To contemporaries, the Second World War marked a turning point in the evolution of European society, one of those moments, often associated with crisis and turbulence, when “the social contract is reformulated.” Just when things looked blackest, visions of a better future were proffered. Roosevelt's “new freedoms” lit a beacon; Beveridge's blueprint for egalitarian social change, issued to great acclaim in 1942, provided more specific formulations. In the first flush of reform following the end of hostilities, the promise of major innovation appeared to have been sincere. According to the most optimistic, Britain had peacefully undergone a socialist revolution. Similar, and more successfully far-reaching, initiatives in Scandinavia together with attempts at reform in France and Germany confirmed this trend in favor of solidaristic social policy as apparently one of the most significant expressions of the sentiment of national unity that, born in battle, was now to be made a characteristic of the peacetime era.

The new sense of community was most tangibly embodied in plans for universalist, comprehensive, egalitarian social insurance, a goal captured in the phrase “social security.” Reformers envisioned a system uniting all citizens, covering them equally for each risk regardless of the distinctions of class, fate or biology by which they were otherwise separated.