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Cross-regional war:
World War Two – Effects
Key concepts:
Consequence
As you read this chapter, consider the following essay questions:
Men of the 45th Division of the
US 7th Army celebrate VE Day
in Nuremberg after capturing
the city.
• Discuss the international impact of one 20th-century war.
• Examine the political and economic effects of one 20th-century war.
The impact of the war in Europe
Human cost
No other war has recorded such a loss of life in so short a time. Some estimates put
the number of dead at more than 50 million, with nearly 40 million of these in Europe.
As you have read in the section on total war in the previous chapter, the impact on
civilians in this war was huge. Perhaps as many as two-thirds of the war dead were
civilians, the most extreme example of this situation being Poland, which lost a fifth
of its population, almost all of the victims civilians. In fact, in Europe, only Germany
and the UK suffered military losses significantly greater than civilian losses. America’s
casualties, meanwhile, were almost exclusively military.
British Empire
Mobilized
Military killed
Civilians killed
(thousands)
(thousands)
(thousands)
8,720
452
80
China
8,000
1,500
7,800
France
6,000
250
360
11,000
3,250
700
Germany
Italy
4,500
330
500
Japan
6,095
1,700
360
Poland
USA
1,000
120
5,300
14,900
407
Small number
USSR
12,500
9,500
21,500 (est.)
Total from above countries
72,715
17,509
36,600
Military and civilian death toll in
World War Two.
The horror for civilians did not end with the conclusion of hostilities. More than 20
million people had been displaced during the course of the war, not just as a result
of the fighting, but also due to the actions of different countries in expelling and
deporting whole groups of people. Stalin and Hitler alone were responsible for the
forced removals of some 30 million people.
In addition, many people were forced to move from their homes once the war was
over. In German-speaking areas in Hungary, Romania, and Poland, Germans were
driven from their homes and forced to move to Germany. This also happened in
German lands taken at the end of the war by Russia and Poland. In all, between 1945
and 1947, approximately 16 million Germans were expelled from the countries of
Central and Eastern Europe, and many died as a result of this flight to Western Europe.
Thus, although the war was over, the suffering continued for many.
Economic cost
World War Two was also much more devastating economically than World War One.
Unlike in World War One, the fighting in World War Two took place over nearly all of
Europe. Aerial bombing was particularly destructive. Very few cities of any size were
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World War Two: Effects
left unscathed, and the result was millions of dead and homeless people. In addition,
transport and communications had been seriously disrupted, industry destroyed, and
farmland ruined.
The consequence of this was that Europe was prostrate in 1945, with the ‘victors’ of
the war (apart from the USA) emerging from the conflict almost as devastated as the
losers. Food production had fallen to half pre-war production levels and 150 million
people were dependent on some sort of relief food distribution during 1945–1946.
Britain was bankrupted by the war, and the Soviet economy suffered badly, with much
of western Russia devastated and 25 million homeless.
Political consequences
At the conclusion of the First World War it was borders that were invented and adjusted, while
people were on the whole left in place. After 1945 what happened was rather the opposite: with
one major exception boundaries stayed broadly intact and people were moved instead.
Tony Judt, Postwar (Vintage, 2010), p.27.
Compared with the peace settlement at Versailles, boundary changes after World War
Two were relatively slight, with the exception of Poland, which saw its border being
shifted westwards – it lost 179,000 square kilometres of land in the east and gained
104,000 square kilometres from German territories.
The new boundaries for Poland were decided at the Yalta Conference. There was no
major treaty drawn up at the end of World War Two as there had been at Versailles
in 1919, but the Allied leaders met twice in 1945 to make decisions about post-war
Europe, first at Yalta in February, and then at Potsdam in July.
Significantly, no treaty was signed concerning the future of Germany itself. Although
it was agreed at the Yalta Conference in 1945 that Germany should be temporarily
divided into four occupation zones, growing hostility between the Western Allies
and the Soviet Union led to a permanent division of Germany by 1949. In addition,
in all the countries that the Red Army had liberated – Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria,
and later Czechoslovakia – one-party regimes under Stalin’s control had emerged by
1948, despite an agreement at Yalta that free elections would be allowed in all Eastern
European states.
