Aftermath of World War II

See also: Casualties of World War II, Atlantic Charter, and Consequences of German Nazism

The aftermath of World War II introduced a new era of tensions arising from opposing ideologies, mutual distrust, and a nuclear arms race between East and West, together with a radically altered international correlation of forces. There were post-war boundary disputes in Europe and elsewhere, and questions of national self-determination in Poland and in European colonial territories.

The immediate post-war period in Europe was characterised by the Soviet Union annexing or converting into Soviet Socialist Republics all the countries that the Red Army had taken over behind its own lines in driving the German invaders out of central and eastern Europe. Countries converted into Soviet Satellite states within the Eastern Bloc were: Poland; Bulgaria; Hungary; Czechoslovakia; Romania; Albania; The German Democratic Republic or communist East Germany was created from the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany, while the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia emerged as an independent communist state not aligned with the USSR.

Japan was occupied by the Allies. In accordance with the Potsdam Conference agreements, which promised territorial concessions to the USSR in the Far East in return for entering the war against Japan, the USSR occupied and subsequently annexed the strategic island of Sakhalin. During the occupation of Japan, the focus would be on demilitarisation of the nation, demolition of the Japanese arms industry, and the installation of a democratic government with a new constitution. The Far Eastern Commission and Allied Council For Japan were established to administer the occupation of Japan. These bodies served a similar function to the Allied Control Council in occupied Germany.

Immediate effects

Warsaw: Aftermath of war.

At the end of the war, millions of people were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and much of the European industrial infrastructure was destroyed. The Soviet Union had been heavily affected, with 30% of its economy destroyed.

Luftwaffe bombings of Frampol, Wieluń and Warsaw in 1939 instituted the practice of bombing purely civilian targets. Many other cities suffered similar annihilation as this practice was continued by both the Allies and Axis forces.

The United Kingdom ended the war economically exhausted by the war effort. The wartime coalition government was dissolved; new elections were held, and Winston Churchill was defeated in a landslide general election by the Labour Party under Clement Attlee.

In 1947, United States Secretary of State George Marshall devised the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, effective in the years 1948 - 1952. It allocated US$13 billion for the reconstruction of Western Europe.

Soviet Union

Ruins in Stalingrad, typical of the destruction in many Soviet cities.

The losses suffered by the Soviet Union in the war against Germany were enormous. Total demographic population loss was about 40 million people, of which 8.7 million were combat deaths. The non-military deaths of approximately 19 million included deaths by starvation in the siege of Leningrad; deaths in German prisons and concentration camps; deaths from mass shootings of civilians; deaths of labourers in German industry; deaths from famine and disease; deaths in Soviet camps; and the deaths of both Soviet non-conscript partisans and of Soviet citizens not conscripted into the Soviet armed forces who died in German or German-controlled military units fighting the USSR. It would take 30 years for the post-war population level to catch up with pre-war level.

Soviet ex-POWs and civilians repatriated from abroad were suspected of having been Nazi collaborators, and 226,127 of them were sent to forced labour camps after scrutiny by Soviet intelligence, NKVD. Many ex-POWs and young civilians were also conscripted to serve in the Red Army, others worked in labour battalions to rebuilt infrastructure destroyed during the war.

Although the Soviet Union was victorious in World War II, its economy had been devastated. Roughly a quarter of the country's capital resources were destroyed, and industrial and agricultural output in 1945 fell far short of prewar levels. To help rebuild the country, the Soviet government obtained limited credits from Britain and Sweden but refused assistance proposed by the United States under the economic aid programme known as the Marshall Plan. Instead, the Soviet Union compelled Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe to supply machinery and raw materials. Germany and former Nazi satellites including Finland made reparations to the Soviet Union. The reconstruction programme emphasised heavy industry, to the detriment of agriculture and consumer goods. By 1953, steel production was twice its 1940 level, but the production of many consumer goods and foodstuffs was lower than it had been in the late 1920s.

