Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

Everyone expected World War Two to end, like its predecessor, with an all-embracing Peace Treaty, and five separate treaties were indeed signed in Paris in 1946. These settled territorial and other business in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland and Italy, though not in Norway, which remained technically in a state of war with Germany until 1951.10 But however much these developments mattered for the peoples concerned (and in the case of Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary they signaled their definitive consignment to Soviet domination), such agreements could be reached because in the end none of the Great Powers were willing to risk confrontation over them. The business of Germany, however, was starkly different. To the Russians especially, Germany mattered very much indeed. Just as the war had been about Germany, so was the peace, and the spectre of German revanchism haunted Soviet calculations every bit as much as it did those of the French. When Stalin, Truman and Churchill met at Potsdam (from July 17th to August 2nd 1945, with Attlee replacing Churchill following Labour’s victory in the British General Election), it proved possible to reach agreement on the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe, the administrative sub-division of Germany for occupation purposes and the goals of ‘democratization’, ‘denazification’ and ‘decartelization’. Beyond this level of general common intention, however, the difficulties began.