Chapter 30: Challenging the Postwar Order (Brandon)

Going into the 1960s, it appeared that Europe had reached a political “consensus,” offering political and social stability to the region as living standards rose and the Cold War tensions between nations relaxed. However, this image was shattered as certainties were protested by counterculture leaders, economic growth stopped, conservative politicians changed the course of the welfare state, and movements formed on all sides of the political spectrum. At the same time, revolutions in East Bloc nations broke down the Communist order there, and Europe started to seem as unstable as ever before.

Chapter Objective: To understand the changes that occurred in Europe in the final decades of and following the Cold War, as well as their causes and the lasting effects they have had on the world.

EQ: What were some of the major causes of the counterculture movement that emerged in Europe?

For the most part, counterculture in Europe followed the movement in the United States. The “baby boom” following World War II had caused a much larger ratio of young people to older people, and this great number of young people had become teenagers, predisposed to rebellion, by the 1960s. Additionally, these teenagers had grown up during an era of political liberalism, and were wealthier than the children of generations before them ever had been, so politics were more important to them than before because they had more time to focus on and understand them. These children had also heard about the horrors of the totalitarian regimes that were still fresh in the world's memory. Finally, combined with the struggle and success of the American civil rights movement as inspiration, all of these factors converged to form a distinct counterculture movement whose echoes still have an influential grip on today's society.

Important People (Hannah)

Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain, was the first woman to be elected to lead a major European power. Gaining power in 1979, Margaret Thatcher's actions are the best illustration of the effects of neoliberal policies. Economically, she hoped to reduce the role of government, unleashing a series of free-market policies. The government cut spending on health care, education, and public housing; it also reduced taxes and created a whole new class of property owners. She created a greater reliance on private enterprise and free market, believing governments created inflation by printing too much money. These policies widened the gap between rich and poor, creating poverty and an increase in interest rates and unemployment. Her popularity decreased but she kept her position as prime minister with her aggressive foreign policy. A speech against communism earned her the nickname “the iron lady” in a Red Army newspaper, which she embraced and used to her advantage. She was elected to a third term in 1987, and she worked extremely well with Ronald Reagan. She was replaced in 1990, but her influence on the British economy and ideals still exist today.

Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer and philosopher who wrote The Second Sex in 1949. She worked with nihilistic philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and argued that women were trapped by limiting conditions. She said that only through boldness and assertiveness could women escape the role that was created for their gender. Beauvoir thought that men and women could establish free and equal unions, not marriages that took part in constraining women to their “role.” She inspired a huge feminist movement that took hold in the 1960s and 1970s, and paved the way for Betty Friedan to write The Feminine Mystique in 1963.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the Russian successor to Yuri Andropov, was the most vigorous Soviet leader in a generation. He was a strong believer in communism, but he realized it needed reforming to work in the Soviet Union. He was trained as a lawyer and became a Communist Party official. He was considered smart, charming, tough, and an idealist. He attacked corruption and incompetence in the government, consolidated his power, and condemned alcoholism and drunkenness. Three famous reforms are attributed to Gorbachev. He launched an economic restructuring referred to as perestroika, a relaxation on censorship and an invitation for a degree of openness called glasnost, and a democratization campaign that led to free elections and a greater civil society. Although he launched his actions in order to save communism and raise the Soviet Union back to the West's level, he was one of the greatest factors in destroying communism in Russia.

U.S. Events and Art (Danielle)

U.S. events:

The Vietnam War:

Following the Geneva Accords, Vietnam was temporarily divided into a socialist north zone and an anticommunist south. President Eisenhower sent military aid to South Vietnam, President Kennedy sent military advisers, and President Johnson provided massive military aid and American troops. An undeclared war had started in Vietnam, and it was met with an antiwar movement back in the United States. President Nixon hoped to withdraw American forces from 1968, and in 1973 a peace agreement was reached with North Vietnam allowing America to exit the war. In 1974, North Vietnam launched a successful offensive and a unified communist country resulted in 1975.

Connection Across Continents: Antiwar protests spread to Western Europe. Many European critics were angered by America’s presence in Vietnam. They believed that it was an invasion into a distant civil war.

American Consumer Culture: In the 1950s a consumer-oriented American economy developed. Upper-class products became available to middle-class and the popularity of things like television skyrocketed. Refrigerators and automobiles became normal possessions. A massive movement of whites out of the cities and into the suburbs occurred, which is known as white flight. In the 1960s, a counterculture appeared that rejected social norms and stressed simplicity and drug use.

Connection Across Continents: Things like U.S.-style supermarkets were constructed in Europe. Critics of consumerism appeared in Europe. Many feared the threat of an Americanization of European culture. They didn’t want the conformity and lack of creativity that was seen in the United States. 

Art Pieces:

Kim Prisu painted on the Berlin Wall in 1990 as part of the East Side Gallery (a collection of 105 paintings by artists from all over the world that were painted o the east side of the Berlin Wall). His work captures humor and imagination in contemporary images. During the 1980s, graffiti art appeared on the Western side of the wall, while the Eastern side remained blank. When the East German government opened the Berlin Wall in 1989, artists also began to paint the Eastern side.