To USSR from
Poland
BALTIC SEA
To Poland from
Germany
USSR
Map showing the new borders
of Poland after World War Two.
Curzon Line
GERMANY
Oder-Neisse Line
Warsaw
POLAND
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
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Key
Territorial changes
USSR
Activity 1
ATL
Thinking skills
1. Why was no peace treaty officially drawn up with Germany at the end of World War Two?
The effects of the war on international relations
The USA and USSR emerge as superpowers
The most significant post-war development in international relations was the change
in the balance of power. With some exceptions, such as Austria, the major powers
before and after World War One were more or less the same. After World War Two,
however, the situation changed radically. American politician Dean Acheson wrote of
the post-World War Two situation: ‘The whole world structure and order that we had
inherited from the 19th century was gone.’
The USSR and the USA emerged from World War Two significantly more powerful
than they had been before the war, while the ‘old powers’ of Britain and France
emerged significantly weaker. Why was this?
Military reasons
●
●
●
●
To defeat Germany, the USA had acquired the largest air force in the world, with
almost 73,000 aircraft. By 1945, it also had 12 million men in the armed forces and
more than 70,000 naval vessels. In addition, it possessed the atomic bomb.
To defeat Germany, the USSR had acquired the largest land army in the world.
France and Britain’s inability to defeat Germany had changed the balance of power.
They had become ‘second-rank’ powers. Without the USA and the USSR, there was
no way that Britain could have defeated Germany on its own.
The USSR now lacked any strong military neighbours. This made it a regional power.
Economic reasons
●
●
●
●
The USA’s economy was strengthened by the war. It was able to out-produce all the
other powers put together.
The USA was committed to more ‘open’ trade; its politicians and businessmen
wanted to ensure liberal trade conditions and market competition prevailed. The
USA was willing to play an active role in preventing the pre-war pattern of tradeblocs and tariffs from re-emerging. The USA now took the lead in international
collaboration through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
The USA had the economic strength to prevent a return to instability in Europe.
The small Eastern European countries that had been created by the Treaty of
Versailles were not economically viable on their own; they needed the support of a
stronger neighbour, and the USSR could replace Germany in this role.
Political reasons
●
●
For the West, the ideals of democracy and international collaboration had triumphed
over Fascism. Thus liberal democracy was seen as the right path for the future.
For the USSR, it was Communism that had triumphed over Fascism, and the
Communist Party was given a new lease of life. Indeed, Communism had widespread
respect in Europe because of its part in resisting the Germans. Many of the earliest
resistance movements in occupied Europe had been dominated by the Communists,
and immediately after the war there were strong Communist parties in several
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World War Two: Effects
●
●
Western European states. Also, in Asia, Communism filled the power vacuum left by
the collapse of colonial empires.
The USSR’s huge losses and the role of the Red Army in defeating the Nazis gave
Stalin a claim to a large role in forming the post-war world.
The USSR had the political (as well as military) strength to prevent a return to
instability in Eastern Europe. Communism could fill the political vacuum there.
Activity 2
ATL
Thinking skills
Source analysis
While the war’s immeasurable costs and the destruction were not limited to Europe, it is clear
in retrospect that it marked the end of the Continent’s global ascendency. The demise of
European dominance was a gradual process that began before 1914 and ended after 1945,
yet only the bloodletting of two massive wars ensured the transfer of power away from Europe
to the United States and the Soviet Union and to the near collapse of the European empires.
Europe would never again be the centre of world politics, nor could it ever again claim the
superior moral position that had buttressed its prestige in so many non-European regions.
Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark (OUP, 2013), pp.1066–1067.
1. According to Steiner, what was the impact of World War Two on Europe?
The impact of the superpowers
CHALLENGE
YOURSELF
ATL
Thinking and research skills
What actually is the definition
of a ‘superpower’? Who first
used the term ‘superpowers’
and when? How far did the
superpowers differ from the
‘Great Powers’ of pre-World War
Two Europe?
