Effects of World War II
Encyclopedia
The effects of World War II had far-reaching implications for most of the world. Many millions of lives had been lost as a result of the war. Germany
was divided into four quadrants, which were controlled by the Allied Powers
— the United States
, United Kingdom
, France
, and the Soviet Union
— and itself was one of the survivors.
The war can be identified to varying degrees as the catalyst for many continental, national and local phenomena, such as the redrawing of European borders, the birth of the United Kingdom
's welfare state
, the communist revolution in China and Eastern Europe
, the creation of Israel
, and the division of Germany and Korea
and later of Vietnam
. In addition, many organizations have roots in the Second World War; for example, the United Nations
, the World Bank
, the World Trade Organization
, and the International Monetary Fund
. Technologies, such as nuclear fission
, the electronic computer
and the jet engine
, also appeared during this period.
A multipolar world was replaced by a bipolar one dominated by the two most powerful victors, the United States and Soviet Union, which became known as the superpower
s.
At the end of the war, millions of refugee
s were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and most of the European industrial infrastructure
was destroyed.
The main beneficiary of these revisions was the Soviet Union
, which expanded its borders at the expense of Germany, Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia
, Romania
and Japan. The Soviet Union also acquired the three independent states of Estonia
, Latvia
and Lithuania
, which had declared their neutrality before the outbreak of World War II
. The Baltic states were occupied and annexed early in the war in agreement with the Nazis
via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
, then re-conquered in 1944. The Soviet Union also attempted to establish a separate government in that portion of Iran
it had controlled during the war.
A minor temporary beneficiary was France, which in 1947 annexed the German state of Saar as a nominally independent protectorate under French economic control. Poland was compensated for its losses to the Soviet Union by most of Germany east. In total, Germany lost roughly a quarter of its territory.
Numerous Germans were expelled
, mostly from the ceded German territories and from the Sudetenland
. Many died, and historians debate to this day the death rate. Several hundreds of thousands of Poles, and Japanese were also expelled.
from the defeated nations, and in the Paris Peace Treaty
, the Soviet Union's enemies—Hungary, Finland and Romania
—were required to pay $300,000,000 each to the Soviet Union. Italy was required to pay $360,000,000, shared chiefly between Greece, Yugoslavia
, and the Soviet Union. The much larger reparations from occupied Germany to Russia were to be paid not by goods or money but by the transfer of capital goods, such as dismantled manufacturing plants. A separate
Reparations to the western victors consisted mainly of free coal deliveries as well as of machinery and dismantled factories, of which the majority went to France, with some going to Britain. Germany and Italy also paid in the form of POW-provided forced labor; 100,000 in Britain and 700,000 in France. The U.S settled for appropriating German patents as well as all German company assets in the U.S. The "intellectual reparations", such as patents and blueprints, taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion, equivalent of around $100 billion in 2006 terms. The program of also acquiring German scientists
and technicians for the U.S. was also used to deny the expertise of German scientists to the Soviet Union.
The U.S. eventually stopped the shipment of dismantled factories from the U.S. zone of occupation east because of increasing friction with Russia, part of which was caused by Russian refusal to provide the western occupation zones with surplus food from the eastern occupation zone which had been the breadbasket of Germany. Western Allied dismantling of industry in the Saar area and Ruhr area
was virtually completed by 1950.
of 1944 called for stripping Germany of the industrial resources required for war. The main industrial areas of the Ruhr and Silesia
were to be removed from Germany, as were Germany's main sources of coal and iron, namely Saar and the German speaking parts of Alsace-Lorraine
, which were to be once again under French occupation.
While the Morgenthau Plan was never implemented in its original form, it did end up greatly influencing events. Most notable was this influence seen through its toned-down offshoots. Examples of these are the Potsdam Conference
, Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067, and the industrial plans for Germany
.
In occupied Germany, the Morgenthau plan lived on in the U.S. occupation directive JCS 1067 and in the Allied "industrial disarmament" plans, designed to reduce German economic might and to destroy Germany's capability to wage war by complete or partial de-industrialization and restrictions imposed on utilization of remaining production population. The first industrial plan for Germany, signed in 1946, required the destruction of 1,500 manufacturing plants. The purpose of this was to lower German heavy industry output to roughly 50% of its 1938 level. By 1950, after the virtual completion of the by then much watered-out "level of industry" plans, equipment had been removed from 706 manufacturing plants, and steel production capacity had been reduced by 6,700,000 tons.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 (JCS 1067), which governed U.S. policy in Germany from April 1945 until July 1947, stated that no help was to be given to the Germans in rebuilding their nation, save for the minimum required to mitigate starvation.
