The Atlantic and Its Enemies

Those who survived the Second World War stared out onto a devastated, morally ruined world. Much of Europe and Asia had been so ravaged that it was unclear whether any form of normal life could ever be established again. Everywhere the 'Atlantic' world (the USA, Britain and a handful of allies) was on the defensive and its enemies on the move. For every Atlantic success there seemed to be a dozen Communist or 'Third World' successes, as the USSR and its proxies crushed dissent and humiliated the United States on both military and cultural grounds. For all the astonishing productivity of the American, Japanese and mainland western European economies (setting aside the fiasco of Britain's implosion), most of the world was either under Communist rule or lost in a violent stagnancy that seemed doomed to permanence. Then, suddenly, the Atlantic won - economically, ideologically, militarily - with astonishing speed and completeness.

Norman Stone is one of Britain's most celebrated historians. He is the author of The Eastern Front, 1914-1917, Hitler, Europe Transformed and World War One: A Short History. He has taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Bilkent, where he is now Director of the Turkish-Russian Centre.