ABSTRACT
In May 1945 European power and influence stood at its lowest point for centuries. The collapse of the Third Reich ushered in the Cold War, thus promoting the division of Europe into two armed camps dominated by the USA and USSR. Neither of these powers was truly European. While the USA had a strong ethnic and cultural base primarily of European origin, neither its leaders nor its people saw issues with European eyes. It was fortunate for much of Europe that what was in its interests so often coincided with American interests in the course of the next forty years or so. The USSR in the post1945 era, as Russia had been before 1914, was involved in European affairs, had European interests, and, occasionally, looked at questions in a European way. But its interests stretched beyond Europe, and the USSR possessed a cultural and ethnic base which was far from being European in character; the USSR, then, even at the height of the Cold War did not always give priority to Europe. Furthermore, the nature of Stalinism – ostensibly derived from a European ideology – struck most Europeans as barbarous and alien. Europeans in 1945, and for long after, were forcibly reminded of their continent’s decline; the most powerful symbol of the change in status was the division of Berlin and, from 1961 onwards, the wall which physically separated West from East.