These policies were however to some degree counteracted by the military governor of the U.S. zone in Germany, General Lucius D. Clay
, who did his best to use whatever loopholes the directives allowed for, particularly for actions that would reduce “unrest” and “famine“. This slowed down the rate factories were being destroyed and increased the food rations to 1,500 calories per day (half the normal UK rations).
The problems brought on by these types of policies became apparent to many after a year of occupation. Germany had long been the industrial giant of Europe, and its poverty held back the general European recovery. The continued scarcity in Germany also led to considerable expenses for the occupying powers, which were obligated to try to make up the most important shortfalls.
The Western powers' worst fear was that the poverty and hunger would drive the Germans to communism
.
General Clay stated "There is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories a day and a believer in democracy on a thousand".
After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff
, and Generals Clay and George Marshall
, the Truman administration
finally realized that economic recovery in Europe could not go forward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it had previously had been dependent.
In July 1947, President Truman rescinded on "national security grounds" the punitive JCS 1067, which had directed the U.S. forces of occupation in Germany to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany." It was replaced by JCS 1779, which instead stressed that "[a]n orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany."
that made it important to bring as much of Germany as possible into the western camp, it became apparent that a change of policy was required. The most notable example of this change was a plan established by United States Secretary of State
George Marshall, the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan
, which called for the U.S. Congress to allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Europe. Also as part of the effort to rebuild global capitalism
and spur post-war reconstruction, the Bretton Woods system
was put into effect after the war.
For western Germany, the psychological impact of the Marshall Plan was large. In monetary terms, Germany received only half of what Britain received; in addition, Germany was eventually forced to repay the majority of the money. But it meant that the occupation policy was officially changed, and thus the West German people finally could start rebuilding their new nation. The East German population were not included, and their attempt to revolt against the Russians a few years later was quickly put down.
In the Netherlands the Bakker-Schut Plan
to demand a huge monetary compensation and even to annex
a part of Germany that would have doubled the country's size was dropped. But many Germans living in the Netherlands were declared 'hostile subjects' and put into a concentration camp in an operation called Black Tulip. A total of 3,691 Germans were ultimately deported.
Closely related was the Monnet Plan
of French bureaucrat Jean Monnet
that proposed giving France control over the German coal areas of the Ruhr and Saar and using these resources to bring France to 150% of prewar industrial production.
process that would see the empires of the United Kingdom and others swept away.
These tendencies helped India
and Pakistan
become independent from the British Empire
in August 1947. Soon Malaysia and other South East Asian colonies also became independent. The Netherlands lost Dutch East Indies
, and France lost Indochina
. In just a few decades, most Asian and African colonies were independent.
s. After the war, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
and the United States both became formidable forces. The U.S. suffered very little during the war and because of military and industrial exports became a formidable manufacturing power. This led to a period of wealth and prosperity for the U.S. in the fields of industry
, agriculture
and technology
.
While the homeland of the United States was untouched by the war, quite the opposite was true in the Soviet Union. At the height of the Axis
advance in 1941, the Wehrmacht
got within 20 kilometers (12.5 mi) of Moscow. Although the Nazis
were pushed back from Moscow by Soviet winter counter thrusts in early 1942, the Wehrmacht's Operation Blue
in summer 1942 pushed Russian forces northeast of the Black Sea
to Stalingrad
and southeast of the Black Sea to the approaches to Grozny
at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains
. Therefore the Germans controlled all of Soviet territory west of Leningrad
, Moscow, and Stalingrad
, from the Baltic Sea
to the Caucasus. During the initial German invasion, Operation Barbarossa
, the use of scorched earth
tactics by both sides left the western portion of the Soviet Union almost totally destroyed. Agricultural land was burned, livestock exterminated, infrastructure dismantled or destroyed and entire towns flattened. All of this land was part of more battles as the Red Army
swept west in 1943-1944. Although the Soviets were able to salvage some heavy industry and ship it to safer areas around the Ural Mountains
, much of the USSR's pre-war industry fell into the hands of the Germans.
The Soviet Union also suffered unprecedented casualties. From 1941 to 1945 the Red Army lost over 10 million killed and more than 18 million wounded. Civilian losses were also immense; most estimates range from 14 to 17 million civilians killed. Most civilians in the occupied lands in the western USSR were either shot or left to starve or freeze to death by the Germans. Additionally, the majority of Holocaust victims, as well as the perpetration of the Holocaust, were from the Eastern Front. The total deaths resulting from the war amounted to roughly fourteen percent of the USSR's and sixteen percent of Poland's total pre-war population. By comparison, the United States lost about 0.3% of its total pre-war population.
