ABSTRACT
Europe as such was defeated by the war, not only Germany. In Western Europe, the regimes were still by and large legitimate in the eyes of the population: Nazi Germany had ruled through quisling governments, the occupied nations had resisted, and the powers of the state had taken refuge in London. Western Europe was politically and socially intact but economically devastated when the power defined as legitimate returned, Eastern Europe was in chaos both politically and economically. With the exception of Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe had socioeconomic systems lagging far behind with their feudal and pre-capitalistic structures. Six Western European powers lost their colonies in the period subsequent to the 1945 defeat: Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands — and Britain.
