ABSTRACT
With the end of the Cold War come new questions on the years after 1945, on the reconstruction and the division of the European world in that era. They concern not just the predictable issues: the redefinition of Germany, the rebuilding of France, the dilemmas of Britain. Today's questions go deeper. They invite comparisons with the first postwar era, trace the link between reconstruction and modernisation in each nation, highlight the distance between intentions and results. How could free market capitalism, discredited in Europe by two world wars and the upheavals of the 1930s, recover in the space of a decade to flourish as never before? How was it possible for the ruined nations of 1945 to carry through a revolution in production and consumption and at the same time keep up ever more costly defences in the Cold War? Was the division of the continent into two hostile blocs the price to pay for all this?