Because of the immense loss of life and the destruction of land and industrial capacity, the USSR was at an economic and (because of the American use of atomic weapons on Japan) strategic disadvantage relative to the United States. The USSR was, however, in a better economic and strategic position than any other continental European power. By the end of the war in 1945 the Red Army was very large, battle-tested and occupied all of Eastern and Central Europe as well as what was to become East Germany. In areas they occupied, the Red Army installed governments they felt would be friendly towards the USSR. Given the tremendous suffering of the Soviet people during the war, Soviet leadership wanted a "buffer zone" of friendly governments between Russia and Western European nations.
grew out of the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC), which was founded in 1951 by the six founding members: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg
(the Benelux
countries) and West Germany, France and Italy. Its purpose was to pool the steel and coal resources of the member states, and to support the economies of the participating countries. As a side effect, the ECSC helped defuse tensions between countries which had recently been enemies in the war. In time this economic merger grew, adding members and broadening in scope, to become the European Economic Community
, and later the European Union.
had failed to actively prevent the war, in 1945 a new international alliance was considered and then created, the United Nations
(UN). The UN also was responsible for the initial recognition of the establishment of the modern state of Israel
in 1948, in part as a response to the Holocaust.
The UN operates within the parameters of the United Nations Charter
, and the reason for the UN’s formation is outlined in the Preamble to the United Nations Charter
. Unlike its predecessor, the United Nations has taken a more active role in the world, such as fighting diseases and providing humanitarian aid to nations in distress. The UN also served as the diplomatic front line during the Cold War
. The biggest advantage the United Nations has over the League of Nations is the presence of world superpowers such as the United States and Russia, for the League had little actual international power because of the absence of these nations.
The end of World War II is seen by many as marking the end of the United Kingdom's position as a global superpower
and the catalyst for the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as the dominant powers in the world. Friction had been building up between the two before the end of the war, and with the collapse of Nazi Germany relations spiraled downward.
In the areas occupied by Western Allied troops, pre-war governments were re-established or new democratic governments were created; in the areas occupied by Soviet troops, including the territories of former Allies such as Poland, communist state
s were created. These became satellites
of the Soviet Union.
Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation. The American, British and French zones were grouped a few years later into West Germany and the Soviet zone became East Germany. Austria was once again separated from Germany and it, too, was divided into four zones of occupation, which eventually reunited and became the republic of Austria. The partitions were initially informal, but as the relationship between the victors deteriorated, the military lines of demarcation became the de facto country boundaries. The Cold War had begun, and soon two blocs emerged: NATO and the Warsaw Pact
.
The partitioning of Europe and Germany
and Berlin
persisted until the crumbling of the Eastern Bloc in 1989/1990. The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989.
in order to quickly achieve a working nuclear weapon design
greatly impacted the scientific community, among other things creating a network of national laboratories in the United States. In addition, the pressing for numerous calculations for various things like codebreaking (Colossus
) and ballistics tables kick-started the development of electronic computer
technology.
(where they took the place of many men during the war years), though this was somewhat reduced in the decades following the war, as changing society forced many to return to home and family.
According to historian Antony Beevor
, amongst others, in his book Berlin - The Downfall 1945 the advancing Red Army had left a massive trail of raped women and girls of all ages
behind them. Between several tens of thousands to more than 2,000,000 were victims of rape, often repeatedly. This continued for several years. As a result of this trauma East German women's attitude towards sex was affected for a long time, and it caused social problems between men and women. Russian authorities dispute the event.
The German soldiers left many war children
behind in nations such as France and Denmark, which were occupied for an extended period. After the war, the children and their mothers often suffered recriminations. The situation was worst in Norway, where the “Tyskerunger“ (German-kids) suffered greatly. However, today that factor is not present in Norway.
The casualties experienced by the combatant nations impacted the demographic profile of the post war populations. One study found that the male to female sex ratio
in the German state of Bavaria fell as low as 60% for the most severely affected age cohort (those between 21 and 23 years old in 1946). This same study found that out-of-wedlock births spiked from approximately 10-15% during the inter-war years up to 22% at the end of the war. This increase in out-of-wedlock births was attributed to a change in the marriage market caused by the decline in the sex-ratio.
In the military sphere, World War II marked the coming of age of airpower. Advanced aircraft
and guided missile
s (developed late in the war) made the battleship
, once the queen of the world's oceans, and fixed fortification
s such as coastal artillery
obsolete. While the pendulum continues to swing in this never-ending competition, air powers are now a full partner in any military action.
The war was the high-water mark for mass armies. While huge conscript
armies were seen again (during the Korean War
and in several African conflicts), after this victory the major powers relied upon small highly-trained and well-equipped militaries.
