Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

In politics, corruption is largely a by-product of opportunity.

Even in 1960, well after the worldwide movement towards independence had gathered steam, 70 percent of the world’s gross output and 80 percent of the economic value added in manufacturing industry came from Western Europe and North America.

Even the Belgians finally released the Congo in June 1960 (albeit in an irresponsible manner and with disastrous results).

‘Nothing lasts unless it is incessantly renewed.’

English landladies could no longer display signs announcing ‘No Blacks, Irish or Dogs’; but notices forbidding entry to ‘dogs and Italians’ were not unknown in Swiss parks for some years to come.

Between 1934 and 1976 sterilization programmes were pursued in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, in each case under the auspices and with the knowledge of Social Democratic governments. In these years some 6,000 Danes, 40,000 Norwegians and 60,000 Swedes (90 percent of them women) were sterilized for ‘hygienic’ purposes: ‘to improve the population’. The intellectual driving force behind these programmes—the Institute of Racial Biology at the University of Uppsala in Sweden—had been set up in 1921, at the peak of the fashion for the subject. It was not dismantled until fifty-five years later. What, if anything, this sad story tells us about Social Democracy is unclear—distinctly unsocialist and undemocratic societies and governments have done more and worse. The