Germany

Main articles: History of Germany (1945–1990), Forced labor of Germans after World War II, Morgenthau Plan, Industrial plans for Germany, Denazification, Territorial changes of Germany after World War II, and Legal status of Germany

Partition

Post-WWII occupation zones of Germany, in its 1937 borders, with territories east of the Oder-Neisse line shown as annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, plus the Saar protectorate and divided Berlin. East Germany was formed by the Soviet Zone, while West Germany was formed by the American, British, and French zones in 1949 and the Saar in 1957.

In the west, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France, and by declaring Germany to be the territory it had contained within its boundaries of December 31, 1937, the Sudetenland was reverted back to Czechoslovakia. In addition, close to 1/4 of pre-war (1937) Germany was de-facto annexed by the Allies, and the surviving roughly 10 million Germans were either expelled from or (if they had fled during the fighting) refused to return to their homes. The remainder of Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, coordinated by the Allied Control Council. The Saar was detached and put in economic union with France in 1947. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was created out of the Western zones. The Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic. Austria was separated from Germany and divided into four zones of occupation, which reunited in 1955 to become the Republic of Austria.

Reparations

Germany paid reparations to the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union mainly in the form of dismantled factories, forced labor, and coal. Germany was to be reduced to the standard of living she had at the height of the Great Depression. Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the US and Britain pursued an "intellectual reparations" programme to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. The value of these amounted to around US$10 billion, equivalent to about US$100 billion in 2006 terms. In accordance with the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, payment of reparations was assessed from the countries of Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland.

Aid

The hunger-winter of 1947, thousands protest against the disastrous food situation (March 31, 1947).

US policy in post-war Germany from April 1945 until July 1947 had been that no help should be given to the Germans in rebuilding their nation, save for the minimum required to mitigate starvation. The Allies' immediate post-war "industrial disarmament" plan for Germany had been to destroy Germany's capability to wage war by complete or partial de-industrialization. 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. Dismantling of West German industry ended in 1951. By 1950, equipment had been removed from 706 manufacturing plants, and steel production capacity had been reduced by 6,700,000 tons. After lobbying by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Generals Clay and George Marshall, the Truman administration accepted 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 directive that had ordered the US occupation forces to "take no steps looking toward the economic rehabilitation of Germany." A new directive recognised that "[a]n orderly, prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany." From mid 1946 onwards Germany received US government aid in the form of the GARIOA programme. From 1948 onwards West Germany also became a minor recipient of the Marshall plan for European recovery. Volunteer organisations had initially been forbidden to send food, but in early 1946 the Council of Relief Agencies Licensed to Operate in Germany was founded. The prohibition against sending CARE Packages to individuals in Germany was rescinded on 5 June 1946.

After the German surrender, the International Red Cross was prohibited from providing aid such as food or visiting POW camps for Germans inside Germany. However, after making approaches to the Allies in the autumn of 1945 it was allowed to investigate the camps in the UK and French occupation zones of Germany, as well as to provide relief to the prisoners held there.

On February 4, 1946, the Red Cross was permitted to visit and assist prisoners also in the U.S. occupation zone of Germany, although only with very small quantities of food. "During their visits, the delegates observed that German prisoners of war were often detained in appalling conditions. They drew the attention of the authorities to this fact, and gradually succeeded in getting some improvements made".

Japan

Main articles: Occupation of Japan and International Military Tribunal for the Far East

