ABSTRACT
In 1945 Europe was at its lowest ebb, much of its industry, its housing stock and its transport systems were in ruins, many of its people were homeless, starving, refugees, or all three. The fate of the continent seemed to lie in the hands of the two extra-European superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, whose victorious troops had met on the River Elbe on 25 April. In defeated Germany, soon to be divided between the competing Soviets and Americans, 1945 was die Stunde Null (Zero Hour), a political, cultural and physical vacuum. But the sensation of an obliteration of previous identities spread far beyond the borders of the crushed Third Reich. The experiences of the war had, apparently, exposed the frailties of the national state as an adequate safeguard of security, undermined the faith of many in nationalism itself and had negated many of the basic tenets of liberalism leaving the entire continent, winners and losers alike, unsure of where the future lay. It seemed as if the old certainties had been destroyed and it was not clear what would replace them.
