ABSTRACT
In 1945, the future of Europe, wracked by war and civil war, appearedquite bleak. Large parts were physically devastated. Institutionally, the nation-state was discredited. Every continental country except the Soviet Union bore the scars of defeat, betrayal and compromise, and even in the Soviet Union, accusations of Ukrainian and Baltic collaborationism fueled Russian nationalism and chauvinism. The continental countries that had fought wars had been defeated and humiliated. The legacy of collaboration in economics and politics scarred even the neutral countries. Island Britain, though not militarily defeated, was financially exhausted. Realism, the tradition of foreign policy linked with the nation-state, was also at an end. A.J.P. Taylor quite correctly noted that “A realist foreign policy must always end at Vichy – cautious collaboration with the aggressor.”1 But in 1945, no one wanted to end at Vichy, and the world after Vichy and after Hitler needed morality as a guide to the behavior of states. The major new domestic political forces that emerged to face the new challenge were all oriented toward non-national politics and international ideals: communism, socialism, or Christian democracy.