After the War the Allies rescinded Japanese pre-war annexations such as Manchuria, and Korea became independent. The Soviet Union (one of the Allies) also annexed the Kurils, leading to the still ongoing Kuril Islands dispute. US President Roosevelt had at the Yalta conference secretly traded the Japanese Kurils and south Sakhalin to the Soviet Union in return for Soviet entry in the war with Japan. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese were forced to relocate to the Japanese main islands. Okinawa became a main U.S. staging point covering large areas of it with military bases, it remained occupied until 1972 (many years longer than Japan itself). The bases still remain. Many Japanese soldiers were, in order to negate the Geneva Convention, classified as Japanese Surrendered Personnel instead of POW, and were used as forced labor until 1947. Some Japanese troops were utilized by the European colonial forces to fight against the liberation movements that had sprung up in Asia and were trying to stop the UK, France and the Netherlands from re-colonizing them. Japanese War crimes trials, similar to the Nuremberg trials, were held. Reparations were collected from Japan. To further remove Japan as a potential future military threat, the Far Eastern Commission decided that Japan must partly de-industrialized. Dismantling of Japanese industry was foreseen to have been achieved when Japanese standards of living were reduced to those between 1930 and 1934. (see Great Depression) In the end the adopted program of de-industrialisation in Japan was implemented to a lesser degree than the similar U.S. "industrial disarmament" program in Germany. Japan received emergency aid from GARIOA, just as Germany, and In view of the cost to American taxpayers for the emergency aid, in April 1948 the Johnston Committee Report recommended that the economy of Japan should be reconstructed. In early 1946 the Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia were formed and permitted to supply Japanese with food and clothes.

War victims

In Japan, survivors of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as hibakusha (被爆者) were ostracized by Japanese society . Japan provided no special assistance to these people until 1952. By the 65th anniversary of the bombings, total casualties from the initial attack and later deaths reached about 270,000 in Hiroshima. and 150,000 in Nagasaki. About 230,000 hibakusha are still alive, about 2200 of whom are suffering from radiation-caused illnesses.

Baltic States and Finland

Main article: Occupation and annexation of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union (1940)

The 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact divided Eastern Europe into zones of interest between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Under threat of invasion, the neutral Baltic states acceded to Soviet demands in the fall of 1939 to station military units on their territory under the terms of pacts of "mutual assistance." Finland, also a neutral state, refused the same demand. A brief but vitriolic propaganda campaign ensued, reaching a peak when on November 26, 1939 Pravda published ШУТ ГОРОХОВЫЙ НА ПОСТУ ПРЕМЬЕРА (Buffoon Holding the Post of Prime Minister) labeling the Finnish foreign minister, Cajander, a "buffoon" and a "clown" and blaming him for the impasse in negotiations. The Soviet Union invaded Finland four days later in the Winter War, annexing amongst other territory Finland's second largest city, Vyborg. The Finnish attempt to recover their lost territory in the Continuation War ultimately failed. While Finland managed to retain its independence after the war it was nevertheless subjected to Soviet-imposed constraints in its domestic affairs.

In 1940 the Soviet Union invaded and occupied the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania—and annexed them shortly thereafter.

In June 1941, the Soviet-installed governments carried out mass deportations of "enemies of the people". Consequently, at first many Balts greeted the Germans as liberators when they occupied the Baltic only a week later.

The British prime minister Winston Churchill argued for a watered down interpretation of the Atlantic Charter (that promised self-determination) for the purpose of permitting the Soviet Union to continue to control the Baltic states. In March 1944 the U.S. accepted Churchill's view that the Atlantic Charter did not apply to the Baltic states.

With the return of Soviet troops at the end of the war a low-key guerrilla war by the resistance movements of the Forest Brothers ensued, which was to continue until the mid 1950s.

Population displacement

Expulsion of Germans from the Sudetenland

Main article: World War II evacuation and expulsion

As a result of the new borders drawn by the victorious nations, large populations suddenly found themselves in hostile territory. The Soviet Union took over areas formerly controlled by Germany, Finland, Poland, and Japan. Poland received most of Germany east of the Oder-Neisse line, including the industrial regions of Silesia. The German state of the Saar was temporarily a protectorate of France but later returned to German administration.

Germans

Main article: Expulsion of Germans after World War II

The number of Germans expelled, as set forth at Potsdam, totalled roughly 12 million, including 7 million from Germany proper and 3.0 million from the Sudetenland. Mainstream estimates of casualties from the expulsions range between 500,000 - 2 million dead.

