European continent had suffered a long period of wars and the most common ones are the World War I (WWI) and the World War II (WWII). The European societies could not bear any longer for wars or having so many thought prior to World War I. The World War I left no aspect of European civilization untouched as pre-war governments were transformed to fight total war.
World War I
The World War I gave impacts on Europe socially, politically, economically and intellectually. The countries in European continent had channeled all of their resources into this war which resulted in large social change. The result of working together for a common goal seemed to be unifying European societies.
All sides involved in the war had enacted some form of a selective service which leveled classes in many ways. Wartime scarcities made luxury an impossibility and unfavorable. Reflecting this, clothing became uniform and utilitarian. The bright blue and red prewar French infantry uniforms had been changed after the first few months of the war since they made whoever wore them into excellent target of machine guns.
World War I
The World War I gave impacts on Europe socially, politically, economically and intellectually. The countries in European continent had channeled all of their resources into this war which resulted in large social change. The result of working together for a common goal seemed to be unifying European societies.
All sides involved in the war had enacted some form of a selective service which leveled classes in many ways. Wartime scarcities made luxury an impossibility and unfavorable. Reflecting this, clothing became uniform and utilitarian. The bright blue and red prewar French infantry uniforms had been changed after the first few months of the war since they made whoever wore them into excellent target of machine guns.
Women's skirts rose above the ankle permanently and women became more involved in the society compared to before. They undertook a variety of jobs previously held by men. They were now a part of clerical, secretarial work, and teaching. They were also more widely employed in industrial jobs.
By 1918, 37.6 percent of the work force in the Krupp armaments firm in Germany was female (FWW, 2009). In England the proportion of women works rose strikingly in public transport (for example, from 18,000 to 117,000 bus conductors), banking (9,500 to 63,700), and commerce (505,000 to 934,000) (FWW, 2009). Many restrictions on women disappeared during the war. It became acceptable for young, employed, single middle-class women to have their own apartments, to go out without chaperones, and to smoke in public.
It was only a matter of time before women received the right to vote in many belligerent countries. Strong forces were shaping the power and legal status of labor unions, too. The right of workers to organize was relatively new, about half a century. Employers fought to keep union organizers out of their plants and armed force was often used against striking workers.
The universal rallying of workers towards their flag at the beginning of the war led to wider acceptance of unions. However, it was more of a bureaucratic route than a parliamentary route that integrated organized labor into government. A long war was not possible without complete cooperation of the workers with respect to putting in longer hours and increasing productivity.
Strike activity had reached its highest levels in history just before the war. There had been over 1500 different work stoppages in France and 3,000 in Germany during 1910. More than a million British workers stopped at one time or another in 1912. In Britain, France, and Germany, deals were struck between unions and government to eliminate strikes and less favorable work conditions in exchange for immediate integration into the government process.
This integration was at the cost of having to act more as managers of labor than as the voice of the labor. Suddenly, the strikes stopped during the first year of the war. Soon the enthusiasm died down. The revival of strike activity in 1916 shows that the social peace had become thin, everywhere, there were work stoppages and the number of people on strike in France quadrupled in 1916 compared to 1915.
In Germany, in May 1916, Berlin workers held a three-day walkout to protest the arrest of the pacifist Karl Liebknecht (Zimand, 2002). By the end of the war most had rejected the government offer of being integrated in the bureaucracy, but not without playing an important public role and gaining some advantages such as collective bargaining.
The war may have had a leveling effect in many ways, but it also sharpened some social differences and conflicts. Soldiers were revolting just like workers:
“Soldiers were no longer willing to sacrifice their lives when shirkers at home were earning all the money, taking the women around with their cars, cornering all the best jobs, and while so many profiteers were waxing rich" - (Tucker & Roberts, 2005).
The draft was not completely fair since not all men were sent to the trenches. Skilled workers were more important to industry and some could secure safe works at home. Unskilled young males and junior officers paid with their lives the most. The generation conflict was also widened by the war as veterans’ disillusionment fed off of anger towards the older generation for sending them to trenches.
European governments at that time took on many new powers in order to fight the total war. War governments fought opposition by increasing police power. Authoritarian regimes like tsarist of Russia had always depended on the threat of force, but now even parliamentary governments felt the necessity to expand police powers and control public opinion. Britain gave police powers wider scope in August 1914 by the Defense of the Realm Act which authorized the public authorities to arrest and punish dissidents under martial law if necessary (FWW, 2009).
