Farewell to Arms
Book Review - American Prospect
The rise of Europe's welfare states and the death of its warfare states in the aftermath of World War II.
Jay Winter | April 17, 2008
Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe by James J. Sheehan (Houghton Mifflin, 284 pages, $26.00)
Try driving from Paris to Berlin and you will understand that in Europe today the only frightening extremes are the speeds at which motorists drive on the Autobahn. It is a remarkable change for a continent that not so long ago was consumed by the passions of war and wracked by cruelty and suffering. In place of that strife are the mundane and less terrifying tasks of securing the well-being of nations that are self-conscious of their varying histories and eccentricities, but whose borders resemble those of Connecticut and Massachusetts.
This transformation is the subject of James J. Sheehan's Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?, one of those rare books that rearranges the terms of discussion of 20th-century European history. A distinguished historian, recently retired from teaching at Stanford, Sheehan goes one step beyond Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes -- the best and most stimulating synthesis to date -- by showing that 1945, rather than 1968 or 1989, was the real point of no return throughout the continent. Before 1945, states were sovereign entities that waged war. After that date and over time, states voluntarily parted with some of their sovereignty in joining a new Europe whose business was welfare, not warfare.
Sheehan's focus is this passage of Europe from "garrison" to "civilian" states, the achievement that may now allow Europe to put its history in its past. The change came about through two massive political transformations after 1945. The first was the peaceful transition from right-wing dictatorships to democracies first in Germany and Italy, and then in Spain, Portugal, and Greece, whose political stability is due in large part to their participation in the European Union. The second was the relatively peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe. Sheehan rightly emphasizes contingency in these two processes. Without farsighted leaders like King Juan-Carlos in Madrid or Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, these changes might have been blocked or accompanied by significant bloodshed. But they were not, probably because men and women all over Europe had had a surfeit of violence and knew from their own and their families' experiences what that violence had meant. "Never again" was a phrase less associated with the Holocaust after 1945 than with total war against civilians and soldiers alike.
The rise of Europe's welfare states and the death of its warfare states in the aftermath of World War II.
Jay Winter | April 17, 2008
Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe by James J. Sheehan (Houghton Mifflin, 284 pages, $26.00)
Try driving from Paris to Berlin and you will understand that in Europe today the only frightening extremes are the speeds at which motorists drive on the Autobahn. It is a remarkable change for a continent that not so long ago was consumed by the passions of war and wracked by cruelty and suffering. In place of that strife are the mundane and less terrifying tasks of securing the well-being of nations that are self-conscious of their varying histories and eccentricities, but whose borders resemble those of Connecticut and Massachusetts.
This transformation is the subject of James J. Sheehan's Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?, one of those rare books that rearranges the terms of discussion of 20th-century European history. A distinguished historian, recently retired from teaching at Stanford, Sheehan goes one step beyond Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes -- the best and most stimulating synthesis to date -- by showing that 1945, rather than 1968 or 1989, was the real point of no return throughout the continent. Before 1945, states were sovereign entities that waged war. After that date and over time, states voluntarily parted with some of their sovereignty in joining a new Europe whose business was welfare, not warfare.
Sheehan's focus is this passage of Europe from "garrison" to "civilian" states, the achievement that may now allow Europe to put its history in its past. The change came about through two massive political transformations after 1945. The first was the peaceful transition from right-wing dictatorships to democracies first in Germany and Italy, and then in Spain, Portugal, and Greece, whose political stability is due in large part to their participation in the European Union. The second was the relatively peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe. Sheehan rightly emphasizes contingency in these two processes. Without farsighted leaders like King Juan-Carlos in Madrid or Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, these changes might have been blocked or accompanied by significant bloodshed. But they were not, probably because men and women all over Europe had had a surfeit of violence and knew from their own and their families' experiences what that violence had meant. "Never again" was a phrase less associated with the Holocaust after 1945 than with total war against civilians and soldiers alike.
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