Throughout the twentieth century, many Europeans agreed that individual freedom had to be defended against an oppressive state. Dissidents strove to do so at the risk of imprisonment and physical violence. Political radicals and neoliberals accused even democratic states of undermining the very possibility of living freely. But for others the relationship was far more equivocal. Social democrats promised to foster working-class people’s freedom by expanding the welfare state, thus rendering them independent of capitalism and the family. Even major dictatorships, out of an interest in mobilization or acquiescence, did not present themselves solely as collectivistic projects. Whether or not the power of the state promoted or stifled freedom thus remained a matter of controversy. This chapter explores three aspects of this relationship: how inmates of concentration and work camps in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, and Franco’s Spain were deprived of their freedom but desperately attempted to safeguard some vestiges of it; how the Third Reich, various Eastern Bloc regimes, and the late Francoist dictatorship tried to accommodate individualistic desires and demands within their repressive structures; and, finally, how the project of social democratic liberty took shape and was challenged from both the left and the right.

In twentieth-century Europe, work was related to individual freedom in different ways. Rationalized, large-scale production imposed disciplinary constraints on men and women and threatened to undermine their independence, yet other developments promised to safeguard independence and raised the prospect of choice. Moreover, the relationship between work and individual freedom was subject to diverging definitions and contrasting political agendas. Some of these definitions and agendas stemmed from the nineteenth century, but now had to be pursued under very different conditions. Others rose to prominence in the twentieth century, as capitalist, extreme-right, and Communist promises to enhance freedom at work competed with each other. These ambitious projects, however, were confronted with structural contradictions and subversive behaviors. The three major aspects treated in this chapter are how farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers endeavored to defend their economic independence at a time of capitalist pressure and Communist hostility; how millions of Europeans, having entered factories for want of a better alternative, strove to create a shop floor of their own; and, finally, how women (and, to a lesser extent, men) balanced chores and choices when carrying out domestic tasks and reflecting on their meaning.

The twentieth-century quest for individual freedom was pursued not merely in Europe proper but also at its boundaries. This had much to do, in the first instance, with a desire for liberation from metropolitan societies that many identified with an excess of constraints and conventions. It also reflected a strong sense of European superiority over both Americans and colonized peoples. But, as the century wore on, uncertainties arose from the growing power of the United States and the increasing criticism and various reforms to which colonial rule was subject. American popular culture appealed to youth across the continent, to the dismay of many adults, while colonized subjects increasingly claimed the status of free individuals, both in overseas colonies and as immigrants to Europe. This chapter discusses whether there was autonomy or conformism in America, at a time when its supposed freedoms were so attractive to many Europeans though they appalled others; how colonial self-reliance was loudly claimed and staunchly defended against indigenous demands and more liberal forms of European rule; and, finally, what colonized subjects’ perspectives were on the individual freedom they were denied but were seeking as part of their efforts to become decolonized.

This book has historicized the quest for individual freedom in twentieth-century Europe by highlighting conflict-ridden expansion: more and more people claimed the status of free individuals, but they did so in very different ways, in various contexts, and more often than not in the face of powerful opposition. The Conclusion brings out the overarching narrative centered around ordinary Europeans’ efforts to expand their realm of control in spite of obstacles, to carve out a space for themselves, and to live freely according to their own preferred understandings. It also argues that these efforts stood in tension with various political movements that aspired to combine individual and collective freedom. This tension eased when the quest in its unheroic versions, having put both democracies and dictatorships under pressure to adapt, could be pursued in the more favorable context of détente and affluence. With the end of the Cold war, it seemed indeed to have prevailed. But the relationship between individual freedom and Europeanness was never entirely exempt from conflict and complexity and has recently become more controversial again.

