*** TONY JUDT: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin Books Ltd (80 Strand London WC2R ORL, UK). 2006, 933 pp. ISBN 1-59420-065-3.
This ambitious book won the European Book Prize on 10 December 2008, the second such prize awarded by the Esprit d'Europe association. The prize-giving ceremony, chaired by Jacques Delors, took place at the European Parliament and was attended by the presidents of the European Parliament and the European Commission. The jury of a dozen journalists from several countries was chaired by Jorge Semprun. Written in English and already translated into numerous languages, the French edition of this book was published in 2007 by Armand Colin publishers and has given rise to myriad far from convergent commentaries. The author's Jewish parents fled Russia and Lithuania and the author was born in London in 1948. He was brought up in the United Kingdom, France and Israel, and now lives in the United States, where he lectures in European history at New York University. In 1995, he set up the Erich Maria Remarque Institute at New York University, a European affairs research institute with the aim of encouraging transatlantic cooperation. The author is an intellectual who is bold enough to openly argue his case on academic freedom in the United States, the chances of survival of the state of Israel, and his rather corrosive views on the European project in a book entitled "A Grand Illusion: An Essay on Europe" that was published in 1996. Despite being a French speaker, the author of this review read the book in English because, as many commentators have pointed out, it is highly personal, and there is a far stronger feeling of living through events, getting involved in them to share them with the readers than a concern to describe them objectively so that they can be understood. This book is written by a true author who uses his literary skills to express what he feels, and in this sense, the book thoroughly deserves the comment by The New York Review of Books about it being a brilliant, important, book with the pace of a thriller and the scale of an encyclopaedia, rather than a book designed to explain the nuts and bolts of history.
The great originality of Judt's approach is the writing of a common pan-European history for both parts of Europe, East and West, thereby correcting the unfortunate legacy of Western Europeans, who have tended to ignore the history of their fellow Europeans who suffered under Soviet domination for so long. The author explains in the introduction that it was in Vienna in December 1989, returning from a trip to Prague, that he decided to write the book, aware that the events he had just witnessed would change the history of Europe in a decisive fashion. It is certainly true that talking about the rebuilding of Europe since 1945 and observing in parallel how events unfold on either side of the Iron Curtain is highly original and the analysis is extremely revealing. Likewise for the author's description of the role played by the United States in the rebuilding of Europe, particularly getting the Marshall Plan up and running and the start of the Cold War. The wealth of detail about life in the many countries described, particularly their economic development (irrespective of the type of system in which they evolved), and the originality of the analysis of the artistic and intellectual creativity of the countries under discussion, sheds great light on the diversity of cultural identity in Europe as a whole. In this connection, this book's contribution to the affirmation that human beings do not live together in society in Europe simply on the basis of economics, the market or a single currency, helps anchor understanding and awareness of the shared values that justify the unity of a Common Memory.
The book does, however, suffer from considerable errors of judgement about the actual details of history, initiatives and approaches that led to the gradual unification of Europe during the period covered in this personal account. There are so many gaps, errors of judgement, confusion and elements of unacceptable prejudice that one would be forgiven for wondering how a serious historian could possibly have gone so off-track. When the author says that considered as a whole, the European Union is a good thing, he reveals what he never says openly but which is constantly under the surface, namely that he considers most of the work to establish a supranational Europe as being in vain, pursued solely by naïve idealists, smacking of pipedreams and probably bound for failure. In this field, the author is so imbued with the political culture of his country of birth, the United Kingdom, that he cannot even imagine the reality of sovereign nation states being able to change, as is shown, for example, by the claim that the state in recent times has two inter-dependent functions - raising taxes and going to war. He adds that Europe (the European Union) is not a state because it can neither raise taxes nor does it have the ability to go to war. He has forgotten that the sole aim of all the efforts to establish the European Union was precisely to end the need of states to go to war against each other in the first place! It is striking, for example, that he does not stress the role of the different 'political cultures' that exist in Europe, differences which explain the often divergent ideas of the concept of 'peoples,' particularly in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Slavic countries and Switzerland, and the fact that this has an impact on the way the state is managed and the manner in which people live in democracies. It would appear that the author thinks that the reality of sovereign nation states is the only 'eternal' reality in the history of the European Union. Although he points out the importance of the tens of millions of victims of wars between countries in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century, he does not seem to understand what the construction of the European Union actually signifies in terms of ensuring peace in our time. That would appear to jeopardise the line taken by the United Kingdom, which continues to legitimately believe that its survival, power and identity depend on disunity on the continent, which is used to justify the pursuit, even as a member of the European Union, of a strategy that has characterised British policy for centuries.
The end of the epilogue reflecting on the role of memory, particularly the Shoah, provides a perfect indication of Tony Judt's prejudices about the European project. He writes that the EU may perhaps put itself forward as a solution to history but it will never be able to substitute for history. This comment doesn't seem to acknowledge that while history should never be forgotten, it is perfectly within the power of human beings to change the course of that history. The twentieth century provides proof of this. Why is it then that the author appears unable to speak positively about the EU? It is true that he is not writing a history of the European project in the second half of the twentieth century, but the history of Europe from a different perspective. Winner of the European Book Prize, this excellent book merits the interest generated by the prize, but does not describe the full reality of the history of Europe after the Second World War. European citizens in future generations, when starting to take up their responsibilities in terms of establishing more democratic structures in the European institutions, will not recognise themselves here. Perhaps a mistake has been made about the role of Memory? Only time will tell.
