The Traditional European Powers between Decadence and New Challenges (1947–58): A Comment

Abstract

During the period under discussion (essentially the 1950s), there was a gradual but nonetheless decisive shift in the Western European balance of power. If you look at the beginning of the period, that is around 1950, the United Kingdom was unquestionably the third world power: it had the third largest economy and the third largest armed forces. It may have been a long way behind the United States and the Soviet Union, but it was a long way ahead of anyone else. By the end of the 1950s, however, its position had been largely undermined. Britain suffered from a very slow rate of economic growth throughout the 1950s — a consequence, some would say, of an attempt to straddle the ‘three circles’ referred to by Anne Deighton — while the economies of continental Western Europe grew much more rapidly. This was exemplified in the West German Wirtschaftswunder and with the beginnings of the Italian ‘economic miracle’.