Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

There was coal to be mined; roads, railways, buildings, power lines to be rebuilt or replaced; tools to be manufactured and then applied to the manufacture of other goods. For all these jobs there was a shortage of trained labor; as we have seen, young, able-bodied men in the Displaced Persons camps had little difficulty finding work and asylum, in contrast to women with families—or ‘intellectuals’ of any sort. One consequence of this was the universal exaltation of industrial work and workers—a distinct political asset for parties claiming to represent them. Left-leaning, educated, middle-class men and women embarrassed by their social origin could assuage their discomfort by abandoning themselves to Communism. But even if they didn’t go so far as to join the Party, many artists and writers in France and Italy especially ‘prostrated themselves before the proletariat’ (Arthur Koestler) and elevated the ‘revolutionary working class’ (typically imagined in a rather Socialist-Realist/Fascist light as stern, male and muscular) to near iconic status.