Soviet Union

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union

In Eastern Europe, two million Poles were expelled by the Soviet Union from east of the new border which approximated the Curzon Line. This border change reversed the results of the 1919-1920 Polish-Soviet War. Former Polish cities such as L'vov came under control of the Soviet administration of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Additionally, the Soviet Union had transferred more than 2 million people within their borders from various ethnicities (Germans, Finns, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, etc.)

United States and Canada

Main articles: Japanese American internment and Japanese Canadian internment

During the war, the United States government interned approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Approximately 22,000 Japanese Canadians (14,000 of whom were born in Canada) were interned in Canada. After the war, some internees choose to return to Japan, while most remained in North America.

Rape during occupation

In Europe

Main article: Rape during the occupation of Germany

As Soviet troops marched across the Balkans, they committed rapes and robberies in Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The population of Bulgaria was largely spared this, due to the generally excellent behavior of Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin’s troops. The population of Germany was treated significantly worse. Rape and murder of German civilians was as bad as, and sometimes worse than Nazi propaganda had expected it to be. Political officers encouraged Russian troops to seek revenge and terrorize the German population. Estimates of the numbers of rapes committed by Soviet soldiers range from tens of thousands to 2 million. About one-third of all German women in Berlin were raped by Soviet forces. A substantial minority were raped multiple times. In Berlin, contemporary hospital records indicate between 95,000 and 130,000 women were raped by Russian troops. About 10,000 of these women died, mostly by suicide. Over 4.5 million Germans fled towards the West. The Soviets initially had no rules against their troops fraternizing with German women, but by 1947 started to isolate their troops from the German population in an attempt to stop rape and robbery by the troops. Not all Russian soldiers behaved this way, there were also examples kindness, especially towards children.

Foreign reports of Soviet brutality were denounced as false. Rape, robbery, and murder were blamed on German bandits impersonating Russian soldiers. Some justified Russian troops brutality towards German civilians based on previous brutality of German troops towards Russian civilians. Until the reunification of Germany, GDR histories virtually ignored the actions of Russian troops, and Russian histories still tend to do so. Reports of mass rapes by Russian troops were often dismissed as anti-Communist propaganda or the normal byproduct of war.

Rapes also occurred under other occupation forces, though the majority were committed by Russian troops. French Moroccan troops matched the behavior of Soviet troops when it came to rape, especially in the early occupations of Baden and Württemberg. In a letter to the editor published in September 1945, American army sergeant wrote "Our own Army and the British Army along with ours have done their share of looting and raping ... This offensive attitude among our troops is not at all general, but the percentage is large enough to have given our Army a pretty black name, and we too are considered an army of rapists." Robert Lilly’s analysis of military records led him to conclude about 14,000 rapes occurred in Britain, France and Germany at the hands of US soldiers between 1942 to 1945. Lilly assumed that only 5% of rapes by American soldiers were reported (making 17,000 GI rapes a possibility), while analysts estimate that 50% of (ordinary peace-time) rapes are reported. Supporting Lillys lower figure is the "crucial difference" that for WW-II military rapes "it was the commanding officer, not the victim, who brought charges".

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.

In Japan

Main article: Rape during the occupation of Japan

Post-war tensions

Main articles: Iron Curtain, Origins of the Cold War, and Cold War (1947–1953)

Europe

Soviet expansion, change of Central-Eastern European borders and creation of the Communist Eastern bloc after World War II

The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before World War II was over, when a heated exchange of correspondence took place between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill over whether the Polish Government in Exile, backed by Roosevelt and Churchill, or the Provisional Government, backed by Stalin, should be recognised. Stalin won.

A number of allied leaders felt that war between the United States and the Soviet Union was likely; in fact, on May 19, 1945, American Under-Secretary of State Joseph Grew went so far as to say that it was inevitable.