Gabriel Fragnière
*** MICHEL DUMOULIN (Ed.): Italie et Belgique en Europe depuis 1918 - Italië en België in Europa sedert 1918. Institut Historique Belge de Rome (4 rue d'Egmont, B-1050 Brussels. Internet: http: //http://www.academiabelgica.it - Distributed by Brepols Publishers, 67 Begijnhof, B-2300 Turnhout. Fax: (32-14) 428919 - email: orders@brepols.com - Internet: http://www.brepols.net ). 2008, 581 pp. ISBN 90-74461-64-1.
Following on from a conference organised by the 'Institut Historique Belge de Rome' at the 'Academia Belgica de Rome,' this book updates research into relations between Italy and Belgium in the twentieth century in terms of diplomacy and politics, and also on the business, social, cultural and sports front. Comprising articles in French, Dutch, Italian and English, it looks beyond Belgian-Italian relations as such to consider how the two countries sit in the European Union context in the light of issues like nuclear energy and monetary cooperation in managing the single currency.
(MT)
*** BENEDIKT SCHOENBORN: La mésentente apprivoisée. De Gaulle et les Allemands, 1963-1969. Presses Universitaires de France (6 av. Reille, F-75014 Paris Cedex 14. Tel: (33-1) 58103100). "Publications de l'Institut universitaire de hautes études internationale de Genève" series. 2007, 430 pp, €40. ISBN 978-2-13056038-8.
On 14 September 1958, the then Chancellor of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, travelled to France for his first meeting with General de Gaulle, who had just returned to power. The car stopped a few miles from Colombey-les-deux-Églises because the driver had spotted two men walking along the road, General de Gaulle and his aide-de-camp, who had come to meet the Chancellor on foot. Adenauer got out of the car and, slightly intimidated, went towards de Gaulle who, believing he spoke German pretty well, asked him how he got around rather than how he was getting on. Adenauer answered in surprise, “By foot.” Adenauer recounted this anecdote to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who himself recounted it to the author of this book. It is one of the treasures to be discovered on reading this fine tome, which would merit first place in the reviews in the European Library service. The book shows that a doctorate thesis in history for University Paris IV Sorbonne and the 'Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales de Genève' is not necessarily deathly dull. Making use of the available archives and interviews with key players and eye witnesses of events between the signing of the Elysée Treaty in 1963 and General de Gaulle's resignation in 1969, every page of the book is captivating and helps readers understand several episodes that helped fashion the European project, whether positively or negatively. The first part of the book looks at the main areas of unity between France and Germany during the period in question, namely the Elysée Treaty, the objectives it represents, the economy and finance. The author then considers the political interests that divide France and Germany, namely their relationship with the United States and their differing views on Europe. The third section looks at issues related to the mistrust and envy that lived on despite the 1963 reconciliation, which manifested in the form of the inability of both sides to develop a common approach towards Russia. To end, I quote Prof. Bariéty, who argues in the preface that the book will attract the attention of historians and deserves the attention of anyone interested in a recent past that prepared the way for the present.
(MT)
*** DANIEL NAURIN, HELEN WALLACE (Eds.): Unveiling the Council of the European Union. Games Governments Play in Brussels. Palgrave Macmillan (Brunel Road, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS, UK. Tel: (44-1256) 302794 - Fax: 330688 - email: mdl@macmillan.co.uk - Internet: http://www.palgrave.com ). "Palgrave Studies in European Union" series. 2008, 320 pp, £60. ISBN 978-0-230-55504-4.
Highly interesting from start to finish, this book results from the transparency that has been introduced in recent years in the EU institution that used to be the most prone to arranging secret meetings behind closed doors. Politics researchers have been given access to information that was classified until very recently under the force of diplomatic habit. This incongruous secrecy by a legislative institution has largely been relaxed in recent years and although improvements still need to be made, the political analysts who have written for this book were able to work on far more comprehensive data than would have been available in the past, enabling them to gain a far more fleshed-out understanding of how the EU's Council of Ministers actually operates. They explain in detail how decisions take shape at the Council of Ministers, revealing that most decisions are made by consensus. The different coalitions that form the various forces in the agreements reached are analysed in several essays (Left-Right, Southern Europe versus Northern Europe, Western Europe against Eastern Europe, and so on). The way negotiations are organised is studied in the light of legislation on the dangers of genetically modified organisms and trade policy. Other writers examine leadership in the light of the powers of the presidency, the conciliatory impact of the Council of Ministers' Secretariat General and the relative weight of the different Member States on the Council depending on whether they are large or small, old or new. This technical book is not aimed the general public but it will delight specialists.
(MT)
*** GABRIELE KUCSKO-STADLMAYER (Ed.): European Ombudsman Institutions. A comparative legal analysis regarding the multifaceted realisation of an idea. Springer (P. O. Box 89, 4-6 Sachsenplatz, A-1201 Vienna. Fax: (43-1) 3302426 - email: books@springer.at - Internet: http://www.springer.at ). 2008, 584 pp, €89-95. ISBN 978-3-211-72880-2.
This is the English transition of a German book already reviewed by European Library, making a comparative study of the legal foundations of ombudsman-type institutions in Europe, focussing on the sheer diversity of types of ombudsman in the countries in question. The book publishes the results of research directed by the author at Vienna University in Austria to contribute to the debate about how to improve ombudsmen from the political and legal point of view.
(EPi)
*** Europe's World. Europe's World (Bibliothèque Solvay, Parc Léopold, 137 rue Belliard, B-1040 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 7387592 - Fax: 7391592 - email: subscriptions@europesworld.org - Internet: http://www.europesworld.org ). 2009, No. 11, 202 pp, €12. Annual subscription: €30.
The latest issue of this review so dear to Giles Merritt includes essays on the relationship to be developed by the European Union with neighbouring countries (including an article by Eneko Landaburu on the Russian question), security and defence issues and developments within Europe.
(MT)