[5] Judt decided to write Postwar in 1989 while waiting for a train at Vienna central station,[6][7] inspired at least in part by having witnessed the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia.

The socio-political stability of postwar Europe was, according to Judt, only possible because "thanks to war, occupation, boundary adjustments, expulsions, and genocide, almost everybody now lived in their own country, among their own people.

"[10]: 9  According to Judt, this is also when the European Model of government and society first emerges, characterised by welfare protections, public funding for education and healthcare, and a rejection of violence as a legitimate means of political transformation.

In the final part, Judt argues that many of the concerns occupying Europe immediately after World War II have dissipated, particularly fears of German militarisation.

Historian Anthony Gottlieb called it "rich and immensely detailed" in his review for The New York Times,[17] and Bernard Wasserstein wrote that it is "the best history of Europe since 1945 that is currently available.

"[1] Stanley Hoffmann praised Postwar as a "monumental work" and "tour de force",[19] and Simon Young wrote that "the great virtue of Judt's book is the clarity and the breadth of its [historical] account.

Some reviewers sharply criticized the absence of notes and bibliography, and the historian David M. Kennedy said that Postwar would have been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for History had it not been for the lack of published footnotes.

[1][18][21][8][25] Judt excused the omission of a scholarly apparatus because it was “a very long book addressed to a general readership,” but nonetheless promised that the source references and bibliography would eventually be made available online.

The list was published in the subsequent Penguin and Vintage paperback editions, and was for some years posted as the book's “General Bibliography” on the Remarque Institute website.

Judt considers the European model of government and economy to be an accident, brought about by "necessity and pragmatism" as opposed to a specific political vision.

While Judt ostensibly refrains from deriving a grand theory of European history, according to Louis Menand, the book does present a core thesis: "Europe was able to rebuild itself politically and economically only by forgetting the past, but it was able to define itself morally and culturally only by remembering it.

"[1] The book frequently returns to the topic of antisemitism and its continued effects after the end of World War II;[17] Ascherson wrote that Judt was "writing mainly [but not exclusively] about the changing memory of the Jewish Holocaust.

"[8] Judt presents European history since WWII as an "organic regrowth" characterised firstly by pragmatism and secondly by the task of processing World War II and its atrocities.