Cold War Conflicts and Social Transformations in the UK (CH. 30)

With the end of the Second World War came a complete change in the face of Europe, England included.  Great Britain, along with France and The United States, combined to occupy West Germany, opposing the communist USSR occupying East Germany.  Europe was split into the region east of the "Iron Curtain" and the western portion of Europe.  This is also known as a period of great economic crisis, one of the greatest in European history. Britain and other nations combined to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which provided military protection for non-communist countries.  But not only was their drastic change in politics and the economy, but the world changed socially as well.  The youth revolution, particularly prominent in London, was taking over Europe.  When these youths, born after the end of WWII, grew of age they would become the counterculture that rebelled against parents, authority figures, and the status quo.  Bob Dylan sums it up best when he says in song "the times they are a' changing", and indeed they were.