History Department

History 309 – CONTEMPORARY EUROPE – November 14, 2005  

A NEW EQUILIBRIUM?

Europe in the 1950s  

TERMS TO KNOW:

1. Peaceful co-existence
2. “Balance of terror”
3. British Conservatives
4. Konrad Adenauer
5. Italian Christian Democrats
6. French crisis of 1958
7. Charles DeGaulle
8. Salazar
9. Franco
10. Nikita Khrushchev
11. Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” (1956)
12. Wladislaw Gomulka
13. Imre Nagy
14. Hungarian Insurrection (1956)

From Perry:

15. Adenauer

16.  Meinecke

17. Vogt  Djilas

18.  Heller

QUESTIONS

1. Far from being a “boring decade,” the 1950s were an immensely important time for Europeans.  Make a list of the most important three or four trends going on, and then decide which of them you think was the most important (be sure to explain your decision!).
2. Think politics in the 1950s:  compare and contrast three big political blocks, (1) the democratic states in the West; (2) the two Iberian right-wing dictatorships; and (3) the communist dictatorships in the East.  They’re all quite different – yet, do they all have anything in common?