Given the new position of the USA and the USSR in 1945, and their relative strength
compared to the weakened European countries, it is not surprising that they were to
become the key players in setting up the post-war settlement of Europe. After 1945, at
least until 1949, Europe continued to be at the heart of international relations, but now
as the battleground between the USSR and the USA, as the two superpowers came into
direct conflict over how the post-war settlement should be carried out. This tension
developed into what became known as the ‘Cold War’. The map of Europe after 1945
was determined by this growing conflict between the USSR and the USA, with a clear
divide between Eastern and Western Europe. For the USA, this situation meant an end
to isolationism and the beginning of a dominant role in world affairs.
The Cold War began where it had left off in 1941, with profound distrust of Soviet motives, and
an ideological divide every bit as deep as that between liberalism and Nazism. Only two years
after the end of the war the American Air Policy Commission reported to Truman that the
essential ‘incompatibility of East and West’ called for the build-up of a ‘devastating’ force of
bombers and missiles equipped with nuclear weapons capable of operation at a range of 5,000
miles. American strategists moved effortlessly from one Manichaean world to the next.
Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, 2nd ed. (Pimlico, 2006), p.404.
Western Europe
One aspect of the developing Cold War was the intervention of the USA and the USSR
in the economic recovery of Europe. With Western Europe’s economic weakness
translating into political weakness, the USA was forced to step in to provide economic
aid. This took the form of the Marshall Plan in 1948; the USA was spurred into action
to do this in order to prevent the weakened governments of France and Italy falling
to Communism. Thanks partly to the Marshall Plan, Western countries were able
to implement necessary social changes and recover economically. In fact, in the
1950s and the 1960s, Western European countries enjoyed two decades of sustained
economic growth.
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With the elimination of Fascism, Western Europe also saw the establishment of multiparty democracies, led for the most part by elder statesmen who had entered politics
many decades before. Tony Judt explains this phenomenon:
The vogue between the wars had been for the new and the modern. Parliaments and democracies
were seen by many – and not just Fascists and Communists – as decadent, stagnant, corrupt and
in any case inadequate to the tasks of the modern state. War and occupation dispelled these
illusions, for voters if not for intellectuals. In the cold light of peace, the dull compromises of
constitutional democracy took on a new appeal. What most people longed for in 1945 was
social progress and renewal, to be sure, combined with the reassurance of stable and familiar
political forms. Where the First World War had a politically radicalising effect, its successor
produced the opposite outcome; a deep longing for normality. Statesmen whose experience
reached back beyond the troubled inter-war decades to the more settled and self-confident era
before 1914 thus had a particular attraction … Whatever their party ‘label’, the elder statesmen
of Europe were all, by 1945, sceptical, pragmatic practitioners of the art of the possible.
Tony Judt, Postwar (Vintage, 2010), p.82.
Activity 3
ATL
Thinking skills
Source analysis
1. How does Judt account for the political developments that took place in Europe after 1945?
2. According to Judt, what difference was there between the impact of World War One and World War
Two on political developments? Why do you think that there was this difference?
The ‘social progress’ that Judt mentions above took the form of new social legislation
that revolutionized the role of the modern state and the expectations upon it. Every
European country set up provision for a wide range of social services post-1945, though
perhaps it was in Britain that the change in the role of the state was most marked. The
election of 1945 swept out Churchill and the Conservative Party and returned the Labour
Party, led by Clement Attlee, to office. This British government went on to establish the
Welfare State, with care for the individual ‘from the cradle to the grave’.
The Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an
American economic aid
programme for Europe.
It was a response to the
economic devastation
of Europe after the war
and the fact that the
USA was aware that,
without economic
recovery, there was a
danger that Communist
parties, already strong in
France and Italy, would
gain increasing support
in Europe. The USSR
refused to take part in
the Plan, claiming that
it was an attempt by the
Americans to exercise
‘dollar diplomacy’ over
Europe, thus establishing
American economic
domination. This helped
to lead to the economic
division of Europe as the
USSR set up Comecon.
