Europe\'s Challenges After WWII and the Transition Away From Communism

¶ … Europe faced after WWII and the fall of communism in 1991: How has Europe managed the transition away from communism?

After World War II, Europe was devastated physically and economically from the conflict in a manner far different from the United States. The U.S. had not seen war on its soil. Britain, in contrast, had been razed by the blitz, and its far-flung empire was crumbling. France had likewise been torn apart, and Germany had been bombed into submission. There was also the looming specter of communism on the Eastern horizon. Stalin was determined to use Eastern Europe as a 'buffer zone' against Western European encroachment. Soon, the West and East were polarized into two different alliance systems, that of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. All efforts of Eastern Europe to extricate itself from the Warsaw Pact were met with swift suppression by Moscow, as manifested during the brief Czechoslovak 'spring' in the 1960s. Eastern Europe was used to prop up the Soviet Union economically as well as militarily and politically. "Throughout the more than thirty years since it was founded, the Warsaw Pact...served as one of the Soviet Union's primary mechanisms for keeping its East European allies under its political and military control.[footnoteRef:1]" [1: Glenn E. Curtis, Czechoslovakia: A Country Study, (Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, 1992), excerpted http://shsu.edu/~his_ncp/warpact.html [30 Apr 2012]]

In the West, the Marshall Plan was America's attempt to rebuild Europe's economy and infrastructure after the end of World War II. Given the causes of the Second World War, which many felt were rooted in the punitive policies directed against Germany after World War I, Western Germany was not depleted of its resources and forced to pay crushing war reparations. "Winston Churchill was strongest in raising the issue of the dangers of a starving Germany if too many reparations were demanded and taken. He focused on the fact that the Germans must be left enough resources to pay reparations. A starving Germany would benefit no one.[footnoteRef:2]" Instead, the focus was upon bolstering the Western front to undercut the mounting influence of Stalin. [2: Bruce L. Brager, "Yalta," from The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe, Reprinted at http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/yalta.aspx [30 Apr 2012]]

Although Eastern Europe was subsumed unwillingly, for the most part, under Soviet control, a few nations such as Greece were highly sympathetic to leftism, given the role the communists had played in opposing fascism. As part of the newly-declared Truman Doctrine, the U.S. declared that it would aid all anti-communist forces, including those present in Greece and anywhere else in the world. The new war, the Cold War, was not to be fought in a full-on conflagration between the United States and the Soviet Union, given the massive, deadly threat that the nuclear weapons presented in the arsenals of both major powers. Instead, it was destined to be fought using smaller nations as battlegrounds, including Europe.

The Berlin Airlift, in which the United States flew supplies to the besieged free section of Berlin, refusing to let it fall, is often considered to be one of the most defining moments of the Cold War. "People of Kennedy's...generation probably recognized the irony that Berlin had become a symbol of freedom and resistance to expansionist tyranny at the height of the Cold War. Though never the ideological center of Nazi Germany -- that dubious honor belonged to Munich and Nuremberg -- thirty years before Berlin was the center of government, the control center of the greatest threat to freedom and security the world has known.[footnoteRef:3]" The human encroachment of the Berlin War in 1991 is often cited as the unofficial end of the Cold War, further underlining the city's symbolism as a beacon of freedom. [3: Ibid.]

The transition of Eastern Europe from a command economy to a capitalist economy proved to be difficult for many states. "The fact that Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians and Slovenes have had for more than a thousand years permanent political, cultural and commercial interactions with German speaking neighbors certainly made the resumption of commercial ties with Germany and Austria after 1989 much easier.[footnoteRef:4]" These economies had a strong, thriving capitalist tradition before their incorporation into the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact. A far more rocky transition was experienced by poorer nations, such as Romania, and the former communist nation of Yugoslavia became completely fragmented into warring enclaves, cumulating most famously in the bloody Balkan wars. The dominance of the U.S.S.R., while oppressive, contained many age-old rivalries that erupted in a conflagration of rage. [4: Oldrich Kyn, "Eastern Europe in Transition," from The Transition to a Market Economy (Cheltenham, UK). excerpted: http://econc10.bu.edu/economic_systems/Theory/Transition/eetrans.htm [30 Apr 2012]]

To bring about the transition from communism to capitalism was a difficult and bracing experience, necessitating harsh measures, such as the abandonment of price controls, an end to mandatory full employment, and the selling off of state enterprises. This 'shock therapy' in effect meant that the transition would be swift and relatively brutal, forcing newly privatized entities to become competitive by shedding unproductive practices and workers. Today, it is conceded that "the shock treatment did have some beneficial effects. Manufactured exports to the West have risen; small private enterprises have thrived; and unemployment in Warsaw, Budapest, and Prague has been practically nil.[footnoteRef:5]" However, within these economies there remained some social support: subsidizes exist for rent, fuel, and transportation, as have some industrial subsidies. [5: Alice Amsden, "Beyond Shock Therapy," The America Prospect, (19 Dec 2001, http://prospect.org/article/beyond-shock-therapy-why-eastern-europes-recovery-starts-washington[30 Apr 2012]]