On March 5, 1946, in his "Sinews of Peace" (Iron Curtain) speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill said "a shadow" had fallen over Europe. He described Stalin as having dropped an "Iron Curtain" between East and West. Stalin responded by saying he believed co-existence between the Communist and the capitalist systems was impossible. In mid-1948 the Soviet Union imposed a blockade on the Western zone of occupation in Berlin.

Due to the rising tension in Europe and concerns over further Soviet expansion, American planners came up with a contingency plan code-named Operation Dropshot in 1949. It considered possible nuclear and conventional war with the Soviet Union and its allies in order to counter the anticipated Soviet takeover of Western Europe, the Near East and parts of Eastern Asia due to start around 1957. In response, the US would saturate the Soviet Union with atomic and high-explosive bombs, and then invade and occupy the country. In later years, to reduce military expenditures while countering Soviet conventional strength, President Eisenhower would adopt a strategy of "massive retaliation", a doctrine relying on the threat of a US nuclear strike to prevent non-nuclear incursions by the Soviet Union in Europe and elsewhere. This approach would entail a major buildup of US nuclear forces and a corresponding reduction in America's non-nuclear ground and naval strength. The Soviet Union would view these developments as "atomic blackmail".

In Greece, Civil war broke out in 1947 between Anglo-American supported royalist forces and communist-led forces, with the royalist forces emerging as the victors. The US launched a massive programme of military and economic aid to Greece and to neighbouring Turkey, arising from a fear that the Soviet Union stood on the verge of breaking through the NATO defence line to the oil-rich Middle East. In what became known as the Truman Doctrine, and to gain congressional support for the aid, US president Truman on March 12, 1947 described the aid as promoting democracy in defence of the “free world”.

The US sought to promote an economically strong and politically united Western Europe to counter the threat posed by the Soviet Union. This was done openly using tools such as the European Recovery Program which encouraged European economic integration. The International Authority for the Ruhr, designed to keep German industry down and controlled, evolved into the European Coal and Steel Community, one of the founding pillars of the European Union. The United States also worked covertly to promote European integration, for example using the American Committee on United Europe to covertly funnel funds to European federalist movements. In order to ensure that Western Europe could withstand the Soviet military threat the Western European Union was founded in 1948, and NATO in 1949. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, famously stated the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down". However, without the manpower and industrial output of West Germany no conventional defense of Western Europe had any hope of succeeding. To remedy this, in 1950 the US sought to promote the European Defence Community, which would have included a rearmed West Germany. The attempt was dashed by its rejection by the French parliament. On May 9, 1955 West Germany was instead admitted to NATO, the immediate result of which was the creation of the Warsaw Pact five days later. The Cold war also saw the creation of propaganda and espionage organisations such as Radio Free Europe, Information Research Department, Gehlen Organization, Central Intelligence Agency (1947), Special Activities Division, Ministry for State Security.

Asia

World map of colonization at the end of the Second World War in 1945.

Main articles: Decolonization of Asia and Wars of national liberation

In Asia, the surrender of Japanese forces was complicated by the split between East and West as well as by the movement toward national self-determination in European colonial territories.

Korea

Main article: Division of Korea

At the Yalta Conference the Allies agreed that an undivided post-war Korea would be placed under four-power multinational trusteeship. After Japan's surrender, this agreement was modified to a joint Soviet-American occupation of Korea. The agreement was that Korea would be divided and occupied by the Russians from the north and the Americans from the south.

Evolution of the border between the two Koreas, from the Yalta Soviet-American 38th parallel division to the stalemate of 1953 that persists as of today

Korea, formerly under Japanese rule, and which had been partially occupied by the Red Army following the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan, was divided at the 38th parallel on the orders of the US War Department. A United States Military Government in southern Korea was established in the capital city of Seoul. The American military commander, Lt. Gen. John R Hodge, had enlisted many former Japanese administrative officials to serve in the new American military government. North of the military line, the Russians administered the disarming and demobilisation of repatriated Korean nationalist guerrillas who had fought on the side of Chinese nationalists against the Japanese in Manchuria during World War II. Simultaneously, the Russians enabled a build-up of heavy armaments to pro-communist forces in the north. The military line became a political line in 1948, when separate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th parallel, each republic claiming to be the legitimate government of Korea. It culminated in the north invading the south, and the Korean War two years later.

