THIS is a work of stupendous scholarship, and — at almost 850 pages — an exhaustingly comprehensive and in-depth study of European history since 1945.

Tony Judt manages to present a highly readable, engaging account of numerous nations and their many subcultures in the fluidly rich language so characteristic of his writing.

Whether he is discussing western or eastern European states, or capitalist or communist systems, Mr. Judt is consistently balanced, objective, and even sympathetic. In sum, this book is a dazzling display of the very best of historical writing.

Mr. Judt begins his account by portraying, in vivid relief, the almost incomprehensible magnitude of devastation caused by World War II. For all of the fury unleashed on England by bombing early in the war, it suffered considerably less than central and eastern Europe (including the former Soviet Union).

For those countries were the major battlegrounds of the war and bore the most grinding punishment: opposing armies repeatedly sweeping back and forth over the same lands, occupation by hostile forces, massive destruction of cities and infrastructure, and the forced removal — even genocide — of millions of people.

Running throughout Postwar — and it is this that so ably demonstrates Mr. Judt’s mastery — is the complicated story of more than just one “Europe.”

In addition to the significant differences between and among the nations of western and eastern Europe, there were the varied experiences and expectations of the continent’s numerous ethnic peoples, especially Jews. Prior to 1914, these peoples were not confined to a single country.

By 1945, however, the old Europe of pre-1914 was smashed and gone forever.  Now there was an additional challenge: all Europe’s peoples were faced with the need of either reconstructing their memory of their own history or forgetting it, for there was the gravest need to explain how such a sweeping catastrophe could have happened without dwelling on it.

Also, because there was a desperate need to redirect peoples’ energy toward rebuilding their ravaged countries, it was vital that all such explanations avoid dwelling on disturbing images of the past (especially, on the uncomfortable matter of their own culpable actions).

Shaded narratives

These carefully shaded narratives served to clarify just who had been responsible for the horrors of the war, assigning the responsibility to a relative few rather then acknowledging the reality that the onus for the war and its multiple evils was, in fact, widespread.

Thus the French came to remember the war years as a period of heroic resistance to German occupation, despite the collaboration of the elected Vichy government with the Germans (including their contributions to the Holocaust through arresting and deporting thousands of French Jews). Meanwhile, in Germany, it was clear that it was “only” Hitler and “his” Nazis who were at fault, and certainly not the entire German nation.

Eastern European states, including the Soviet Union, had a different kind of historical memory to (re) construct: many of them, while having long yearned to be part of Europe (at least, its cultural life), had never been considered to have been part of Europe by western Europeans.

The Russians felt slighted by the Western account of who played the major role in winning the war which, in that version of history, stemmed from the invasion at Normandy and the fighting on the Western front. And those eastern European nations that were part of the Soviet Union struggled to explain the historical “rightness” of their being Soviet, while also maintaining their own distinct, national memories.

It turned out, however, that each new generation asked different questions of the past, and this resulted in repeated waves of “adjusting” historical memories. By the early ‘70s, not only had the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia put pressure on Eastern European states to modify their own interpretations of their communism, but also young people in the West demanded to know “what had really happened” during the war years.

Was Germany as a whole responsible for the war, or “just” the Nazis? How many Germans (as well as Austrians and Poles) knew about, and participated in, the Holocaust? And, by the way, how did the vast majority of the French who were not resistance fighters interact with the Germans — and the Jews?

And underlying all this was the overarching desire of all of Europe’s leaders — and the heartfelt prayer of their peoples — to avoid yet another war.

The Soviets believed that their vigilance and a partitioned Germany would best preserve the peace.

For their part, the West quietly agreed with the Russians on the benefits of a divided Germany (although, for the German public’s consumption, continuing to speak of the desirability of seeing Germany reunified), and — more importantly — sought to overcome centuries of individual nations’ nationalism by building cooperative institutions to link all European states together.

The military alliance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was one consequence and, although it took decades to evolve, the greatest achievement of these years was the European Union. From our current vantage point, it is this Union which is clearly the greatest reason why western and central Europe have managed to break the suicidal cycle of internecine European wars.

Beginning in the 1980s, momentous changes again rocked the continent as the Soviet Union unexpectedly fragmented. That this occurred with relatively little bloodshed was due to some remarkable communist leaders who, when faced with this cascading disintegration, chose to respond with calm acceptance rather than resort to force (There were, nonetheless, two unfortunate exceptions to this: Romania in the ‘80s and Yugoslavia in the ‘90s.).

Remembering the past

In western Europe, meanwhile, the turmoil of the years between 1914 and 1945 had faded from the memory of the living. Instead, buffeted by the substantial inflow of immigrants whose culture and religion were quite different, as the 21st century dawned many citizens were once again sliding into the comforting nostalgia of nationalism, while the malignant forces of the hateful right began gaining greater popular support.

As the Spanish philosopher George Santayana observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” For those of us in 2014 observing these developments, we might be pardoned for asking: Was all the suffering of the previous century for naught? Is the century that witnessed the slaughter of 60 million human beings and the near suicide of Europe doomed to be followed by another century of mindless hate and destruction?

Historians like Tony Judt are custodians of our memory. But this is not the false memory of misleading construction; it is, rather, a memory that serves as a mirror in which we are forced to gaze at our true faces and our actual pasts — warts and all.

The author has been a college teacher of American history and political science, the director of the US National Catholic Rural Life Conference; he served as a member of the Iowa State House of Representatives, and retired from public service in the Iowa executive branch in 2004.