The West at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

1. The West at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century Chapter 30 Isabella Hill

2. The Twentieth-Century Movements of People

3. Displacement Through War • World War II created a refugee problem in Europe • It is estimated 46 million people were displaced between 1938 and 1948 in Eastern Europe • Many cities had been bombed during the war and now many Eastern Europeans had no homes • Many Soviet natives feared execution under Stalin upon their return to the Soviet Union • Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary forced out all ethnic Germans to solve the German minorities living outside of Germany • It was said that, “War, violence, and massive social dislocation turned Versailles’s dream of national Homogeneity into realities

4. External and Internal Migration • Between 1945 and 1960, approximately 500,000 Europeans left Europe each year. • After World War II majority of immigrants were from rural areas or were educated city dwellers • Decolonization also took place in the post war period • It lead to non-Europeans moving into Europe • This influx of non-Europeans lead to long-term social tension and conflict well through the end of the 19th century • not only were forge in immigrants frowned upon but immigrants from within Europe who were looking for work were seen as disturbances in the social fabric • Yet, the growing Muslim population throughout Europe proved to be the most prominent issue of the 19th century

5. The New Muslim Population • The European Muslim population rose towards the end of the 20th century because of the economic growth and decolonization • As the European economy recovered in the 25 years after WWII, a labor shortage ensued • The European imported laborers, many of whom came from Islamic nations • These laborers were welcomed on what was considered a “temporary” basis • The Algerian War also brought many Muslims to France • Today there are as many as 1.3 million Muslims in Great Britain, 3.2 million in Germany, and 4.2 million in France • Both the host countries and the Muslims laborers thought their assimilation would be temporary • the radicalization of parts of the Islamic world has affected all nations with a Muslim population and many nations attempt to exert more control over its Islamic population that any other religious group

6. European Population Trends • In the last quarter century, many people have become concerned with the birth rate of many European nations • In 1950 the average birth rate of the European woman was 2.1, in 1980 it had dropped to 1.9, and by is presently 1.4 • In Mediterranean nations such as Greece, Spain, and Italy the rate has reached even lower • One reason for this decreased birth rate is that women are waiting later in their childbearing years to have children • Yet, most European nations have been trying to limit immigration at a time when they many most need the workers • The falling birth rate means Europe will have to face the prospect of an ageing population • This aging population is less likely to give rise to innovation and economic change

8. Toward a Welfare State Society

9. Christian Democratic Parties • Other than the British Labor Party, the methods of the new postwar politics were not those of democratic socialist parties • Such parties did not thrive outside of Scandinavia after the onset of the Cold War and were opposed by the communists and conservatives • Various Christian democratic parties introduced new policies • These new parties were largely Roman Catholic in leadership and membership • Religious groups like this had existed since the 19th century but they had been mainly interested in the social, political, and educational interests of the church • The parties that had been active in the resistance of Nazism and fascism held an initial advantage on the Continent

10. The Creation of Welfare States • The Great Depression and World War II changed the European view on social welfare • Nations began to reallocate funds to social welfare from their military • This lack of military funding in European nations was made possible by the NATO defense umbrella, primarily funded and staffed by the United States, which protected Western Europe • The modern welfare of Europe was broadly the same across Europe • The concept of social insurance against predictable risks popped up at this time • Great Britain was the first major nation to create a welfare state • The most important part of this early legislation was the National Health Service • Similar policies were not adopted in France and Germany until the 1970s because of government refusal of universal coverage

11. Resistance to the Expansion of the Welfare State • Western European attitudes toward the welfare state have reflected in three periods that have marked economic life since the end of the war • The first period was reconstruction, which lasted from 1945 through the early 1950s • The second period was 25 years of steadily expanding economic growth • The third period was first an era of inflation in the late 70s then fed into a time of relatively low growth and high unemployment from the 90s until present day • The most influential political figure in reasserting the importance of markets and resisting the power of labor unions was Margaret Thatcher • Her goal was to make the British economy more efficient and competitive • The benefits of the welfare system has been endangered by the leveling off of the European population • Many European States formerly associated with left-wing parties have limited the growth of the welfare state

