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1940s

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"'40s" redirects here. For decades comprising years 40–49 of other centuries, see List of decades.
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The 1940s was the decade that started on January 1, 1940 and ended on December 31, 1949.

The Second World War took place in the first half of the decade, which had a profound effect on most countries and people in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. The consequences of the war lingered well into the second half of the decade, with a war weary Europe divided between the jostling spheres of influence of the West and the Soviet Union. To some degree internal and external tensions in the post-war era were managed by new institutions, including the United Nations, the welfare state and the Bretton Woods system, providing to the post-World War II boom which lasted well into the 1970s. However the conditions of the post-war world encouraged decolonialisation and emergence of new states and governments, with India, Pakistan, Israel, Vietnam and others declaring independence, rarely without bloodshed. The decade also saw the early beginnings of new technologies (including computers, nuclear power and jet propulsion), often first developed in tandem with the war effort, and later adapted and improved upon in the post-war era.

Wars and Conflicts

Wars

File:Infobox image for WWII.png
World War II, images of different aspects of the major event (the war) of the 1940s. From top left: Marching German police during Anschluss, emaciated Jews in a concentration camp, Battle of Stalingrad, Capture of Berlin by Soviets, Japanese troops in China, Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945
  • 1948 Arab–Israeli War (1948 - 1949) - The war was fought between the newly declared State of Israel and its Arab neighbours. The war commenced upon the termination of the British Mandate of Palestine in mid-May 1948. After the Arab rejection of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (UN General Assembly Resolution 181) that would have created an Arab state and a Jewish state side by side, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria attacked the state of Israel. In its conclusion, Israel managed to defeat the Arab armies.

Major political changes

  • Establishment of the United Nations Charter (June 26, 1945) effective (October 24, 1945)
  • Establishment of the defense alliance NATO April 4, 1949.

Internal conflicts

Decolonization and Independence

David Ben-Gurion proclaiming Israeli independence from the United Kingdom on May 14, 1948

Economics

Science and Technology

Technology

ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer.

Science

File:Kon-Tiki.jpg
Kon-Tiki, 1947

Popular Culture

Film

Main article: 1940s in film
Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane in "Citizen Kane" (1941)
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946)

Although the 1940s was a decade dominated by World War II important and noteworthy films about a wide variety of subjects were made during that era. Hollywood was instrumental in producing dozens of classic films during the 1940s, several of which were about the war and some are on most lists of all-time great films. European cinema survived although obviously curtailed during wartime and yet many films of high quality were made in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Europe. The Cinema of Japan also survived. Akira Kurosawa and other directors managed to produce significant films during the 40s.

In France during the war the tour de force Children of Paradise directed by Marcel Carné 1945, was shot in Nazi occupied Paris.[5][6][7] Memorable films from Post-war England include David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949), and Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1946) and The Red Shoes (1948), Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, the first non-American film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture and Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) directed by Robert Hamer. Italian neorealism of the 1940s produced poignant movies made in post-war Italy. Roma, città aperta directed by Roberto Rossellini 1945, Sciuscià directed by Vittorio De Sica 1946, Paisà directed by Roberto Rossellini 1946, La terra trema directed by Luchino Visconti 1948, The Bicycle Thief directed by Vittorio De Sica 1948, and Bitter Rice directed by Giuseppe De Santis 1949, are some well-known examples.

In Japanese cinema The 47 Ronin is a 1941 black and white two-part Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail 1945, and the post-war Drunken Angel 1948, and Stray Dog 1949, directed by Akira Kurosawa are considered important early works leading to his first masterpieces of the 1950s. Drunken Angel 1948, marked the beginning of the successful collaboration between Kurosawa and actor Toshirō Mifune that lasted until 1965.

Music

See also: Timeline of musical events § 1940s
  • The most popular music style during the 1940s was the swing which prevailed during the World War II.

Literature

Sports

During the 1940s Sporting events were disrupted and changed by the events that engaged and shaped the entire world. During World War II in the United States Heavyweight Boxing Champion Joe Louis and numerous stars and performers from American baseball and other sports served in the armed forces until the end of the war. Among the baseball players (including well known stars) who served during World War II were Moe Berg, Joe Dimaggio, Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg, and Ted Williams. They like many others sacrificed their personal and valuable career time for the benefit and well being of the rest of society.

Fashion

See also: 1930–1945 in fashion and 1945–1960 in fashion

People

World leaders

Adolf Hitler during the 1940s
Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin in the Yalta Conference, February 1945

Military leaders

Erwin Rommel, German Field Marshal who lead the North African Campaign.

Activists and religious leaders

See also: List of individuals and groups assisting Jews during the Holocaust and Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
Mohandas Gandhi during the 1940s

Entertainers

Musicians

Sports figures

Baseball

See also: History of baseball in the United States § The war years, and All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Ted Williams being sworn into the military on May 22, 1942.

Boxing

File:Poster-Joe-Louis.jpg
World War II recruiting poster featuring Louis
See also: Ring Magazine fighters of the year and List of The Ring world champions

References

  1. ^ "Holocaust," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2009: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question ..."
  2. ^ Niewyk, Donald L. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, p.45: "The Holocaust is commonly defined as the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II." Also see "The Holocaust", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007: "the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this "the final solution to the Jewish question".
  3. ^ Niewyk, Donald L. and Nicosia, Francis R. The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, pp. 45–52.
  4. ^ Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths, would produce a death toll of 17 million. [1] Estimates of the death toll of non-Jewish victims vary by millions, partly because the boundary between death by persecution and death by starvation and other means in a context of total war is unclear. Overall, about 5.7 million (78 percent) of the 7.3 million Jews in occupied Europe perished (Gilbert, Martin. Atlas of the Holocaust 1988, pp. 242–244). Compared to five to 11 million (1.4 percent to 3.0 percent) of the 360 million non-Jews in German-dominated Europe. Small, Melvin and J. David Singer. Resort to Arms: International and civil Wars 1816-1980 and Berenbaum, Michael. A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis. New York: New York University Press, 1990
  5. ^ DeWitt Bodeen, Les Enfants du Paradis, filmreference.com
  6. ^ [2] Gio MacDonald, Edinburgh University Film Society program notes, 1994-95
  7. ^ Quoted by Roger Ebert, Children of Pardise, Chicago Sun-Times, 6 January 2002 review oif the Criterion DVD release

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 1940s.
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