Perhaps most important of all, World War II ushered in the nuclear era, with the dropping of the first atomic bombs
on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in 1945.
s, as well as the mass murder of the Jews in the Holocaust committed mainly on the area of General Government
, in the Nuremberg trials
. Similarly Japanese leaders were prosecuted in the Tokyo War Crime Trial. Although the deliberate targeting of civilians was already defined as a war crime and it had been used extensively by both sides, most notably in Poland, Britain, Germany and Japan, those responsible were never tried for it. In other countries, notably in Finland, the Allies demanded the political leadership to be prosecuted in “war-responsibility trials.”
of Japan that was more far-reaching than might otherwise have occurred. Japan quickly modernized into a strong, western-style market and industrial economy, a boom that was to continue well into the 1990s and 2000s.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
was divided into four quadrants, which were controlled by the Allied Powers
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
— the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
— and itself was one of the survivors.
The war can be identified to varying degrees as the catalyst for many continental, national and local phenomena, such as the redrawing of European borders, the birth of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's welfare state
Welfare state
A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...
, the communist revolution in China and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, the creation of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, and the division of Germany and Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
and later of Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
. In addition, many organizations have roots in the Second World War; for example, the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
, the World Trade Organization
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , which commenced in 1948...
, and the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
. Technologies, such as nuclear fission
Nuclear fission
In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts , often producing free neutrons and photons , and releasing a tremendous amount of energy...
, the electronic computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
and the jet engine
Jet engine
A jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet to generate thrust by jet propulsion and in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets...
, also appeared during this period.
A multipolar world was replaced by a bipolar one dominated by the two most powerful victors, the United States and Soviet Union, which became known as the superpower
Superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
s.
Europe in ruins
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
s were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and most of the European industrial infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
was destroyed.
Border revisions and population transfers
As a result of the new borders drawn by the victorious nations, large populations suddenly found themselves in hostile territory.The main beneficiary of these revisions was the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, which expanded its borders at the expense of Germany, Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
and Japan. The Soviet Union also acquired the three independent states of Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
and Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, which had declared their neutrality before the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The Baltic states were occupied and annexed early in the war in agreement with the Nazis
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
, then re-conquered in 1944. The Soviet Union also attempted to establish a separate government in that portion of Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
it had controlled during the war.
A minor temporary beneficiary was France, which in 1947 annexed the German state of Saar as a nominally independent protectorate under French economic control. Poland was compensated for its losses to the Soviet Union by most of Germany east. In total, Germany lost roughly a quarter of its territory.
Numerous Germans were expelled
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
, mostly from the ceded German territories and from the Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
. Many died, and historians debate to this day the death rate. Several hundreds of thousands of Poles, and Japanese were also expelled.
Reparations
The eastern victors demanded payment of war reparationsWar reparations
War reparations are payments intended to cover damage or injury during a war. Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land.- History :...
from the defeated nations, and in the Paris Peace Treaty
Paris Peace Treaties, 1947
The Paris Peace Conference resulted in the Paris Peace Treaties signed on February 10, 1947. The victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland .The...
, the Soviet Union's enemies—Hungary, Finland and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
—were required to pay $300,000,000 each to the Soviet Union. Italy was required to pay $360,000,000, shared chiefly between Greece, Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, and the Soviet Union. The much larger reparations from occupied Germany to Russia were to be paid not by goods or money but by the transfer of capital goods, such as dismantled manufacturing plants. A separate
Reparations to the western victors consisted mainly of free coal deliveries as well as of machinery and dismantled factories, of which the majority went to France, with some going to Britain. Germany and Italy also paid in the form of POW-provided forced labor; 100,000 in Britain and 700,000 in France. The U.S settled for appropriating German patents as well as all German company assets in the U.S. The "intellectual reparations", such as patents and blueprints, taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion, equivalent of around $100 billion in 2006 terms. The program of also acquiring German scientists
Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...
and technicians for the U.S. was also used to deny the expertise of German scientists to the Soviet Union.
The U.S. eventually stopped the shipment of dismantled factories from the U.S. zone of occupation east because of increasing friction with Russia, part of which was caused by Russian refusal to provide the western occupation zones with surplus food from the eastern occupation zone which had been the breadbasket of Germany. Western Allied dismantling of industry in the Saar area and Ruhr area
Ruhr Area
The Ruhr, by German-speaking geographers and historians more accurately called Ruhr district or Ruhr region , is an urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With 4435 km² and a population of some 5.2 million , it is the largest urban agglomeration in Germany...
was virtually completed by 1950.