China

Main article: Chinese Civil War

Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang

The nationalist and communist Chinese forces, formerly aligned in the war against Japan, resumed their civil war, which had been temporarily suspended during the war against Japan. Despite US support to the Kuomintang, the Communist forces were ultimately victorious and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, while Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan.

Malaya

Main article: Malayan Emergency

Labour and civil unrest had broken out in the British colony of Malaya in 1946. A state of emergency was declared by the colonial authorities in 1948 when acts of terrorism started occurring. The situation deteriorated into a full-scale anti-colonial insurgency, or Anti-British National Liberation War as the insurgents referred to it, led by the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military wing of the Malayan Communist Party. The Emergency would endure for the next 12 years, ending in 1960. In 1967, communist leader Chin Peng revived hostilities, known as the Communist Insurgency War, ending in the defeat of the communists by British Commonwealth forces in 1969.

Vietnam

Main article: First Indochina War

Following the reoccupation of Indochina by the French following the end of World War II, the area having fallen to the Japanese, the Việt Minh launched a rebellion against the French authority, (backed by the US), governing the colonies of French Indochina.

Dutch East Indies

Main article: Indonesian National Revolution

A soldier of an Indian armoured regiment examines a light tank used by Indonesian nationalists and captured by British forces during the fighting in Surabaya.

The invasion and occupation of Indonesia during World War II brought about the destruction of the colonial state in Indonesia, as the Japanese removed as much of the Dutch state as they could, replacing it with their own regime. Although the top positions were held by the Japanese, the internment of all Dutch citizens meant that Indonesians filled many leadership and administrative positions. Following the Japanese surrender in August 1945, nationalist leaders Sukarno and Hatta declared Indonesian independence. A four and a half-year struggle followed as the Dutch tried to re-establish their colony, using a significant portion of the Marshall plan aid it received from the US in its quest to re-conquer Indonesia. The Dutch were directly helped by UK forces who sought to re-establish the colonial dominions in Asia. The UK also kept 35,000 Japanese Surrendered Personnel under arms to fight against the Indonesians.

Although Dutch forces re-occupied most of Indonesia's territory a guerrilla struggle ensued, and the majority of Indonesians, and ultimately international opinion, favoured Indonesian independence. In December 1949, the Netherlands formally recognised Indonesian sovereignty.

Algeria

Main article: Algerian War

The Algerian War, was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France.

Covert operations and espionage

The Balkan Peninsula, as defined by the Danube-Sava-Kupa line

British covert operations in the Baltic States, which began in 1944 against the Nazis, were escalated after the war to include the recruitment and training in London of Balts, in a covert operation by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) codenamed Jungle, for the clandestine infiltration of intelligence and resistance agents into the Baltic states between 1948 and 1955. The agents were landed on a Baltic beach by an experienced former Nazi naval captain. The agents were mostly Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian emigrants who had been trained in the UK and Sweden and were to link up with the anti-Soviet resistance in the occupied states. Leaders of the operation included Alfons Rebane (an Estonian who had fought for the Germans against the USSR), Stasys Žymantas, and Rūdolfs Silarājs. The agents were transported under the cover of the "British Baltic Fishery Protection Service", a cover organization launched from British-occupied Germany, using a converted World War II E-boat captained and crewed by former members of the wartime German navy . British intelligence also trained and infiltrated anti-communist agents into Russia from across the Finnish border, with orders to assassinate Soviet officials. MI6's entire intelligence network in the Baltic States became completely compromised, penetrated and was covertly controlled by the KGB as a result of counter-intelligence supplied to the KGB by British spy Kim Philby.