This book explores what Europeans in the twentieth century understood by individual freedom and how they endeavored to achieve it, often against the odds. The Introduction lays out its conceptual bases, arguing that the quest was multi-faceted and unfolded in nonlinear ways, which jars with teleological narratives of the rise and decline of “the individual.” It disputes Annelien de Dijn’s recent account of one dominant concept of modern liberty and is attentive to mainstream as well as marginalized versions of individual freedom, questioning Michel Foucault’s idea that the former were “imposed on us” through disciplinary power. Instead, the book borrows from sociologist Georg Simmel and political philosopher Isaiah Berlin to stress the subjective, gradual, and unpredictable character of individual freedom and the fact that it was pursued against a range of obstacles and constraints. It tells a story of conflict-ridden expansion. Men and women had to claim their personal freedom in a context marked by world wars, the expanding power of the state, the constraints of work life, pre-established moral norms, the growing influence of America, and the uncertain future of colonial rule.

On the face of it, total war would seem to be fundamentally and entirely at odds with the very notion of individual freedom. Yet the relationship between the two was more complicated than that. From the beginning of World War I, much propagandistic effort went into stressing the voluntariness of military or quasi-military service. At the same time, imposing discipline on complex societies triggered major tensions, unintended effects, and subversive behaviors, allowing for some unexpected gains in personal independence. In general, military conflicts exacerbated disputes about the very meaning of freedom – both while they were being fought and when they were being anticipated or commemorated. This chapter discusses three issues: the extent to which military mobilization and enemy occupation created room for female independence, the ways in which contemporaries understood conscription and soldiers coped with it, and the various means by which Europeans endeavored to free themselves from military conflict, from muddling through to principled resistance under Nazi occupation or during the Cold War.

The quest for individual freedom was defined and pursued in the twentieth century in an environment shaped by moral norms that were established in the nineteenth century, if not before, but continued to be staunchly defended before undergoing a process of adjustment. At the same time, the question arose of what life would be like once these norms had been shaken off or decisively weakened. Furthermore, the selfhood of those who pushed for liberation was contested between coherence and control, on the one hand, and various modes of transgression, on the other. While such issues were first debated and probed in countercultural circles, they had become a mainstream concern by the end of the century, leading to new uncertainties about how far individual freedom should go and whom it should benefit. This chapter explores how sexuality was restrained by a morality that came to be adjusted in the decades after World War II; how the prospect of a “liberated” life emerged, leading to new expectations, but also creating imbalances and bringing disappointments alongside gains; and how the transgressive urge to expand the ego questioned the norm of coherent selfhood before eventually revealing its darker side.

This broadly conceived introduction discusses recent approaches to the history of capitalism in the United States and Germany and relates them to the findings of economic and business historians of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. It identifies four key tensions between the prominence of Kapitalismuskritik and the tacit spread of capitalist practices and attitudes; a focus on capitalism’s concentrated and organized character and the experience of its bewildering complexity; state intervention and the dynamics of the market; and a national framework of viewing the economy and capitalism’s transnational entanglements. The overarching argument is that Nazism became attractive not least for promising to resolve these tensions. It professed to transcend capitalism while harnessing its energies for a racist and imperialist agenda. These and other aspects are treated in the volume’s four sections on debating, concealing, promoting, and racializing German capitalism between 1918 and 1945.

In the interwar period, the issue of how much space capitalism left for human agency preoccupied many Germans. Would they be able to revolutionize or reform this economic order, or were they compelled to work and live within it? This chapter argues that capitalism proved remarkably capable of confining individual, collective, and governmental agency. Therefore, expectations of transformation were often disappointed or scaled back, as the first section shows. The second section examines more tacit ways of adapting to a capitalist logic, while the third turns to the attempts of Chancellor Hermann Brüning’s two cabinets to steer Germany through the economic depression. Brüning was caught between calls for decisive leadership, doubts about the effectiveness of government intervention, and a rapidly shifting situation. Adolf Hitler, by contrast, promised to restore human control over the economy. After 1933, his regime loudly claimed to have transcended capitalism while inconspicuously exploiting its logic.