Chapter Connection: Since its construction in 1961, the Berlin Wall divided the city and stood as a symbol of Cold War division in Europe. When the hated division was suddenly torn down twenty-eight years later, Germans were overjoyed. This was an important part of the fall of communism throughout east-central Europe.

In 1971, Martin Sharp created his Jimi Hendrix painting. Sharp was a leading pop artist in the 1960s and 1970s and designed many music posters, covers, cartoons and illustrations. Pop art was a movement that appeared in Britain in the 1950s and consisted of art that was based on modern popular culture and mass media.

Chapter Connection: A counterculture movement emerged in Europe in the 1960s. This movement consisted of sexual openness, drug use and rock music. Bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones became popular. Like Sharp’s Jimi Hendrix, similar pop artwork advertised these rock groups.

Listening to the Past (Brandon)

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring is the publication that served to largely kickstart the environmental movement. Published in 1962, it warns Americans and others about the use of DDT and of pesticides in general, due to its toxic effects on wildlife. Ten years after the book was published, DDT was banned in the United States.

A Fable for Tomorrow

There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.

Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.

Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.

There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example; where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs; the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit.

The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died.

In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams.

No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them. A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know.

Questions for Analysis

1. What does Carson imply that the cause of these disasters is? What will she likely propose to do to prevent them?
2. What are the effects of the substance that Carson is writing about? To what extent do you think she is exaggerating? Does the degree of exaggeration matter?
3. How different are Carson's fears from the environmental fears of today? Has industrialized society improved or worsened the environmental situation since this has been published?

Connections Across Time (Cassie)

A United States event that occured in the 1970's, were the Embargo Years. The Embargo Years were the result of the environmental movement and energy crisis. Many citizens in the US during this time hopped on board with these movements and grew passionate towards protecting the environment and finding natural, healthier resources to power the country. During the Embargo Years imports of oil to the US dropped, and prices rose dramatically. Nixon was president at this time and things like "Project Independence" and The Federal Energy Office was created in attempts to help and/or get rid of the oil problems. The embargo lasted 6 months, and after it was all said and done, many new environmental policies developed over the years. In 1978, congress passed the National Energy Act, the Natural Gas policy act, and the Department of Energy was created all in order to better the natural world. All of this connects across to Europe in the 1970s, because during this time in Europe the rise of the environmental movement was growing and developing rapidly. Just like in the US, people in Europe grew extremely passionate and committed to saving the environment because of all the terrible effects that the industrial development had created. Although the United States and Europe are an ocean apart, the people living on each shared the same drive and interests when it came to the environment. So while the Embargo Years were going on, many groups and individuals in the US also joined together to protest the destructive consequences happening to the environment. In Europe, this too was occuring. The environmental movement grew and protests occured. One of the most famous events during the environmental movement in Europe at this time was the event that student protesters took on at the Univerity of Copenhagen in 1969. They took over a scientific conference on natural history by locking the doors and spraying the professors with polluted lake water. They also held up and oil-doused duck, shouting, "Come and save it... you talk about pollution, why don't you do anything about it?!" These events that occured across continents connect simply because of the dramatic times that were happening due to the crazed fight to save the environment. Both the US and Europe experienced turmoil in these areas, and the environmental movement came out of it along with protests and new policies to conserve the environment and it's resources.

Another United States event that was occuring during this time was the creation of the "new left." The new left in the US was influenced primarily by The Vietnam War. The new left was a term that was associated with liberal and radical political movements during the 1960's, and mainly made up of college students. These people were strongly against the US's involvement in Vietnam and protested sending our troops over to fight. The term "hippies" is closely linked to the new left, because both go hand-in-hand with eachother during their time periods and what the believed in. They sought to create a large amount of reforms that advocated for democracy and civil rights. This new left that developed in the United States also had developed in Europe, as well. The new left in reference to the European ways is defined as - a movement of students in the West who advoacted simpler, purer societies based on an updated, romanticized verison of Marxism. They sought to create a more humanitarian style of socialism and sought to correct the errors of the "old left." The Europeans apart of the new left also dreamed of complete freedom and simpler, purer societies. Many student activists in western Europe rose up just like in the US, and protests also occured there. The new left in the United States connects across to the continent of Europe because they both share almost exactly the same definition, motives, and dreams as one another. On both Europe and the US the new left was made up of groups and individuals believing in the same things and sharing the same values and ideas.

3 2 1 Summary (Hannah)

3 Things I Learned:

•  I learned about the French National Front's stance as anti-immigration.
• I learned that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were actually very good friends, besides the fact that they worked together. I thought that was adorable :)
• I learned that Ostalgie is a word to describe feelings of nostalgia for old Eastern ways of life. While people wanted the new democratized reforms and freedoms, they yearned for the stability and comfort that communist Soviet Union gave them.

2 Things I Found Interesting:

• I found it interesting that Mikhail Gorbachev was trying to reform communism in the Soviet Union, but he actually helped to destroy it. 
• I found learning about the ETA interesting because the only terrorist group we hear about is Al Qaeda. Also, the ETA is still active, trying to break the Basque country away from Spain.

1 Question I Still Have:

• What Cold War tensions are still left in the world?