Through later acts policies, powers grew to include suspending newspapers and the ability to intervene in a citizen’s private life in the use of lights at home, food consumption, and bar hours. Police powers tended to grow as the war went on and public opposition increased as well. In France, a sharp rise of strikes, mutinies, and talk of a negotiated peace raised doubts about whether France could really carry on the war in 1917. A group of French political leaders decided to carry out war at the cost of less internal liberty. The government cracked down on anyone suspected of supporting a compromise peace. Many of the crackdowns and treason charges were just a result of war hysteria or calculated political opportunism. Expanded police powers also included control of public information and opinion. The censorship of newspapers and personal mail was already an established practice.
Governments regularly used their power to prevent disclosure of military secrets and the airing of dangerous opinions considering war efforts. The other side of using police power on public opinion was the “organizing of enthusiasm” which could be thought of as:
Governments regularly used their power to prevent disclosure of military secrets and the airing of dangerous opinions considering war efforts. The other side of using police power on public opinion was the “organizing of enthusiasm” which could be thought of as:
Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people; the organization embraces within its scope only those who do not threaten on psychological grounds to become a brake on the further dissemination of the idea.
World War I provided a ground for the birth of propaganda which countries used with even more frightening results during World War II. Governments used the media to influence people to enlist and to brainwash them war into supporting the war. The French premier used his power to draft journalists or defer them in exchange for favorable coverage. The German right created a new mass party, the Fatherland Party. It was backed by secret funds from the army and was devoted to propaganda for war discipline. By 1918, the Fatherland Party was larger than the Social Democratic Party. Germany had become quite effective at influencing the masses.
The economic impact of the war however was much disproportioned. At one end, there were those who profited from the war and at the other end were those who suffered under the effects of inflation. The opportunities to make enormous amounts of money in war manufacture were plentiful. War profiteers were a public scandal. Fictional new rich, like the manufacturer of shoddy boots in Jules Romains’ Verdun had numerous real-life counterparts. However, government rarely intervened in major firms, as happened when the German military took over the Daimler motor car works for padding costs on war-production contracts. Governments tended to favor large, centralized industries over smaller ones. The war was a stimulus towards grouping companies into larger firms. When resources became scarce, nonessential firms, which tended to be small, were simply closed down. Inflation was the greatest single economic factor as war budges rose to astronomical figures and massive demand forced shortages of many consumer goods. Virtually every able-bodied person was employed to keep up with the demand. This combination of high demand, scarcity, and full employment sent prices soaring, even in the best managed countries.
In Britain, a pound sterling brought in 1919 about one-third of what it had bought in 1914. French prices approximately doubled during the war and it only got worse during the 1920’s. Inflation rates were even higher in other belligerents. The German currency ceased to have value in 1923. All of this had been foreseen by John M. Keynes as a result of the Versailles Treaty:
“The danger confronting us is the rapid depression of the standard of life of the European populations to a point which will mean actual starvation for some which was a point already reached in Russia and approximately reached in Austria (CEE, 2008).”
Inflation affected different people quite differently. Skilled workers in strategic industries found that their wages kept pace with prices or even rose a little faster. Unskilled workers and workers in less important industries fell behind. Clerks, lesser civil servants, teachers, clergymen, and small shopkeepers earned less than many skilled labors. Those who suffered most were those dependent on fixed incoming. The incomes of elderly on pensions or middle class living on small dividends remained about the same while prices doubled or tripled. These dropped down into poverty. These new poor kept their pride by fixing their old clothes, supplementing food budget with gardens, and giving up everything to appear as they had before the war. Inflation radically changed the relative position of many in the society. Conflicts arose over the differences in purchasing power. All wage earners had less real purchasing power at the end of the war than they had at the beginning. Even more badly, some great fortunes were built during the wartime and postwar inflation. Those who were able to borrow large amounts of money could repay their debts in devalued currency from their war profit.
Four years of chaos and utter destruction had smashed the old Europe. The most advanced quarter of the world had turned to violence and barbarism of its own accord. Progress and reason had been suppressed for destruction. Moreover, it also brought to light an almost incredible phenomenon where it could be seen that the civilized nations know and understand one another so little that makes one can turn against the other with hate and loathing.
