THE DEVASTATION OF EUROPE AND JAPAN
After the allies won World War II, Europe was broken and crumbling, with about forty million Europeans dead. While some of the main European cities such as Paris, Rome, and Brussels were not scarred badly by the war, London and especially Eastern Europe and Germany were in a terrible state. Despite the land and cities in these locations being in burned or in ruins, countless people were either homeless or living uncomfortably in destroyed homes and shelters, starving, thirsty, injured, sick, and largely unemployed because of mass destruction of factories during the war. There was now European guilt over the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust, so the Nazis were tried in the Nuremberg Trials, and many were found guilty. In Japan, the country was also destroyed both inside and out, and the Japanese eventually surrendered completely to the United States. General MacArthur wanted to not punish the Japanese to harshly, but in the end he felt he must demilitarize Japan, taking away all of the country's armies. From 1945 to 1952, the United States now occupied Japan, and made them a new constitution that ensured a more democratic government, unlike the old empire, With all of that done, the United States and forty-eight other countries signed an overall peace treaty with the Japanese, putting the war to an ultimate close.
Articles
Primary Sources
Videos
Maps
After the allies won World War II, Europe was broken and crumbling, with about forty million Europeans dead. While some of the main European cities such as Paris, Rome, and Brussels were not scarred badly by the war, London and especially Eastern Europe and Germany were in a terrible state. Despite the land and cities in these locations being in burned or in ruins, countless people were either homeless or living uncomfortably in destroyed homes and shelters, starving, thirsty, injured, sick, and largely unemployed because of mass destruction of factories during the war. There was now European guilt over the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust, so the Nazis were tried in the Nuremberg Trials, and many were found guilty. In Japan, the country was also destroyed both inside and out, and the Japanese eventually surrendered completely to the United States. General MacArthur wanted to not punish the Japanese to harshly, but in the end he felt he must demilitarize Japan, taking away all of the country's armies. From 1945 to 1952, the United States now occupied Japan, and made them a new constitution that ensured a more democratic government, unlike the old empire, With all of that done, the United States and forty-eight other countries signed an overall peace treaty with the Japanese, putting the war to an ultimate close.
Articles
- Rebuilding the World After the Second World War, "The capacity for destruction had been so much greater than in the earlier war that much of Europe and Asia lay in ruins." World War II left Europe and Japan broken and bloody, and this article describes all the damage the war caused, and the efforts countries took to repair this damage.
- Effect of World War II on Each Country This describes not only the damage the war caused to Europe and Japan as a whole, but to all of the specific countries in Europe individually.
- How Communism Took Over Eastern Europe After World War II This is an interview with Anne Applebaum about her book, which talks about how after World War II, there was a communist movement in eastern European countries like Poland, Eastern Germany, and Hungary. Unlike at the end of World War I when there was a surge of nationalism, the end of the second world war led to communist movements, partly because of the horrible outcome and role model Hitler proposed with his nationalist fascist ideas.
- The Nuremberg Trials "After the war, some of those responsible for crimes committed during the Holocaust were brought to trial. Nuremberg, Germany, was chosen as a site for trials that took place in 1945 and 1946. Judges from the Allied powers -- Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States -- presided over the hearings of twenty-two major Nazi criminals."
- Inside the Nazi Mind at the Nuremberg Trials is a slightly frightening and sickening article depicting how the Nazis felt when they were being tried for their genocide. What is so shocking is that all the Nazis when questioned on how they could have such little morality for the mass murder they committed, were brainwashed to think they were doing the right thing. They were made to think all minorities, like the Jews, were terrible and evil and bad to Germany's success as a country.
- Occupied Japan- A Progress Report "The ultimate objective of the Allied Powers was to foster conditions which would give the greatest possible assurance that Japan would never again become a menace to the family of nations." This article reflects on what the United States wanted to achieve with occupying Japan, and how the occupation affected everybody living in the country.
- The American Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952 This article goes deep into the "political changes", "economic changes", "changes in civic values", and the "support for change in Japan" under the US Occupation.
- Japan's Last WWII Straggler Dies at 91 "TOKYO (AP) — Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese imperial soldier to emerge from hiding in a jungle in the Philippines and surrender, 29 years after the end of World War II, has died. He was 91." This soldier who was just died never thought World War II had really ended, and would continue to fight for Japan.
- 1947 Japanese Constitution: This is a copy of the new constitution the US assigned to Japan when they began to occupy the country.
- Bringing Democracy to Japan This article is about how General MacArthur wanted the new constitution for Japan to made it more democratic, and not let the emperor be too godlike and all powerful.
Primary Sources
- Documentation of The Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jewry is a German letter delivered in secret stating all the jews and "enemies of Germany" in Lithuania that the police should target and murder.
- Henry Wallace Diary President Truman and his cabinet are discussing whether to take the Japanese up on their surrender offer.
- The Story of Hiroshima the effects of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were brutal, as seen her in this chilling accounts from the bombings themselves. "The heat was tremendous . And I felt like my body was burning all over. For my burning body the cold water of the river was as precious as the treasure."
Videos
- Survivor Dr Hiromi Hasai recalls the horror of Hiroshima: This man describes the death and destruction after the war with Japan ultimately was ended, in horrifying and heartbreaking detail.
- Germany After WWII shows what this country became after the war.
- Reconstruction of Japan After WWII describes what Japan did to try and rebuild after the war, and what the USA did to help, or really begin to occupy, the country.
Maps
Here is a map of Europe after WWII, from 1948 to 1949. The map shows the broad parties and social groups that occupied specific parts of Europe, formed from the outcomes of the war.
Source: http://admin.bhbl.neric.org/~mmosall/ushistory/topics/?142-166&Show=0&Filter=0&DisplayFormat=0
Source: http://admin.bhbl.neric.org/~mmosall/ushistory/topics/?142-166&Show=0&Filter=0&DisplayFormat=0
This map goes into detail over which country occupied different parts of Europe in the right after WW2. The Communist Bloc was extremely large and widespread, due to the surge of communist movements post-war.
Source: https://www.blogger.com/blogin.g?blogspotURL=http://mapssite.blogspot.com/2009/10/map-of-europe-post-wwii.html
Source: https://www.blogger.com/blogin.g?blogspotURL=http://mapssite.blogspot.com/2009/10/map-of-europe-post-wwii.html
Above is a map of the areas in Japan destroyed from air raids, specifically bombs from the Untied States.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan
Here is a map of US occupation in Japan from 1945 to 1952. The Black lines represent US forces in Japan.
Source: http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V1/ch14.htm
Source: http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V1/ch14.htm
This above is a map of all the European migration to other countries after World War II, because of little food, jobs, and destruction in the cities and countryside making in nearly impossible to live.
Source: http://pages.uoregon.edu/mccole/HIST303Spring2012/lecturenotes/week6class1.html
Source: http://pages.uoregon.edu/mccole/HIST303Spring2012/lecturenotes/week6class1.html