With Western and Eastern Europe divided economically, the traditional exchange
between East and West was disrupted. On the other hand, the devastation of war and the
Communist threat led to a greater measure of economic cooperation in Western Europe
than ever before, with the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community and
ultimately the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1950s.
What was the impact of the war on the position
of women?
As you read in the previous section, during the war, women took on jobs – from crane
driving to factory work – that were normally the male domain. They also played a key role
in resistance movements in occupied countries – and in the USSR women took on combat
roles at the front. However, after the war there were strong pressures in all countries for
women to return to the roles that they had had before the war. Although they did for the
most part return to their more traditional roles, the taste of work and freedom that women
had experienced played a part in contributing, in the West, to the fight for more equal
rights, in terms of pay and job opportunities, that took place in the 1960s.
CHALLENGE
YOURSELF
Research skills ATL
Continue with your research on
the impact of war on women.
As you did with World War One,
research the position of women
in different countries following
World War Two. What factors,
other than the impact of World
War Two, caused the women’s
movement of the 1960s?
Eastern Europe
Between 1944 and 1948, Stalin established control over Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East
Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland. This involved:
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If you reflect on the
‘results’ of World War Two
discussed here, it is clear
that a historian needs to
be able to understand
something of each of the
other Areas of Knowledge
to be able to understand
historical cause and
effect. It is also important
to realize that each of the
other Areas of Knowledge
has its own ‘history’. Is this
true of any other Areas of
Knowledge?
Cominform
Cominform was
founded by Stalin in
1947 in order to direct
Communist party activity
throughout Europe. It
was the successor to
Comintern (Communist
International), which had
been set up in 1919.
World War Two: Effects
●●
●●
●●
In addition, the USSR sought to integrate its economy with those of Eastern Europe
to offset the weakness of industry and agriculture in the USSR. It established the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon). Comecon was not a massive
aid programme like the Marshall Plan, but more one of economic exploitation. Each
satellite state had to produce what the USSR needed: for example, Poland produced
coal. The satellite states were not to cooperate economically with each other,
however. This situation was one of exploitation for the satellite states, and economic
modernization proceeded at a much slower rate. There was not, therefore, the
economic regeneration that Western Europe experienced.
With no Marshall Plan, and with the priority of the USSR on heavy industry and the
building of nuclear weapons, the citizens of both the Soviet Union and the satellite
states suffered economic hardship in the next few decades.
This economic and political system was backed up by:
●●
●●
●●
●●
●●
Compare and contrast
the impacts of World War
One and World War Two
on Europe.
the establishment of one-party rule, including installation of national leaders
dependent on the USSR
nationalization of private enterprise
establishment of Soviet-style five-year plans – heavy industry was encouraged and
agriculture collectivized.
social and ideological controls, such as Cominform, secret police
censorship of all media
suppression of religious freedom
military presence of Soviet troops
political purges.
Conclusions on the effect of the war in Europe
By 1949, a remarkable symmetry had emerged in Europe, with the political, economic,
and military division of the continent. The Western bloc, under the domination of
the USA, had a common political philosophy – democracy – and the commitment
of the USA, through the ‘Truman Doctrine’, to its defence. The Western states
were tied to the USA and to each other economically, via Marshall Aid and the EEC,
and by 1949 had a military alliance in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). Similarly, the Soviet Bloc comprised Communist states, members of a joint
ideological organization called the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform).
They supposedly had an organization for economic cooperation in Comecon and
were ‘protected’ by Soviet forces (the Warsaw Pact, a Communist version of NATO,
was established in 1955).
Activity 4
ATL
Thinking skills
Review questions
1. What was the effect of the war on the following:
a) the international status of Britain and France
b) the international status of the USA and USSR?
2. Why did distrust start to develop between the USA and the USSR after 1945?
3. What impact did these changes have on international relations?
4. What were the key economic effects of the war? How did the economic situation of Europe change
between 1945 and 1950?
5. What political, economic, and social differences developed between Western European countries
and Eastern European countries?
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