12. New Patterns in Work and Expectations of Women

13. Feminism • Femisist in Europe, although less organized than their American friends, developed a new agenda • Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex was the most influential postwar work on women’s issues • She was a part of the French intellectual establishment and wrote from a privileged position • All European feminists argued that women in Europe, on all levels, experienced distinct social and economic disadvantages • This new feminism shifted from a political movement to a social movement offering broader critique of European culture • New feminist journals popped up across Europe and are still published today • The most important element of recent European feminisms this emphasis on women controlling their own lives

14. More Married Women in the Workforce • The number of married women in the workforce has sharply increased and women began to seek new jobs outside of the home • Low birth rates in the 1930s resulted in fewer young women in the workplace, and older married women replaced them • Surveys at the time indicated that the need to provide care for their children is the most important difficulty women faced in the workplace • This is why so many women only worked part time • Children were no longer expected to contribute to the family income at this point in the 20th century • Children began to spend more than 10 extra years in compulsory education • When families need more income, instead of sending the children to work, the mother would get a job to help pay for the families needs

15. New Work Patterns • The work pattern of women in the 20th century is far more consistent than it had been in the previous century • Single women enter the work force after school and continue to work after they marry • If they have children they stop working until their children go to school, at which point they return to work • As life expectancy extended, women were looking for ways to lead a fulfilling life after their children left home • Women began to have children later in life and have fewer children • Urban women had children later in life and had fewer children than women in rural areas • These decisions left many years for women to develop careers and stay in the workforce

16. Women in the New Eastern Europe • Eastern European women, under communism, were nearly equal to men but were regarded with certain suspicion, as were any other free association, by the government • Most women did well in this society because the were not only expected to, but because they could anyways • The new governments conducted themselves in a similar manner but when funding was low, welfare that benefitted women and children was the first thing that would be eliminated • Women would also be laid off sooner than men and hired after men for a lower wage

17. Transformations in Knowledge and Culture

18. Communism and Western Europe • The final decade of the 20th century saw the end of the large, organized communist parties in Western Europe • Liberal democracies floundered during the Great Depression and many people saw communism as a way to protect humane and liberal values • European University students were often affiliated with the Communist Party • Intellectuals visited the Soviet Union and praised Stalin’s achievements while overlooking Stalin’s terror • Some believe humane ends may come of inhumane methods • Former Communists and their sympathizers wrote novels about their disappointment in Stalin and his failures

19. Existentialism • Existentialism was the intellectual movement the best captured the predicament and mood of mid-twentieth-century European culture • Friedrich Nietzsche was a major forerunner of existentialism as well a Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish writer who received little attention before World War I • Kierkegaard rebelled against Hegelian philosophy and Danish Lutheranism. • He believed Christianity could only be grasped in the lives of those who faced extreme situations, rather than in creeds and doctrines • World War I led people to question whether human beings were truly in charge of the destiny • Existentialist believe human beings are compelled to formulate their own ethics and that traditional religion should not be relied upon for ethics • Their thought reflected the uncertainty of social institutions and ethical values in the ear of two world wars

20. Expansion of the University Population and Student Rebellion • In 1900, only a few thousand Europeans were enrolled in some form of university • In 2000, well over 100,000 Europeans were enrolled in some form of university • University education in Europe is still lower than that of the United States • The Student Rebellions of the 1960s are still not very well understood • Their popularity grew as the war in Vietnam developed and it spread to Europe and the rest of the world • Its basis was resentment of the government and was almost always associated with radical critique of the United States, although Eastern European students resented the Soviet Union more • The movement was generally antimilitarist and questioned middle-class values and traditional sexual mores and family life as well • This movement peaked in 1968 and by the early 1970s, the movement seems to be over

21. The Americanization of Europe • The United States has exerted enormous influence upon Europe though the Marshall Plan, NATO, huge military base around the world, student exchange, pop culture, and tourism • Americanization is a word used in European publications referencing the economic and military influence as well as concerns about cultural loss • Many Europeans feel that American popular entertainment, companies, and business methods threaten to extinguish Europe’s unique qualities • Many American firms now have European branches and large American corporations have outlets from Dublin to Moscow

