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World War II had manifold important effects, many lasting to this day, and many of which may never be known. The immediate global cost in lives stood at approximately 55-62 million soldiers and civilians. Large parts of Europe and East Asia were devastated. Fascism as an international movement was largely both defeated and discredited. The following global organizations, events, and technologies are to various degrees rooted in the war:
Organizations: The United Nations, World Bank, WTO, and IMF; Events: The Cold War, the retreat of European colonialism, and the transition from Great Depression to Baby boom and Long Boom; Technologies: Nuclear fission, the computer and the jet engine.
The war can be identified to varying degrees as the catalyst for, or important influence upon, many continental, national and local phenomena, such as the redrawing of European borders, the birth of the United Kingdom's welfare state, the communist takeover of China and Eastern Europe, the creation of Israel, and the divisions of Germany and Korea.
For the first time in modern history, geopolitical power shifted away from western and central Europe. That multipolar world was replaced by a bipolar one dominated by the two most powerful victors, the United States and Soviet Union, which would go on to be labelled the superpowers.
Europe in ruins
At the end of the war, millions of refugees were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and 70% of the European industrial infrastructure was destroyed.
Border revisions and population transfers
- Main article: Expulsion of Germans after World War II
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 border revisions was the Soviet Union, which expanded its borders at the expense of Germany, Finland, Poland and Japan. A minor beneficiary was France, which in 1947 annexed the German state of Saar. Poland was compensated for its losses to the Soviet Union by receiving most of Germany east of the Oder-Neisse line, including the industrial regions of Silesia.
The number of Germans expelees totaled roughly 15,000,000, most from the ceeded German territories and from the Sudetenland. Germany officially states that 2,100,000 of these expelled lost their lives during the process, mainly due to violence on the part of the Russians, Polish and Czech. Polish and Czech historians claim a much lower death rate.
The repatriation, pursuant to the terms of the Yalta Conference, of two million Russian soldiers who had come under the control of advancing American and British forces, resulted for the most part in their deaths.
Reparations
The Eastern victors demanded payment of war reparations 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 (in 1938 dollars) 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, i.e. dismantled manufacturing plants. A separate reparation was 3,000,000 German former prisoners of war, as well as a number of civilians, that were forced to labour in Russia. Some did not get to return until well into the 1950’s.
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 labour; 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 U.S. eventually stopped the shipment of dismantled factories from the U.S. zone of occupation east due to 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.
Plans for Germany
The initial proposed plans of the United States were harsh. The Morgenthau Plan 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.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 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. 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.
These policies were however covertly 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 at which factories were being destroyed.
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 and make up the most important shortfalls. JSC 1067 did however remain in effect for over two years.
Marshall Plan
In view of the continued poverty and famine in Europe, and with the onset of the Cold War which 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 U.S. 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 so lucky, 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 were 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.
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 symbolically destroy the aura of invincibility the European nation had 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 decolonization process that would see the empires of the United Kingdom, France and others swept away.
Nationalist 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 Indonesia and France lost Indo China. In just a few decades most Asian and African colonies were all independent.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and United States rise in power
The immense destruction wrought over the course of the war caused a sharp decline in the power of the great powers of Europe. 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 which continues to this day.
While the homeland of the United States was untouched by the war, quite the oppositte was true in the Soviet Union. At the height of the Axis advance in 1941, the Wehrmacht got within 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) of Moscow. Although the Nazis were pushed back from Moscow by Soviet winter counterthrusts in early 1942, the Wehrmacht's Operation Blue in summer 1942 pushed German forces northeast of the Black Sea to Stalingrad and southeast of the Black Sea to the approaches to Grozny at the foot the Caucasus Mountains. Therefore the Germans controlled all of Soviet territory west of Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad from the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus. (For visualization purposes, it would be similar to a foreign army occupiing all of the US mainland from the Atlantic coast to the Great Plains.) 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 destoryed and entire towns flattened. All of this land would see 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 unbelieveable levels of 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 esimates range from 14 to 17 million civilians killed. Most civilians in the occupied lands in the western USSR were either shot or simply left to starve or freeze to death by the Germans. Additionally, the majority of Holocaust victims, as well as the perpetration of the Holocaust itself, 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 one-third of one percent 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, it is understandable that Soviet leadership would want a "buffer zone" of friendly governments between Russia and Westen European nations.
Politics
A New Europe
The European Union 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, to support the economies of the participating economies. As a side effect, the ECSC helped diffuse 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.
United Nations
Because the League of Nations 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 creation 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 due to the absence of these nations.
The Cold War begins
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 spiralled 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 states were created. These became satellites of the Soviet Union.
Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, with the American, British and French zones grouped as West Germany and the Soviet zone as 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. Korea was divided in half along the 38th parallel.
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 would emerge: 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.
Technology
The massive research and development involved in the Manhattan Project 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 kickstarted the development of electronic computer technology.
Social effects
One of the economic effects which affected almost all participants to a certain degree was the increased participation of women in the workforce (where they had taken the place of many men during the war years), though this was somewhat reduced in the decades following the war, as changing societal mores 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. 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 huge social problems between men and women. Russian authorities dispute the event.[1]
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, and still suffer, abuse.[2],[3]
Military effects
In the military sphere, World War II marked the coming of age of airpower. Advanced aircraft and guided missiles (developed late in the war) made the battleship, once the queen of the world's ocean's, and fixed fortifications 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. World War II also saw the creation of which, like airpower, are now used in virtually every conflict.
The war was the high-water mark for mass armies. While huge conscript armies would be seen again (during the Korean War and in a number of 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.
Trials for war crimes
After the war, many high-ranking Germans were prosecuted for war crimes, as well as the mass murder of 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"
Defeat of Japan
The defeat of Japan, and its occupation by Allied Forces, led to a westernization of Japan that was more far-reaching than might otherwise have occurred. [It could even be said that the "defeated" nations of Germany and Japan actually derived more long-term, economic benefit from their loss than, say, Britain or France.] Japan quickly modernised into a strong, western-style market and industrial economy, a boom that was to continue well into the 1990s.
See also
- Aftermath of World War I
- Black Tulip — the eviction of Germans from the Netherlands after the war
- Consequences of German Nazism
- The rehabilitation of Germany after World War II
- Japanese post-war economic miracle
- World War II
References
•Glantz, David M and House, Jonathan. When Titans Clashed; How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. University Press of Kansas, 1995. ISBN 0-7006-0899-0