Editor’s Introduction: Ideals, Identity and War: The Idea of Europe, 1939–70

Abstract

This book has two concepts at its centre: Europe and the Second World War. Both are constantly changing in the public perception: now, many decades after the end of World War II, ‘Europe’ is an even more contestedidea than it has ever been, struggling with the consequences of enlargement to the east, and with the confrontation with its ‘Others’ in various forms. The book seeks to inform the current discourse about Europeanidentity, about what Europe should aspire to in terms of its institutions and its values; it does so by means of a targeted historical but multidisciplinary analysis of Europe’s reaction to the tragedy, heroism and disgraceof the Second World War. For in that post- war period lie many of the origins of Europeans’ current attitudes to and about the continent.