Plans for Germany
The initial plans proposed by the United States were harsh. The Morgenthau PlanMorgenthau Plan
The Morgenthau Plan, proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., advocated that the Allied occupation of Germany following World War II include measures to eliminate Germany's ability to wage war.-Overview:...
of 1944 called for stripping Germany of the industrial resources required for war. The main industrial areas of the Ruhr and Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
were to be removed from Germany, as were Germany's main sources of coal and iron, namely Saar and the German speaking parts of Alsace-Lorraine
Alsace-Lorraine
The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...
, which were to be once again under French occupation.
While the Morgenthau Plan was never implemented in its original form, it did end up greatly influencing events. Most notable was this influence seen through its toned-down offshoots. Examples of these are the Potsdam Conference
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...
, Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067, and the industrial plans for Germany
Industrial plans for Germany
The Industrial plans for Germany were designs the Allies considered imposing on Germany in the aftermath of World War II to reduce and manage Germany's industrial capacity.-Background:...
.
In occupied Germany, the Morgenthau plan lived on in the U.S. occupation directive JCS 1067 and in the Allied "industrial disarmament" plans, designed to reduce German economic might and to destroy Germany's capability to wage war by complete or partial de-industrialization and restrictions imposed on utilization of remaining production population. The first industrial plan for Germany, signed in 1946, required the destruction of 1,500 manufacturing plants. The purpose of this was to lower German heavy industry output to roughly 50% of its 1938 level. By 1950, after the virtual completion of the by then much watered-out "level of industry" plans, equipment had been removed from 706 manufacturing plants, and steel production capacity had been reduced by 6,700,000 tons.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 (JCS 1067), which governed U.S. policy in Germany from April 1945 until July 1947, stated that no help was to be given to the Germans in rebuilding their nation, save for the minimum required to mitigate starvation.
These policies were however to some degree counteracted by the military governor of the U.S. zone in Germany, General Lucius D. Clay
Lucius D. Clay
General Lucius Dubignon Clay was an American officer and military governor of the United States Army known for his administration of Germany immediately after World War II. Clay was deputy to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1945; deputy military governor, Germany 1946; commander in chief, U.S....
, who did his best to use whatever loopholes the directives allowed for, particularly for actions that would reduce “unrest” and “famine“. This slowed down the rate factories were being destroyed and increased the food rations to 1,500 calories per day (half the normal UK rations).
The Western powers' worst fear was that the poverty and hunger would drive the Germans to communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
.
General Clay stated "There is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories a day and a believer in democracy on a thousand".
After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...
, and Generals Clay and George Marshall
George Marshall
George Catlett Marshall was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense...
, the Truman administration
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
finally realized that economic recovery in Europe could not go forward without the reconstruction of the German industrial base on which it had previously had been dependent.
In July 1947, President Truman rescinded on "national security grounds" the punitive JCS 1067, which had directed the U.S. forces of occupation in Germany to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany." It was replaced by JCS 1779, which instead stressed that "[a]n orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany."
Marshall Plan
In view of the continued poverty and famine in Europe, and with the onset of the Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
that made it important to bring as much of Germany as possible into the western camp, it became apparent that a change of policy was required. The most notable example of this change was a plan established by United States Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
George Marshall, the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was the large-scale American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to combat the spread of Soviet communism. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948...
, which called for the U.S. Congress to allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Europe. Also as part of the effort to rebuild global capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and spur post-war reconstruction, the Bretton Woods system
Bretton Woods system
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states in the mid 20th century...
was put into effect after the war.
For western Germany, the psychological impact of the Marshall Plan was large. In monetary terms, Germany received only half of what Britain received; in addition, Germany was eventually forced to repay the majority of the money. But it meant that the occupation policy was officially changed, and thus the West German people finally could start rebuilding their new nation. The East German population were not included, and their attempt to revolt against the Russians a few years later was quickly put down.
In the Netherlands the Bakker-Schut Plan
Bakker-Schut Plan
At the end of World War II, plans were made in the Netherlands to annex German territory as compensation for the damages caused by the war. In October 1945, the Dutch state asked Germany for 25 billion guilders in reparations, but in February 1945 it had already been established at the Yalta...
to demand a huge monetary compensation and even to annex
Annexation
Annexation is the de jure incorporation of some territory into another geo-political entity . Usually, it is implied that the territory and population being annexed is the smaller, more peripheral, and weaker of the two merging entities, barring physical size...
a part of Germany that would have doubled the country's size was dropped. But many Germans living in the Netherlands were declared 'hostile subjects' and put into a concentration camp in an operation called Black Tulip. A total of 3,691 Germans were ultimately deported.
