World War II

1
World War II

• The Impact of Total War

2
Economic Damage Western Europe

• Impact of Strategic Bombing
• 75 of Berlin Uninhabitable
• 20 million homeless in Germany
• Dutch lose 219,000 hectares of land
• French lose 40 of pre-war transportation systems
• Norway lost 14 pre-war capital

Dresden After Allied Bombing
3
Economic Damage Eastern Europe

• Poland
• 3/4 RR track
• 1/6 farms
• City of Warsaw leveled
• Yugoslavia
• 25 of vineyards
• 50 livestock
• 60 of roads
• 75 of RR bridges
• 1/5 of all dwellings
• 1/3 of industry

• USSR
• 70,000 villages 1,700 towns
• 32,000 factories
• 40,000 miles of RR track
• Greece
• 1/3 of forest
• 2/3 merchant marine
• Hyperinflation from German extraction of cost of
  occupation

4
The Human Cost

• 36½ million Europeans die!

Deadliest and Most Destructive Conflict in Human
History
5
Military Deaths
COUNTRY MILITARY DEATHS
USSR 8.6 million
Germany 4 million
Italy 400,000
Rumania 300,000
United States 405,399
China 2.2 million
Japan 1.7 million
D-Day Invasion
6
Civilian Deaths
COUNTRY CIVILIAN DEATHS
Japan 500,000
China 15-20 million
USSR 16 million
Poland 5 million
Yugoslavia 1.4 million
Greece 430,000
France 350,000
Hungary 270,000
Netherlands 204,000
Rumania 200,000
ALL EUROPE 19 million
7
Proportion of Pre-War Population Lost
COUNTRY PROPORTION OF POP LOST
Poland 1/5
Yugoslavia 1/8
USSR 1/11
Greece 1/14
Germany 1/15
France 1/77
Britain 1/25
8
Demographic Change

• Gender Imbalance
• USSR 20 million more women than men
• Germany 2/3 of men born in 1918 did not live to
  see 1945
• Yugoslavia All men in entire villages wiped out
• Orphans
• Yugoslavia 300,000
• Poland 200,000
• Netherlands 60,000
• Czechoslovakia 49,000

Belgian Refugees
9
Ethnic Cleansing

• Germans exterminate
• Jews, Gypsies, Slavs Homosexuals, Jehovah's
  Witnesses, Communists
• Red Army Rapes Pillages
• 87,000 women in Vienna raped in 3 weeks following
  occupation
• 150-200,000 Russian babies born to German women
  1945-1946
• Displaced Persons
• Refugees
• Allies force migration of ethnic minorities

The Red Army Seizes Berlin (35,000 Soviets die in
this battle alone!)
10
The Impossible Peace

• Three Big Questions
• What will Eastern Europe look like?
• What to do with Germany?
• What form will post-war international relations
  take?

11
Allied Summits

• Casablanca January 1943
• Allies Agree to Call for Germanys Unconditional
  Surrender
• Teheran December 1943
• Allies agree to divide Germany
• Border between Poland the USSR will move to the
  west
• USSR to have access to Baltic Sea
• Moscow October 1944 (Stalin Churchill only, no
  FDR)
• Secret Deal Churchill Stalin agree on
  percentages of influence in Eastern Europe
• Not too significant ratified the inevitable
• Only Balkans were up for grabs both agreed to
  5050 split

12
Eastern Europe

• Soviet troops physically occupied E. Europe at
  end of WWII.
• USSR viewed E. Europe as essential to its
  security It wanted a sphere of influence.

13
Yalta(February, 1945)

• Declaration of Liberated Europe Promise to
  form representative gov.s, facilitate elections,
  etc.
• U.S. GB formally accept Soviet domination of
  Eastern Europe
• Left out issue of Germany b/c it was so divisive
• Did FDR sell out?

The Big Three at Yalta
14
The Iron Curtain

• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
  Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across
  the Continent. Behind that line lie all the
  capitals of the ancient states of Central and
  Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna,
  Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all
  these famous cities and the populations around
  them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere,
  and all are subject in one form or another, not
  only to Soviet influence but to a very high and,
  in many cases, increasing measure of control from
  Moscow.
• -Winston Churchill, March 5, 1946

15
The German Question

• Plan A The Morgenthau Plan
• Plan for the Leveling of the Post-War Economy
  March 1946 Strictly limited German Industry,
  de-Nazification, abolished army
• It is of the utmost importance that every person
  
• know, that this time, Germany is a defeated
• nation.
• -Henry Morgenthau, Jr. U.S. Sec. of
  Treasury
• Plan B
• Re-build Germany so it can become a
  self-supporting ally.
• You can have peace, or you can have vengeance,
  but you cant have both.
  -Herbert Hoover to Harry Truman

16
PotsdamJuly 17-August 2, 1945

• Nullified German annexations including Austria
• Statement of Occupation Aims
• Prosecution of war criminals
• Expelled Germans living outside of new Germany
• Germany to pay reparations
• Division of Germany, Austria their capitals
  into 4 zones
• Potsdam Declaration Unconditional Surrender in
  Japan
• German question to be decided at final peace
  conference, which never occurs.

Atlee Truman Stalin
(GB) (USA) (USSR)
17
Divided by Default

• US came to favor a unified Germany w/
  reconstructed economy.
• USSR still saw a restored Germany as a major
  threat.
• Britain, France, USA merged zones to form West
  Germany (May, 1949).
• USSR established East Germany as a satellite
  state (Oct. 1949).

Divided Berlin
East Germany
West Germany
18
Postwar International Cooperation

1. War Crimes Trials in Germany, Japan, Italy
2. The United Nations
3. The Bretton Woods Accords

19
The Nuremburg Trials

• First known war crimes trial.
• Originally tried 24 Germans for crimes against
  humanity.
• No clear legal precedent.

• Most suspects claimed the court had no
  jurisdiction Claimed it was victors justice
• 12 sentenced to death, 9 jailed, 3 acquitted
• In all, about 1800 Germans tried after WWII

20
The United Nations

• UN founded Oct. 1945
• Security Council
• Five permanent members w/ vetoes
• United States, Great Britain, France, USSR
  China
• General Assembly
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Truman Addresses the UN Conference (1945)
21
The Bretton Woods Accords(July 1944)

• Defined structure of postwar international
  finance trade.
• Created
• -International Monetary Fund (IMF)
• -World Bank
• -General Agreement on Tariffs Trade (precursor
  to World Trade Organization)