The approach and developments of World War II are summarized in A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (1961, reissued 1983); Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (1989); Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint, and John Pritchard, Total War: The Causes and Courses of the Second World War, 2nd rev. ed. (1989); Martin Gilbert, The Second World War: A Complete History (1989); Gordon Wright, The Ordeal of Total War, 1939–1945 (1968); Michael Marrus, The Holocaust in History (1987); and Raoul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (1961).
The postwar situation is examined in Richard Mayne, The Recovery of Europe: From Devastation to Unity (1970), and Postwar: The Dawn of Today’s Europe (1983); Roger Morgan, West European Politics Since 1945: The Shaping of the European Community (1972); Derek W. Urwin, Western Europe Since 1945: A Political History, 4th ed. (1989); Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes (1994); and Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1992 (1993). Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969, reprinted 1987), discusses, among other things, the Marshall Plan. Henry L. Roberts, Eastern Europe: Politics, Revolution & Diplomacy (1970); and W.W. Rostow, The Division of Europe After World War II, 1946 (1981), focus on the forces that developed the Cold War. Hugh Seton-Watson, The East European Revolution, 3rd ed. (1956), and From Lenin to Khrushchev: The History of World Communism, new ed. (1985), examine developments in eastern Europe and the communist world. V.G. Kiernan, European Empires from Conquest to Collapse, 1815–1960 (1982), examines the dynamics of colonialism. T. Iván Berend, An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Europe: Economic Regimes from Laissez-Faire to Globalization (2006), offers an economic perspective.
The development of European unity is discussed in Sidney Pollard, European Economic Integration, 1815–1970 (1974); Walter Lipgens, A History of European Integration: 1945–1947, trans. from German (1982); Jean Monnet, Memoirs (1978; originally published in French, 1976); R.C. Mowat, Creating the European Community (1973); Miriam Camps, Britain and the European Community, 1955–1963 (1964); and Richard Mayne and John Pinder, Federal Union: The Pioneers (1990). Further insights into the European Union are provided by Desmond Dinan, Ever Closer Union: An Introduction to European Integration, 3rd ed. (2005); and John McCormick, The European Union: Politics and Policies, 4th ed. (2008). Richard J. Mayne