Closely related was the Monnet Plan
Monnet Plan
The Monnet plan was proposed by French civil servant Jean Monnet after the end of World War II. It was a reconstruction plan for France that proposed giving France control over the German coal and steel areas of the Ruhr area and Saar and using these resources to bring France to 150% of pre-war...
of French bureaucrat Jean Monnet
Jean Monnet
Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet was a French political economist and diplomat. He is regarded by many as a chief architect of European Unity and is regarded as one of its founding fathers...
that proposed giving France control over the German coal areas of the Ruhr and Saar and using these resources to bring France to 150% of prewar industrial production.
End of European Imperialism
The destruction of Europe and the destruction of a significant portion of the United Kingdom's cities (via aerial bombing) would also ruin the reputation of the imperial nations in the eyes of their colonies. Coupled with the enormous expense incurred in the war, an empire was perceived to be an unnecessarily expensive possession. Thus this would provoke the rapid decolonizationDecolonization
Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the unequal relation of polities whereby one people or nation establishes and maintains dependent Territory over another...
process that would see the empires of the United Kingdom and others swept away.
These tendencies helped India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
become independent from the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
in August 1947. Soon Malaysia and other South East Asian colonies also became independent. The Netherlands lost Dutch East Indies
Dutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. It was formed from the nationalised colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Netherlands government in 1800....
, and France lost Indochina
Indochina
The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...
. In just a few decades, most Asian and African colonies were independent.
Superpowers
The immense destruction wrought over the course of the war caused a sharp decline in the influence of the great powerGreat power
A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength and diplomatic and cultural influence which may cause small powers to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions...
s. After the war, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the United States both became formidable forces. The U.S. suffered very little during the war and because of military and industrial exports became a formidable manufacturing power. This led to a period of wealth and prosperity for the U.S. in the fields of industry
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...
, agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
and technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
.
While the homeland of the United States was untouched by the war, quite the opposite was true in the Soviet Union. At the height of the Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
advance in 1941, the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
got within 20 kilometers (12.5 mi) of Moscow. Although the Nazis
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
were pushed back from Moscow by Soviet winter counter thrusts in early 1942, the Wehrmacht's Operation Blue
Operation Blue
Case Blue , later renamed Operation Braunschweig, was the German Armed Forces name for its plan for a 1942 strategic summer offensive in southern Russia between 28 June and November 1942....
in summer 1942 pushed Russian forces northeast of the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
to Stalingrad
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 23 August 1942 and 2 February 1943...
and southeast of the Black Sea to the approaches to Grozny
Grozny
Grozny is the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River. According to the preliminary results of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 271,596; up from 210,720 recorded in the 2002 Census. but still only about two-thirds of 399,688 recorded in the 1989...
at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains
Caucasus Mountains
The Caucasus Mountains is a mountain system in Eurasia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus region .The Caucasus Mountains includes:* the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range and* the Lesser Caucasus Mountains....
. Therefore the Germans controlled all of Soviet territory west of Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, Moscow, and Stalingrad
Volgograd
Volgograd , formerly called Tsaritsyn and Stalingrad is an important industrial city and the administrative center of Volgograd Oblast, Russia. It is long, north to south, situated on the western bank of the Volga River...
, from the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
to the Caucasus. During the initial German invasion, Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, the use of scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
tactics by both sides left the western portion of the Soviet Union almost totally destroyed. Agricultural land was burned, livestock exterminated, infrastructure dismantled or destroyed and entire towns flattened. All of this land was part of more battles as the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
swept west in 1943-1944. Although the Soviets were able to salvage some heavy industry and ship it to safer areas around the Ural Mountains
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...
, much of the USSR's pre-war industry fell into the hands of the Germans.
The Soviet Union also suffered unprecedented casualties. From 1941 to 1945 the Red Army lost over 10 million killed and more than 18 million wounded. Civilian losses were also immense; most estimates range from 14 to 17 million civilians killed. Most civilians in the occupied lands in the western USSR were either shot or left to starve or freeze to death by the Germans. Additionally, the majority of Holocaust victims, as well as the perpetration of the Holocaust, were from the Eastern Front. The total deaths resulting from the war amounted to roughly fourteen percent of the USSR's and sixteen percent of Poland's total pre-war population. By comparison, the United States lost about 0.3% of its total pre-war population.
Because of the immense loss of life and the destruction of land and industrial capacity, the USSR was at an economic and (because of the American use of atomic weapons on Japan) strategic disadvantage relative to the United States. The USSR was, however, in a better economic and strategic position than any other continental European power. By the end of the war in 1945 the Red Army was very large, battle-tested and occupied all of Eastern and Central Europe as well as what was to become East Germany. In areas they occupied, the Red Army installed governments they felt would be friendly towards the USSR. Given the tremendous suffering of the Soviet people during the war, Soviet leadership wanted a "buffer zone" of friendly governments between Russia and Western European nations.