22. International Corporations

23. A Consumer Society • European economies came under a lot of pressure during the 1990s and suffered from high unemployment • The consumer sector exploded during the second half of the century • Eastern Europe floundered in the 1950s while Western Europe flourished • Automobiles, refrigerators, ranges, microwaves, televisions, DVD players, cameras, and computers have become a regular part of life in Western European life • Eastern Europeans began to associate Western consumerism with democratic government, free society, and economic policies that favored free markets and limited government planning • The consumer expansion in the West and the obvious lack thereof in the East is what finally created enough discontent to bring down communism and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

24. Environmentalism • Shortages of consumer goods created a demand the fueled post war economic reconstruction and growth well into the 1960s • Concerns about pollution grew in the 1970s • By the 1980s, environmentalists had developed serious political power • The German Greens, formed in 1979. were among the most important environmentalist political groups and held immediate power among the electoral force • During these years concern for the atmosphere, global warming, and water pollution were also at the attention of government around the world • The results of the three previous decades of economic development were becoming obvious • Fish were dying in the Rhine and Thames rivers and acid rain was killing trees from Germany to Sweden • The German Green Movement was started by radical students in the 1960s and was strongly antinuclear but avoided violence and mass demonstrations, seeking to become a legitimate political force through the electoral process

25. Art Since World War II

26. Cultural Divisions and the Cold War • The cultural divisions of the early cold war is evident in the art work of the time • The soviet art was realistic and displays socialist realism • Stalin created the official doctrine of Soviet art and literature in 1934 • Socialist realism sought to create optimistic and easily intelligible scenes of a bold socialist future, in which prosperity and solidity would reign • The free style of the American artist Jackson Pollock is entirely different from the soviet equivalent at the time • Pollock’s lines are freed from representing anything and this allows the human mind to create any image they can find • This is in total contrast with the Soviet art that must clearly portray what the government wanted the admirer of the work to see

27. American Soviet Vs. “Bread” by Tatjiana Yablonskaya “One” by Jackson Pollock

28. Memory of the Holocaust • British sculptor Rachel Whiteread is one of the leading artist in Europe • Her most important public work is Nameless Library in the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, Austria • Nameless Library commemorates the deaths of 65,000 Austria Jews under the Nazis • The spines of the concrete books are turned in, symbolizing the loss of Jewish contribution and of Jewish lives in the Holocaust

29. The Christian Heritage

30. Neo-Orthodoxy • Liberal theologians of the 19th century softened the ideas of sin and portrayed humans closer to the divine than before • World War I ruined this optimistic ideal with its horror and trauma • Karl Barth’s theology was the most important response to WWI • He reemphasized the transcendence of God and the dependence of human kind upon the divine • Barth portrayed God as entirely different from humankind and he was returning to the Reformation ideas of Martin Luther • The writings of Kierkegaard also profoundly influenced Barth and he regarded the lived experience of men and women the best testimony to the power of God • Barth’s theology later became know as neo-orthodoxy and it challenged much of the 19th century views of human nature

31. Liberal Theology • Neo-Orthodoxy did not however shock liberal theology • German-American theologian Paul Tillich saw religion as a human phenomenon rather than a divine one • Tillich thought God could be found in human nature and human culture, where Barth was the divine as outside of humankind • Rudolf Bultmann, and other liberal theologians continued to work on naturalism and supernaturalism problems that had previously troubled writers • Bultmanns work did not rise to prominence when written but was popularized after WWII by Anglican bishop John Robinson

32. Roman Catholic Reform • The most significant changes is Christianity were made to the Roman Catholic Church after the war • Pope John XXIII initiated these significant changes, which were said to be the most extensive move Catholicism had ever made • Mass was no longer celebrated in Latin, but in the local language, freer relations with other Christian denominations were encouraged, if fostered a new spirit toward Judaism, and gave more power to bishops • Pope Paul also appointed new cardinals in former colonies, making the Catholic church into a truly world body

