An Informal Chronology of Postwar Europe    
by Hunt Tooley

1945—End of World War II, of course, and the beginnings (perhaps as far back as 1942/43) of the Cold War.

1947—Britain leaves India:  Pakistan and India separate violently.

1948—Significant Cold War Clashes.  Marshall Plan, Berlin Crisis.  Soviet-sponsored governments throughout Eastern Europe.  Beginning of the Economic Miracle in Germany. (NATO will be founded in 1949.)

1952—King Farouk overthrown in Egypt by a nationalist group of Egyptian generals.  In 1956, their leader, Nasser will confiscate (nationalize) the Suez Canal from the British.

1953—Stalin dies, Beria is executed:  power struggle (Khrushchev will prevail by 1955).

1954--Trying to "recolonize" French Indo-China (Vietnam) after WWII, Communist forces took over the north, and the French fought against this until the North Vietnamese government under Ho Chi Minh defeated the French army at Dien Bien Phu. The French pulled out of Vietnam shortly afterward.

1954-1962--Algerian War--the French fight local forces to hold onto Algeria. Coming to power in 1959, DeGaulle disengages. Algerian became independent in 1962.

1956—Hungarian Uprising (brutally suppressed by Soviets).  Also, Polish uprising and others.

1957—Treaty of Rome creates the European Economic Community (forerunner of European Union).  

1957—Ghana begins the decolonization of sub-Saharan Africa by becoming independent from Britain.

1959-1969—Charles de Gaulle is President of France.  

1961--East German Communist leaders, with backing from Khrushchev in Moscow, order the sealing off of  West Berlin by means of The Wall.

1962—Algeria gains independence from France.

1968—Riots and civil chaos in France (and US), etc.; "Prague Spring," in which Czechs tried to assert independence from Moscow.   This attempt failed.  The year really begins "détente."  

1968—Student revolt and street fighting in Paris and elsewhere.

1972—Polish revolt.  

1975—With the death of Francisco Franco in Spain and the revolution against the Estado Novo dictatorship in Portugal, the last of the Western European old-style dictators to leave office.  

1979-1990—Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister of the UK.  
 
1980—The Polish labor union Solidarity is founded at Gdansk  Shipyard by Lech Walensa.  

1985—Mikhail Gorbachev succeeds Vladimir Chernenko as Soviet chief.  He announces the program of "openness" (glasnost)  and "restructuring" (perestroika). 

1989--Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe begins to crumble: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and others.

November 1989—Berlin Wall "falls"--or rather, is opened by a confused East German government under pressure from the Soviet Union.   East Germans stream out into West Berlin.   December:  Lech Walensa is elected President of Poland. 

1990—German Reunification

1991—Hardline Soviet forces attempt a Coup, which ends the Communist regime for good, as Gorbachev leaves office, and Boris Yeltsin becomes the Russian President.  Many of the Soviet republics break off from Russia. Widespread economic chaos and hardship ensue.

1993—The older European Economic Community (EEC, Common Market, etc.) is superseded by the European Union (established by the Treaty of Maastricht), an economic and political union.

1990-1994—In South Africa, the apartheit regime declines and then disappears.  

1994—Beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia, with eventual violence in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo.  

1999—The United States and NATO bomb Serbia to retaliate for perceived mistreatment of Kosovars.  

2000s—Further developments in the influx of immigrant populations, especially Muslim populations, and attendant frictions.  Further developments in the growth and centralization of the European Union (as it moves farther east to encompass East Central Europe).