Early part of the war satisfied the fascination with speed, violence, and the machine as manifested in the pre-war futurists. Many movements shared a resolute modernist contempt for all academic styles in the arts, a hatred for bourgeois culture and a commitment to the free expression of individuals. All these feelings were given an additional jolt of violence and anger by the horrors of the wartime experience. During the war there was a loss of illusions as described in All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque. Poets and writers like others had also believing in heroism and nobility through war in 1914. Trench warfare hardened and embittered many.
Freud said regarding disillusionment: “When I speak of disillusionment, everyone will know at once what I mean. One needs to be a sentimentalist; one may perceive the biological and psychological necessity for surveying in the economy of human life. And yet condemn war both in its means and ends and long for the cessation of all wars” (Panarchy, 2011).
British poet such as Wilfred Owen who was killed in 1918 was transformed from a young romantic person into a powerful denouncer of those who had sent young men off to war. In “Dulce et Decorum Est,” he mocked the old lie that it was good for a person to die for his country after giving a searing description of a gassed soldier coughing out his lungs (Roberts, 2011).
The anger of poets who were forced to become soldier was directed against those who had sent them for war, and not to their enemy. Their war experience did not produce new art forms or styles. It acted largely to make the harshest themes and the grimmest or most mocking forms of expression of prewar intellectual life seem more appropriate, and to force experiments in opposition to the dominant values of contemporary Europe. The Dada movement which mocked old values ridiculed stuffy bourgeois culture was one of these movements. A mood of desolation and emptiness prevailed at the end of a war where great sacrifice had brought little gain. It was not clear where post-war-anger would be focused but it would definitely be anti-bourgeois politics.
The echoes of a world shattering were heard throughout world as Europe collapsed into total war. These echoes were the sound of change as Europe was transformed socially, politically, economically and intellectually into a machine of complete destruction after the World War I.
World War II
As for the World War II, Europe was devastated for many years during the conflict of the World War II. Millions of people were killed and wounded while industrial and residential centers in England, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Belgium and elsewhere were ruined.
Much of Europe had going through famine period as agricultural production was disrupted by war. Transportation infrastructure worked slowly. The only major power in the world that was not significantly damaged was the United States and the USSR. However, both of these powers are competing among each other in spreading their influence. The United States also worried that the communism influence would eventually spill all over the world that placed the States into the state of awareness in order to prevent the spread of communism.
From 1945 to 1947, the United States was already assisting European economic recovery with direct financial aid (GCMF, 2009). Military assistance was also given to Greece and Turkey in order to manage the crisis. The newly formed United Nations also provides humanitarian assistance. Around January 1947, the United States’ President, Harry Truman appointed George Marshall, the architect of victory during the World War II, to be the Secretary of State (GCMF, 2009).
As what is written in his diary on January 8, 1947, Mr. Truman said that, “Marshall is the greatest man of World War II. He managed to get along with Roosevelt, the Congress, Churchill, the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he made a grand record in China. When I asked him to be my special envoy to China, he merely said, ‘Yes, Mr. President, I’ll go.” No argument only patriotic action. And if any man was entitled to balk and ask for a rest, he was. We’ll have a real State Department now” (Rense, 2011).
In just few months, State Department leadership under Marshall with expertise provided by George Kennan, William Clayton and others crafted the Marshall Plan concept, which George Marshall shared with the world in a speech on June 5, 1947 at Harvard (GCMF, 2009). It is officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP) or the Marshall Plan.
In the beginning, it was intended to rebuild the economies and spirits of Western Europe. Marshall was convinced that the key to restoration of political stability lays in the revitalization of national economies (GCMF, 2009). Further, he saw political stability in Western Europe as a key to curb the advances of communism in the region.
For the European Recovery Program, about sixteen nations including Germany became part of it and shaped the assistance they required, state by state, with administrative and technical support provided through the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) of the United States (Matchette et. al, 1995). European nations received nearly $13 billion in aid which initially resulted in shipments of food, staples, fuel and machinery from the United States to Europe and later resulted in investment in industrial capacity in the continent (GCMF, 2009). Marshall Plan funding however ended in 1951.
Nations which received supports from Marshall Plan had benefited a lot from their economic recovery. From 1948 through 1952, European economies grew at an unprecedented rate. Trade relations led to the formation of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO). The economic recovery led by the coal and steel industries helped to form what is now known as the European Union.
Submitted: 23 Sep 2011
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