Slide 1 · States & Other Institutions of Power
Origins of the Cold War
The wartime alliance between the U.S. and USSR collapsed into an ideological standoff between capitalism/democracy and communism. The Yalta and Potsdam conferences divided postwar Europe, an Iron Curtain descended across the continent, and the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan committed the West to containment.
Slide 2 · States & Other Institutions of Power
The Division of Europe
NATO and the Warsaw Pact formalized two rival military blocs. Germany and Berlin were split between East and West, dramatized by the Berlin Blockade and Airlift and later the construction of the Berlin Wall, while the USSR dominated Eastern European satellite states.
Slide 3 · States & Other Institutions of Power
Cold War Crises & the Arms Race
The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968 were both crushed by Soviet intervention, while the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 brought the superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, fueling Europe's nuclear anxiety amid the ongoing arms race.
Slide 4 · Interaction of Europe & the World
Decolonization
European empires in Africa and Asia collapsed rapidly after World War II — from the violent Algerian War of Independence against France to Britain's 1947 withdrawal from India — ending centuries of direct European imperial rule.
Slide 5 · Economic & Commercial Developments
Economic Recovery & European Integration
The welfare state and West Germany's Wirtschaftswunder drove Western Europe's postwar recovery, while the European Economic Community began a deliberate process of economic integration that would eventually evolve into the European Union.
Slide 6 · Social Organization & Development
Society, Culture & Protest
The youth protest movements of 1968, second-wave feminism, and rising immigration from former colonies reshaped postwar European society, sparking new debates over gender, generational change, and multiculturalism.
Slide 7 · National & European Identity
The End of the Cold War
Gorbachev's reforms of glasnost and perestroika loosened Soviet control and unintentionally accelerated its collapse, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, German reunification, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Slide 8 · Contemporary Europe
Contemporary Europe
Since the Cold War's end, Europe has navigated EU expansion into former Eastern Bloc states, globalization, and ongoing debates over immigration and national identity, as European integration continues to evolve and face new limits.