Post-WWII Years (1 янв 1945 г. – 1 янв 1960 г.)

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Many cities were in ruins and the death count was unprecedented- over 50 million. Millions were left homeless. These displaced persons (DPs) wandered around battered and broken in search of food and shelter. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration provided DP camps, housing, and clothing. Soviets who spent time in the West were unwelcome back in the USSR. Jewish DPs’ lives were destroyed and anti-Semitism made them ostracized. Many left for the new state of Israel (created in 1948) or the U.S.

Germany and Austria had been divided into four occupation zones, each governed by one of the U.S., the USSR, Great Britain, or France. The Soviets collected reparations from their zone as well as from former German allies Hungary and Romania. They also seized factories and equipment from Germany.
Almost 100,000 Germans and Austrians were convicted of war crimes, and many more were investigated or indicted. Retribution was particularly intense in central and eastern Europe. About 25,000 were executed in France and Italy. Newly established postwar government formed official courts to sanction collaborators or send them to prison. German and Austrian “denazification” procedures identified and punished former Nazis. The Nuremberg trials were an international military tribunal organized by the four Allied powers that tried the highest-ranking Nazi military and civilian leaders. Their harrowing testimonies revealed the full horror of Nazi actions.

The large numbers implicated in Nazi crimes, German opposition, and the need for stability made denazification impractical, and it was abandoned for the most part by 1948. Nazis who cooperated with the Soviet authorities would avoid prosecution, and thus many found positions in government and industry in Soviet and Western zones.

Once they lacked the common threat of Nazi Germany, the Allies became divided over ideological differences.

At a conference in Tehran in 1943, the “Big Three” of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin reaffirmed their determination to crush Germany, discussed Poland’s borders, and planned a strategy to win the war. Roosevelet agreed with Stalin that they should open a front in France, instead of Churchill's idea of moving into Germany through the Balkans. The invasion was set later than Stalin wanted, which increased his distrust, but the plan ensured they’d all come together in a defeated Germany.

The Big Three met again in February 1945 at Yalta. At that time, Soviet armies had occupied Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, part of Yugoslavia, and much of Czechoslovakia and were within a hundred miles of Berlin. American-British forces lagged behind. They agreed each of the four victorious powers would occupy a separate zone of Germany and that Germans would play heavy reparations to the Soviet Union. At American insistence, Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan after Germany’s defeat. The USSR would permanently incorporate the eastern Polish territories its army had occupied in 1939. Poland would be compensated with German lands to the west. New governments in Soviet-occupied Europe would be freely elected but “friendly” to the Soviet Union.

U.S. secretary of state George C. Marshall offered the Marshall Plan to help democratic European countries rebuild. It acted as a block against the appeal of communism. It was one of the most successful foreign aid programs in history. By its end in 1951, they had given $13 billion (now over $200 billion).

In 1949, the Soviets established the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), an economic organization of Communist states organized to rebuild the East Bloc.

The Western allies replaced the currency in their zones of Germany and Berlin to create a separate West German state, which violated the peace settlement. This and growing ties between Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands worried Stalin. In response, Stalin used access to Berlin to force the allies to bargain. He blocked all traffic through their zone to win concessions and perhaps reunify the city under Soviet control. The Western allies coordinated flights of hundreds of planes over the roadblocks to provide supplies, and after 324 days, the Berlin airlift succeeded. This paved the way for the creation of two separate German states in 1949: the Federal Republic of German (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It was divided for 41 years.

In 1949 the U.S. formed NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western governments. In 1955, West Germany joined NATO and the Soviets organized the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance among the USSR and its Communist satellites.

When the Soviet-backed Communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, Truman sent U.S. troops. The Korean War ultimately left Korea divided.

During World War II, theoretical science was combined with applied science on a massive effects, leading to developments like aircraft-detecting radar, rocketry and jet aircraft, and the atomic bomb. This formed a new model for science-Big Science. Big Science could tackle difficult problems by combining theoretical work with sophisticated engineering in a large bureaucratic organization. Much of the huge budget was spent towards developing weapons.

After World War II, the economy was in ruins. However, Europe was able to make a tremendous recovery, an “economic miracle”. American aid helped. Governments were determined to stimulate their economies, which they did with liberal democracy and Keynesian economics, a combination of government planning and free-market capitalism, nationalizing of the economy, economic regulation, and social benefit programs.

Christian Democrats offered a middle ground of the right. Across much of Europe, they defeated their left-wing competition. They championed traditional family values, democracy and liberalism, Christian values, and free-market economics.

Portugal, Spain, and Greece were authoritarian regimes that supported the East Bloc. Nationalist authoritarian regimes took hold of the Iberian peninsula in the 1930s. Greece established an authoritarian monarchy after the civil war ended in 1949. All of these governments were replaced by a democratic one in the mid-1970s.

Scandinavia and Great Britain took turns to the left. Scandinavian countries were known for their benefit programs, tolerant lifestyles and Cold War neutrality. Britain’s Labour Party offered a “cradle-to-grave” welfare state. Many industries were nationalized and the government provided free medical services, retirement pensions, and unemployment benefits.

A mutual implementation of state planning, economic growth, and democratic government inspired gradual steps towards unity. Similar financial arrangements and institutions along with American aid eased divisions and led to the Organization for European Economic Cooperation and the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe’s political consolidation upsetted many, and European federalists turned to economics as a way of working toward genuine unity. The European Coal and Steel Community closely linked nations in a transnational market for steel and coal without national tariffs and quotas. The founding nations signed the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community, or Common Market. It encouraged gradual reduction of tariffs, free-market economics, trade, global exports, and sharing resources for the modernization of national industries.

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