In a Europe deeply battered by war, the first two and onehalf decades following the world’s costliest conflict were marked by hard-earned economic recovery (with considerable help from the USA), democratic revival (West Germany and Italy), and huge new challenges in the form of imperial dismantlement, Continental European unification, and Cold War rivalry replete with the spread of nuclear weapons. This period also witnessed tremendous upheaval and innovation in the cultural realm: think Existentialism, abstract painting, B-Bop Jazz, and “Angry Young Men” literature. In this course we will examine how lingering legacies of the past (crippling war debt, rebellious colonies, and anti-Western antagonism) combined with the stark new realities of East-West division to establish the parameters for the rest of the turbulent twentieth century and the world we inhabit today.