33. Late-Twentieth-Century Technology: The Arrival of the Computer

34. The Demand for Calculating Machines • In the Beginning of the 17th Century, thinkers of the scientific revolution began to attempt to create machines that would carry out mathematical calculations that human beings could not carry out in as quick a time period as the machine • Toward the end of the 19th century consolidating American and European nations began to confront the task of collecting, sorting, and storing massive amounts of data pertaining to taxes and the census • Around this same time, private businesses were looking for calculating machinery to take care of the growing amounts of economic and business data • Such machines became possible with the invention of complex circuitry for electricity • As well as complex circuitry, electricity dependent communication devices were becoming more prominent • By the 1920s, companies such as National Cash Register, Remington Rand, and International Business Machined Corporation(IBM) began to manufacture machines for business keeping

35. Early Computer Technology • Being that warfare is the catalyst to change, the end of WWI and WWII would most certainly bring about new advancements in technology • The first machine that is genuinely recognizable as a modern digital computer was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer(ENIAC) • It was built and designed by Moore Laboratories of the University of Pennsylvania and used by the U.S. army in 1946 for launching calculations • The ENIAC had 40 panels and 1,500 electric relays with 18,000 vacuum tubes and thousands of punch cards as well as a separate tabulator to print data

36. The Development of Desktop Computers • The transistor, invented in the 1950s, completely changed electronics • It allowed for miniaturization of circuitry that made vacuum tubes obsolete and made computers smaller • The mouse, microchip, and the bitmap revolutionized computers • The first commercially successful personal computer was the Macintosh by Apple Computer Corporation which was quickly followed by the IBM Personal Computer, or PC • Computer training will now determine one’s success in the job market and nations with computers networks will prosper more fully than those without

37. The Challenge of European Unification

38. Postwar Cooperation • The mid-twentieth century saw Europe move towards politically, militarily, and economically unifying • Economic cooperation involved nearly no loss of sovereign and it brought material benefits to all nations involved • NATO and the Marshall Plan gave countries new experience in cooperation, which made economic transitions easier • The first effort made toward economic cooperation was the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 which included France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) • The company benefited and contributed to the immense growth of material production in Western Europe

39. The European Economic Community • Unity was not solely incited by the success of the European Coal and Steal Company • The Suez intervention of 1956 and the ensuing diplomatic isolation of France and Britain convinced the most Europeans that they could only influence the United States of America and the Soviet Union only through acting together • In 1957 through the Treaty of Rome, the members of the European Coal and Steel Company decided to form the European Economic Community (EEC), which became knows as the Common Market • The members of the EEC envisioned the eventual elimination of tariffs, a free flow of capital and labor, and similar wages in all nations • By 1968 the members had abolished all tariffs between each other and trade and labor migration grew steadily • In 1959, Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Portugal, and Austria had formed the European Free Trade Area • In 1973, Britain, Ireland, and Denmark joined the EEC and in 1982 Greece, Spain, and Portugal joined

40. The European Union • The Treaty of Maastricht in 1991 lead to the unification of currency in the EEC as the Euro • The treaty was finally accepted by all members of the EEC and went into effect in November 1993 • The EEC was renamed the European Union and its influence grew through the 90s • In May 2004 the European Union admitted ten new nations that had achieved economic stability and a genuinely democratic institutions • Many new members were former members of Soviet Russia and require assistance from the Union

41. Discord over the Union • In 2004, with the admittance of ten new nations to the European Union, a new constitution was adopted by the Union • This constitution, known as the European constitution, included a bill of rights and complex economic and political agreements • The new constitution had to be ratified by each nation and it was quickly rejected and referendums were held across Europe • Discord also erupted over the Union’s international budget and a similar incident occurred in 2008 when Ireland did not support changes to the Union • Many factors lead to this disunity of the Union including a growing gap between the politically elite and the voters and the fact that the European economy stagnated in the previous decade • Turkey has also caused problems for the Union because it is divided between those who are in favor of its admittance and those who are not • Turkeys admittance would place severe social and economic strain on the other nations of the Unions as well as what is considered the “Islamic Factor”