Transcript World War II and its aftermath

World War II and its aftermath:
The postwar world
Europe at war’s end
• Devastation and destruction
• Disruption of normal economic life
• Large numbers of displaced persons
• General sense of exhaustion
• Hunger
• Indebtedness of most countries
Map
Contrasts to the post-World War I
Period
• More planning and forethought
• Deliberate effort to avoid the mistakes of
the failed peace and the interwar period
• Very different outcome
– Domestic peace
– Following reconstruction, unprecedented
prosperity and economic growth (in western
Europe)
Factors shaping the peace:
• New elán: desire for something different
among policy-makers, resistance
movements
• Wartime planning
• Altered power relationships
– Economic and political strength of the US
• Weakness of former European powers
– Strength and physical presence of the Soviet
Union
Wartime planning
• Ongoing negotiations among US, Britain, USSR
– summit negotiations
– Tehran (1943)
– Yalta (1945)
– Potsdam (1945)
• Agreements about
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Disposition of territory
Occupation of Germany
Punishment of war criminals
New international structures
• Disagreement about re-establishment of
governments in occupied countries
Creating International structures
• United Nations established (San Francisco
conference, 1945)
• International economic order (Bretton Woods
Conference, 1943)
– New currency system– stable exchange rates with
currencies valued against US Dollar and British
Pound (Bretton Woods system)
– World bank
– International Monetary Fund
– GATT – General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(forerunner of WTO)
Reconstituting governments
• In Western Europe
– Previous regimes re-established, elections held (e.g.,
Netherlands, Denmark, Norway..)
Or
– Constituent assemblies elected and new regimes established
(France, Italy)
Initial shift to the left as anti-fascist coalitions assume power
– tripartite coalitions with Communists, Socialists, others in
France and Italy
• Eastern Europe
– Governments with strong Communist presence put in place
• Civil war in certain areas
– Greece
Dealing with Germany
• Agreement on four power occupation of
Germany and Berlin
• Agreement on trials of war criminals (Nuremberg
trials)
• Grudging agreement on reparations for USSR –
in goods
• Territorial changes
– Minor border changes in west
– Major shifts in the east: Poland shifted west, gaining
territory from Germany, ceding territory to Russia
The cold war and the German question
• Wartime thinking:
– Return Germany to earlier agrarian state
• Postwar: keep Germany as an economic unit
• 1946-1948:
– Growing disagreements between the United States & its allies
and USSR
• Atomic weapons, inspections
• Amount of reparations
• Government of occupied territory
– British and American, then French, zones brought under
common administration
– Increasing tension between west and USSR Map
Berlin blockade
• June 1948: road and rail access to Berlin
blocked
• US and allies launch Berlin airlift, maintain
through May 1949
• 3 western zones brought together as the Federal
Republic of Germany
• Soviet zone re-constituted as the German
Democratic Republic
Map
• Europe increasingly divided
Rebuilding Europe
• From 1945, severe economic dislocations
• Recovery stalled by liquidity crisis – lack of
foreign exchange
• Realization that political and economic stability
linked
• Marshall Plan (1947)
– For US Sec. of State, George Marshall
– US supplies credits for purchase of American goods
– Offered to both western and eastern European
countries
Organizing Western Europe
Postwar efforts to build transnational and
international structures
• Council of Europe
• Benelux
• Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) as vehicle for Marshall
Plan aid (initially OEEC)
• European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC,
fore-runner of EU)
• NATO
The new Europe
• US actively involved, engaged
• Governments actively involved in the management of
their economies
• With Marshall Plan Aid, currency reforms most European
economies recover
– Steady economic growth through 1950s
– By late 1950s, 1960s many countries approaching full
employment
– Older conflicts ease – cf. class tensions
• Cold war imposes political stability in both east and west