European Union
The European UnionEuropean Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
grew out of the European Coal and Steel Community
European Coal and Steel Community
The European Coal and Steel Community was a six-nation international organisation serving to unify Western Europe during the Cold War and create the foundation for the modern-day developments of the European Union...
(ECSC), which was founded in 1951 by the six founding members: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...
(the Benelux
Benelux
The Benelux is an economic union in Western Europe comprising three neighbouring countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. These countries are located in northwestern Europe between France and Germany...
countries) and West Germany, France and Italy. Its purpose was to pool the steel and coal resources of the member states, and to support the economies of the participating countries. As a side effect, the ECSC helped defuse tensions between countries which had recently been enemies in the war. In time this economic merger grew, adding members and broadening in scope, to become the European Economic Community
European Economic Community
The European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...
, and later the European Union.
United Nations
Because the League of NationsLeague of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
had failed to actively prevent the war, in 1945 a new international alliance was considered and then created, the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
(UN). The UN also was responsible for the initial recognition of the establishment of the modern state of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in 1948, in part as a response to the Holocaust.
The UN operates within the parameters of the United Nations Charter
United Nations Charter
The Charter of the United Nations is the foundational treaty of the international organization called the United Nations. It was signed at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, United States, on 26 June 1945, by 50 of the 51 original member countries...
, and the reason for the UN’s formation is outlined in the Preamble to the United Nations Charter
Preamble to the United Nations Charter
The Preamble to the United Nations Charter is the opening of the United Nations Charter.-History:Jan Smuts originally wrote the opening lines of the Preamble as, "The High Contracting Parties, determined to prevent a recurrence of the fratricidal strife which twice in our generation has brought...
. Unlike its predecessor, the United Nations has taken a more active role in the world, such as fighting diseases and providing humanitarian aid to nations in distress. The UN also served as the diplomatic front line during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. The biggest advantage the United Nations has over the League of Nations is the presence of world superpowers such as the United States and Russia, for the League had little actual international power because of the absence of these nations.
Cold War
Superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
and the catalyst for the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as the dominant powers in the world. Friction had been building up between the two before the end of the war, and with the collapse of Nazi Germany relations spiraled downward.
In the areas occupied by Western Allied troops, pre-war governments were re-established or new democratic governments were created; in the areas occupied by Soviet troops, including the territories of former Allies such as Poland, communist state
Communist state
A communist state is a state with a form of government characterized by single-party rule or dominant-party rule of a communist party and a professed allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist-Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state...
s were created. These became satellites
Satellite state
A satellite state is a political term that refers to a country that is formally independent, but under heavy political and economic influence or control by another country...
of the Soviet Union.
Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation. The American, British and French zones were grouped a few years later into West Germany and the Soviet zone became East Germany. Austria was once again separated from Germany and it, too, was divided into four zones of occupation, which eventually reunited and became the republic of Austria. The partitions were initially informal, but as the relationship between the victors deteriorated, the military lines of demarcation became the de facto country boundaries. The Cold War had begun, and soon two blocs emerged: NATO and the Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
.
The partitioning of Europe and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
persisted until the crumbling of the Eastern Bloc in 1989/1990. The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989.
Technology
The massive research and development involved in the Manhattan ProjectManhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
in order to quickly achieve a working nuclear weapon design
Nuclear weapon design
Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three basic design types...
greatly impacted the scientific community, among other things creating a network of national laboratories in the United States. In addition, the pressing for numerous calculations for various things like codebreaking (Colossus
Colossus computer
Not to be confused with the fictional computer of the same name in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer. Colossus and its successors were used by British codebreakers to help read encrypted German messages during World War II...
) and ballistics tables kick-started the development of electronic computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
technology.
Social effects
One of the social effects which affected almost all participants to a certain degree was the increased participation of women in the workforceWomen in the workforce
Until modern industrialized times, legal and cultural practices, combined with the inertia of longstanding religious and educational traditions, had restricted women's entry and participation in the workforce. Economic dependency upon men, and consequently the poor socio-economic status of women...
(where they took the place of many men during the war years), though this was somewhat reduced in the decades following the war, as changing society forced many to return to home and family.
According to historian Antony Beevor
Antony Beevor
Antony James Beevor, FRSL is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous military historian John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission...
, amongst others, in his book Berlin - The Downfall 1945 the advancing Red Army had left a massive trail of raped women and girls of all ages
Red Army atrocities
War crimes perpetrated by the armed forces of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1991 include acts committed by the regular army—the Red Army —as well as the NKVD, including the NKVD's Internal Troops. In some cases, these crimes may have been committed on express orders of the early...
behind them. Between several tens of thousands to more than 2,000,000 were victims of rape, often repeatedly. This continued for several years. As a result of this trauma East German women's attitude towards sex was affected for a long time, and it caused social problems between men and women. Russian authorities dispute the event.
