| Description: | The course focuses on the history of Europe after World War II until the present. It covers both Western and Eastern Europe, dealing with the political, economic and social developments on the two sides of the iron curtain. It investigates the main Western and Eastern European issues: the immediate post-war situation in the West (France, Great Britain and Italy) and in the East (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia); the German problem and German division; the Cold War in Europe and European reactions (East and West); the Hungarian and the Suez crisis in 1956; the 1968 unrest and the Prague Spring; German-German relations; the roots of the crisis in the East and the events of the 1980s (Poland); the end of the Cold War in Europe and German reunification; the disintegration of the Eastern bloc and its consequences (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, former Yugoslavia); European integration from its origins to Eastern enlargement. These and many other themes will be discussed, considering the international background and the relationships between the two superpowers. |