For some fresh breath and broader perspective, much of post war western Europe was extremely polarised between religious and non-religiuous (liberals, but espec

For some fresh breath and broader perspective, much of post war western Europe was extremely polarised between religious and non-religiuous (liberals, but especially socialists). You may want to watch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Camillo_and_Peppone#Films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Camillo_and_Peppone#Films as an accessible example, but everyone from Western Europe speaking to people who were adults between 1940 and 1960 will dig up countless stories. Here's some of mine: - Near where I work, there's a tiny village. Until recently, there were two competing music bands: the "mice" and the "rats". One group was socialists, the others catholics. By 2010, both were largely composed of octogenarians and dying. But don't think they'd ever play one note together! - After WWII, my grandfather, being very poor and having been in the resistance, had a right to financial assistance. He never claimed it because his wife was catholic and the resistance group he participated in was socialist. Claiming his benefits would have been social suicide. - My mother's aunt was a catholic nun, and one of the nicest and most welcoming people, widely respectd by all in the village were she lived. Once, she went to the funeral of a local farmer, a socialist. Her going to that funeral was quite out of the ordinary already, to put it mildly. On her return, she said: "He was a socialist, but a very good and decent man."