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Europe's Second Dark Ages? (book review)

© Joseph Sramek

Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)

In 1937, Joseph Roth asked why "...European states claim for themselves the right to spread civilization and manners to different continents? Why not to Europe itself?" [1] Thus begins Mark Mazower's Dark Continent, a highly revisionist re-examination of Europe during the twentieth century. Instead of rejoicing in democracy's "victory" in the Cold War, and thus believing that it had deep roots in Europe's past, Mazower questions whether the victory even took place and reminds us that for much of the century, democracy was more vanquished than victorious. Furthermore, instead of seeing Fascism and Communism as horrible aberrations from Europe's past, Mazower argues that they are much more a part of the reality of the twentieth century than was liberal democracy. In short, as the twentieth century ends, it is not time for Europeans to rejoice and celebrate much, but rather time to ponder and re-examine their recent past, which was much more a nightmarish decline into a new "Dark Ages" than any forward progression toward a new "glorious age."

Mazower begins by reassessing the effect of the First World War and Versailles. Instead of being a harbinger of democratic liberalism as envisioned by Woodrow Wilson and others, the War and Versailles led to the rise of the exact opposite, a virulent nationalism. [2] While Versailles created several new nation-states for over 60 million Europeans, an additional 25 million were left as ethnic minorities outside the borders of these states. [3] This contrasted sharply with the idea of a "pure" nation, and the tension between this goal and the reality of a multi-national nation was persistent during the Interwar period. Thus, Nazi racist policies were more the apotheosis of current developments within Europe rather than policies that were totally at odds with European history and social thought. [4] Furthermore, the Nazis and the Fascists accepted the geopolitical tenets of British and French imperialism, merely jettisoning the liberalism of that imperialism. [5] In almost all respects, Mazower sadly concludes, fascism was more a part of general European social and political thought than something quite different.

This continuity is to be found in other areas as well. Nazi economic planner Albert Speer, among other Nazis during World War II, sought to create a Grossraumwirtschaft - a regional economy centered around Germany - which was, Mazower argues, very close to the reality of the post-war Common Market, or the reality of the present European Union. [6] Furthermore, like the fascists, post-1945 democrats on both the Left and the Right were more fixated on consensus and cooperation than confrontation and antagonism. [7] Yet - Mazower admits - while this spirit of consensus was a direct result of pre-war and wartime experiences as well as the challenges of the Cold War, it was greatly helped and propelled forward by the great economic boom that occurred from approximately 1950 until 1973. [8]