Rediscovering uncertainty: early attempts at a pan-European post-war recoveryÖ

Abstract

It is time to re-open the question of the early post-war division of Europe as a problem. In order to move beyond bipolarity and give a fuller representation of the tentative and open character of the immediate post-war years it is furthermore pertinent to include a broader array of actors. By highlighting the aspirations of Internationale Gruppe Demokratischer Sozialisten, a transnational network of social-democratic refugees from Germany and German-occupied countries in Sweden during the war and some of their endeavours after the war the articles explores the relative merits of realist and liberal readings of the outcomes. It is argued that historiography so far has underestimated the nationalistic, anti-German position of French and British socialists at the end of the war, and its wider implications as well as the importance of internal domestic dissensions within the UK and US administrations.