The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. Their alliance changed radically in the aftermath of World War II.

The successes of clandestine American activities in Europe would later be offset by longterm damage to its reputation in Vietnam and the Middle East.

The Russian intelligence service KGB believed that the Third World rather than Europe was the arena in which it could win the Cold War. Moscow would in later years fuel an arms buildup in Africa and other Third World regions, notably in North Korea. Seen from Moscow, the Cold War was largely about the non-European world. The Soviet leadership envisioned a revolutionary front in Latin America. "For a quarter of a century," one expert writes, "the KGB, unlike the CIA, believed that the Third World was the arena in which it could win the Cold War." ". In later years, those African countries most corrupted by the "proxy" wars of the late Cold War would become "failed states".

Recruitment of former enemy scientists

When the divisions of postwar Europe began to emerge, the war crimes programmes and denazification policies of Britain and the United States were relaxed in favour of recruiting German scientists, especially nuclear and long-range rocket scientists. Many of these, prior to their capture, had worked on developing the German V-2 long-range rocket at the Baltic coast German Army Research Center Peenemünde.

V-2 rocket launching, Peenemünde, on the Baltic German coast (1943).

Western Allied occupation force officers in Germany were ordered to refuse to cooperate with the Russians in sharing captured wartime secret weapons.

In Operation Paperclip, beginning in 1945, the United States imported 1,600 German scientists and technicians, as part of the intellectual reparations owed to the US and the UK, including about $10 billion in patents and industrial processes. The $10 billion compares to the 1948 US GDP $258 billion, and to the total Marshall plan (1948–52) expenditure of $13 billion, of which Germany received $1.4 billion (partly as loans). In late 1945, three German rocket-scientist groups arrived in the US for duty at Fort Bliss, Texas, and at White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, as “War Department Special Employees”. In early 1950, legal US residency for some of the Project Paperclip specialists was effected through the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico; thus, Nazi scientists legally entered the US from Latin America. Eighty-six aeronautical engineers were transferred to Wright Field, where the US had Luftwaffe aircraft and equipment captured under Operation Lusty. The United States Army Signal Corps employed 24 specialists — including the physicists Georg Goubau, Gunter Guttwein, Georg Hass, Horst Kedesdy, and Kurt Lehovec; the physical chemists Rudolf Brill, Ernst Baars, and Eberhard Both; the geophysicist Dr. Helmut Weickmann; the optician Gerhard Schwesinger; and the engineers Eduard Gerber, Richard Guenther, and Hans Ziegler. By 1959, a further ninety-four Operation Paperclip men had gone to the US, including Friedwardt Winterberg and Friedrich Wigand.

The wartime activities of some Operation Paperclip scientists would later be investigated. The aeromedical library at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas had been named after Hubertus Strughold in 1977. However, it was later renamed because documents from the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal linked Strughold to medical experiments in which inmates from Dachau were tortured and killed. Arthur Rudolph was deported in 1984, though he was not prosecuted, and West Germany granted him citizenship. Similarly, Georg Rickhey, who came to the United States under Operation Paperclip in 1946, was returned to Germany to stand trial at the Mittelbau-Dora war crimes trial in 1947, was acquitted, and returned to the United States in 1948, eventually becoming a US citizen.

The Russians began Operation Osoaviakhim in 1946. NKVD and Soviet army units effectively deported thousands of military-related technical specialists from the Soviet occupation zone of post-World-War-II Germany to the Soviet Union. Much related equipment was also moved, the aim being to virtually transplant research and production centres, such as the relocated V-2 rocket centre at Mittelwerk Nordhausen, from Germany to the Soviet Union. Among the people moved were Helmut Gröttrup and about two hundred scientists and technicians from Mittelwerk. Personnel were also taken from AEG, BMW's Stassfurt jet propulsion group, IG Farben's Leuna chemical works, Junkers, Schott AG, Siebel, Telefunken, and Carl Zeiss AG.

