For post-war Europe, industrial production and its methods of rationalisation and modernisation were adopted as a model for societies more generally. To replace the nationalism of the 1930s that had led to a catastrophe, universal values and technologies were seen as important. Modernism in architecture was both an instrument to realise these goals and the symbol of modern society. Modernism meant technological progress, economic security, relative political stability and social equality, that is, what being European was about. In the book "Industry and Modernism", the meaning of industrial production is discussed particularly in the context of the Nordic and Baltic post-war histories. The polarities of the Cold War suppressed similarities between the two worlds such as the shared belief in the power of architecture, planning and technology to construct new societies. For many western European countries, Nordic countries represented a model of the welfare state, just as Baltic countries were seen as models within the Soviet hegemony. In the book, economic and social history is integrated with business history, architectural history, and the study of industrial heritage.