The German soldiers left many war children
War children
A war child refers to a child born to a native parent and a parent belonging to a foreign military force . It also refers to children of parents collaborating with an occupying force...
behind in nations such as France and Denmark, which were occupied for an extended period. After the war, the children and their mothers often suffered recriminations. The situation was worst in Norway, where the “Tyskerunger“ (German-kids) suffered greatly. However, today that factor is not present in Norway.
The casualties experienced by the combatant nations impacted the demographic profile of the post war populations. One study found that the male to female sex ratio
Human sex ratio
In anthropology and demography, the human sex ratio is the sex ratio for Homo sapiens . Like most sexual species, the sex ratio is approximately 1:1. In humans the secondary sex ratio is commonly assumed to be 105 boys to 100 girls, an assumption that is a subject of debate in the scientific...
in the German state of Bavaria fell as low as 60% for the most severely affected age cohort (those between 21 and 23 years old in 1946). This same study found that out-of-wedlock births spiked from approximately 10-15% during the inter-war years up to 22% at the end of the war. This increase in out-of-wedlock births was attributed to a change in the marriage market caused by the decline in the sex-ratio.
Military effects
Military aircraft
A military aircraft is any fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft that is operated by a legal or insurrectionary armed service of any type. Military aircraft can be either combat or non-combat:...
and guided missile
Guided Missile
Guided Missile is a London based independent record label set up by Paul Kearney in 1994.Guided Missile has always focused on 'the underground', preferring to put out a steady flow of releases and developing the numerous GM events around London and beyond....
s (developed late in the war) made the battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
, once the queen of the world's oceans, and fixed fortification
Fortification
Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
s such as coastal artillery
Coastal artillery
Coastal artillery is the branch of armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications....
obsolete. While the pendulum continues to swing in this never-ending competition, air powers are now a full partner in any military action.
The war was the high-water mark for mass armies. While huge conscript
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
armies were seen again (during the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
and in several African conflicts), after this victory the major powers relied upon small highly-trained and well-equipped militaries.
Perhaps most important of all, World War II ushered in the nuclear era, with the dropping of the first atomic bombs
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...
on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
and Nagasaki in 1945.
Trials for war crimes
After the war, many high-ranking Germans were hanged for war crimeWar crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s, as well as the mass murder of the Jews in the Holocaust committed mainly on the area of General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
, in the Nuremberg trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
. Similarly Japanese leaders were prosecuted in the Tokyo War Crime Trial. Although the deliberate targeting of civilians was already defined as a war crime and it had been used extensively by both sides, most notably in Poland, Britain, Germany and Japan, those responsible were never tried for it. In other countries, notably in Finland, the Allies demanded the political leadership to be prosecuted in “war-responsibility trials.”
Defeat of Japan
The defeat of Japan, and its occupation by Allied Forces, led to a westernizationWesternization
Westernization or Westernisation , also occidentalization or occidentalisation , is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet,...
of Japan that was more far-reaching than might otherwise have occurred. Japan quickly modernized into a strong, western-style market and industrial economy, a boom that was to continue well into the 1990s and 2000s.
See also
- Aftermath of World War IAftermath of World War IThe fighting in World War I ended in western Europe when the Armistice took effect at 11:00 am GMT on November 11, 1918, and in eastern Europe by the early 1920s. During and in the aftermath of the war the political, cultural, and social order was drastically changed in Europe, Asia and Africa,...
- Black Tulip — the eviction of Germans from the Netherlands after the war
- Consequences of German NazismConsequences of German NazismNazism and the acts of the Nazi German state profoundly affected many countries, communities and peoples before, during and after World War II. While the attempt of Germany to exterminate several nations viewed as subhuman by Nazi ideology was eventually stopped by the Allies, Nazi aggression...
- The rehabilitation of Germany after World War IIThe rehabilitation of Germany after World War IIThe reconstruction of Germany was a long process. After World War II, Germany suffered heavy losses both in lives and industrial power: the country's cities were severely damaged from the heavy bombings in the closing chapters of World War II, agricultural production was only 35% of what it was...
- Japanese post-war economic miracleJapanese post-war economic miracleThe Japanese post-war economic miracle is the name given to the historical phenomenon of Japan's record period of economic growth following World War II, spurred mainly by Japanese economic policy, in particular through the Ministry of International Trade and Industry...
- Western betrayalWestern betrayalWestern betrayal, also called Yalta betrayal, refers to a range of critical views concerning the foreign policies of several Western countries between approximately 1919 and 1968 regarding Eastern Europe and Central Europe...
- Adolf HitlerAdolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...