The operation was commanded by NKVD deputy Colonel General Serov, outside the control of the local Soviet Military Administration The major reason for the operation was the Soviet fear of being condemned for noncompliance with Allied Control Council agreements on the liquidation of German military installations.

Some Western observers thought Operation Osoaviakhim was a retaliation for the failure of the Socialist Unity Party in elections, though Osoaviakhim was clearly planned before that. 92 trains were used to transport the specialists and their families (an estimated 10,000-15,000 people).

Founding of the United Nations

As a general consequence and in an effort to maintain international peace, the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, and adopted The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, "as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations." The USSR abstained from voting. The US did not ratify the social and economic rights sections.

Economic aftermath

Further information: Post-World War II economic expansion

By the end of the war, the European economy had collapsed with 70% of the industrial infrastructure destroyed. The property damage in the Soviet Union consisted of complete or partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, and 31,850 industrial establishments. Economic recovery following the war was varied in differing parts of the world, though in general it was quite positive. In Europe, West Germany, after having continued to decline economically during the first years of the Allied occupation, later experienced a seemingly miraculous recovery, and had by the end of the 1950s doubled production from its pre-war levels. Italy came out of the war in poor economic condition, but by 1950s, the Italian economy was marked by stability and high growth. The United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin after the war, and continued to experience relative economic decline for decades to follow.

France rebounded quickly, and enjoyed rapid economic growth and modernisation. (see also Monnet Plan) The Soviet Union also experienced a rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era. In Asia, Japan experienced incredibly rapid economic growth, becoming one of the most powerful economies in the world by the 1980s.

China, following the conclusion of its civil war, was essentially a bankrupt nation. By 1953, economic restoration seemed fairly successful as production had resumed pre-war levels. This growth rate mostly persisted, though it was briefly interrupted by the disastrous Great Leap Forward economic experiment. At the end of the war, the United States produced roughly half of the world's industrial output; by the early 1970s though, this dominance had lessened significantly.

See also

• Operation Jungle
• Operation Unthinkable
• Operation Paperclip
• Atlantic Charter
• Danube River Conference of 1948
• Japanese holdouts
• Post–World War II economic expansion
• 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
• Bretton Woods Agreement

Further reading

• Blum, William (1986). The CIA: A Forgotten History. London: Zed. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Cook, Bernard A (2001). Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0815340575. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Granville, Johanna (2004). The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1585442984. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Grenville, John Ashley Soames (2005). A History of the World from the 20th to the 21st Century. Routledge. ISBN 0415289548. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Iatrides (ed), John O (1981). Greece in the 1940s: A Nation in Crisis. Hanover and London: University Press of New England. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Jones, Howard (1989). A New Kind of War: America's global strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece. London: Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Laar, Mart, Tiina Ets, Tonu Parming (1992). War in the Woods: Estonia's Struggle for Survival, 1944-1956. Howells House. ISBN 0929590082. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Männik, Mart (2008). A Tangled Web: British Spy in Estonia. Tallinn: Grenader Publishing. ISBN 9789949448180. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Martin, David (1990). The Web of Disinformation: Churchill's Yugoslav Blunder. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-180704-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Naimark, Norman M. (1995). The Russians in Germany; A History of the Soviet Zone of occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-78406-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Peebles, Curtis (2005). Twilight Warriors. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1591146607. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Roberts, Geoffrey (2006). Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300112041. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sayer, Ian & Douglas Botting (1989). America's Secret Army: The Story of Counter-intelligence Corps. London: Grafton. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stevenson, William (1973). The Bormann Brotherhood. New York: Harcourt, Brace. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wettig, Gerhard (2008). Stalin and the Cold War in Europe. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0742555429. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wiesenthal, Simon (1984). SS Colonel Walter Rauff: The Church Connection 1943-1947. Los Angeles: Simon Wiesenthal Center. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• World War II aftermath and recovery in Britain