The Aftermath

World War II had finally ended, but its effects lingered. Some actually had their origin in the legacy of World War I. Others were of more recent vintage. Much of the world felt their impact, even areas that had not been directly involved in the conflict. As is the case with most wars, many of the issues that provoked hostilities were not really solved. Others were.

THE PHYSICAL COSTS OF THE WAR

World War II was the most costly conflict in history, in terms of both casualties and destructiveness as well as wealth expended. Casualty figures remain notoriously controversial, but perhaps 21 million military personnel lost their lives. Civilian deaths are even harder to pin down but may number 38 million, among them almost 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust as well as over 200,000 Roma (Gypsies).

The USSR suffered by far the most grievous losses - an estimated 10 million military and 19 million civilian dead. Germany, too, paid a high price for Hitler's ambitions - almost 5 million soldiers killed along with over a million civilians. China also suffered horribly. Estimates vary widely, but military deaths may number 2.5 million, and as many as 20 million civilians may have perished as well. Japan's military and civilian fatalities numbered about 2.5 million. France, Britain, and Italy each suffered over 400,000 deaths, including both military and civilian. Poland lost 300,000 military personnel and over 6 million civilians, including almost 3 million Jews. Yugoslavia's death toll reached 400,000 soldiers and more than a million noncombatants. As in World War I, the United States remained free of destruction, but U.S. battle losses totaled 290,000.

The war also uprooted perhaps as many as 30 million people from their homes in Europe, including those who had served as slave laborers or had survived the Nazi death and concentration camps. These unfortunate victims became known as "displaced persons" in the postwar era. In addition, the end of the war brought wholesale population shifts on a deliberate basis. Germans were the chief victims of this practice. Poland expelled 9 million of them from the territory east of the line formed by the Oder and Neisse rivers and from the southern two-thirds of East Prussia. The Poles had received these lands as compensation for the loss of eastern Poland to the USSR. Czechoslovakia also ousted the 3 million Sudeten Germans, thereby finally solving the Sudetenland question.

Total direct and indirect costs of the war in monetary terms may have reached as high as $4 trillion. Destruction was present almost everywhere in Europe as well as in North Africa. Unlike the situation after World War I, Germany had suffered extensive devastation, and all its major cities lay in ruins. If World War I had disrupted the European economy, the conflict of 1939-45 had brought it to a virtual standstill. In many countries, the industrial complex, communications network, and natural resources were in a state of desolation. Prewar patterns of trade were in total disarray, as were the financial and monetary systems. Inflation was rampant. The fighting had sharply curtailed food production, and starvation and disease stalked large areas of the continent.

In Asia, China bore the scars of eight years of conflict, and another four years of civil war lay just ahead. But, except for Burma and the Philippines, much of Southeast Asia had experienced little direct destruction since 1942. Most of the fighting had taken place on islands with small populations and primitive economies. Japan had not been so fortunate. The rain of death from the skies had destroyed large portions of its major cities.

PROSECUTING WAR CRIMINALS

The victorious Allies were determined to bring to justice the leaders who had been responsible for starting the war and the atrocities that followed. In the case of Germany, to two main culprits had escaped the ignominy of standing trial. Hitler, the man most responsible for the war and its horrors, was dead. So was Himmler, who like his Fuhrer had resorted to suicide. But many German leaders were still alive, and most of them were in Allied custody. The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and France agreed in August 1945 to establish an international military tribunal to try the most important of them.

It convened in Nuremberg, the site of the former Nazi party rallies, in November 1945 and brought forth indictments against 24 German leaders. Among the best known were Goering, Ribbentrop, Speer, Generals Keitel and Jodl, and Admirals Raeder and Donitz. They also included Alfred Rosenberg, the self-styled Nazi theoretician; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who had succeeded Heydrich as chief of the Nazi security police; and Fritz Sauckel, the head of the slave labor program. The two men who had served as Hitler's deputies were on the list as well. The first of these, Rudolf Hess, had been officially the number three man in the Nazi hierarchy until May 1941. At that time, he had crashlanded an Me 110 fighter plane on British soil in an ill-advised attempt to negotiate peace. The second, Martin Bormann, had succeeded Hess and had disappeared in Berlin after Hitler's death. It is likely that he died trying to escape to the West.

The trial lasted until October 1946 and resulted in death sentences by hanging for 11 of the defendants, including Goering, Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Keitel, and Jodl as well as Bormann in absentia. Hess and Raeder received life sentences, Speer 20 years, and Donitz 10 years. Shortly before his scheduled execution, Goering cheated the rope by biting into a cyanide capsule that he had concealed on his person. A series of trials of less important Nazi officials also took place in the various occupation zones. The most notable of these in the American zone resulted in 24 death sentences and 116 prison terms.

In Japan, another international tribunal tried 40 leaders on charges of war crimes. In November 1948 seven of them received death sentences, including former Premier Tojo, who had failed in a suicide attempt prior to his arrest. Eighteen others received prison sentences. Fumimaro Konoye, who had preceded Tojo as premier, avoided arrest by taking poison. Other trials took place in various parts of Japan's former empire. Among the most notable defendants was General Yamashita. A court in Manila found the Tiger of Malaya guilty of condoning atrocities in the Philippines and sentenced him to death in December 1945.

General Ishii and his Unit 731 colleagues, who had engaged in medical experiments on human beings, were much more fortunate. After the war Ishii made a deal with the United States that gave them immunity from prosecution in return for turning over the records of their research into American custody. U.S. officials were determined to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Soviets or Chinese Communists.

Despite the enormity of the crimes involved, the tribunals have received much criticism. Some have questioned whether international courts had any legal standing since there was no world state. They also pointed out that the defendants, despite their undoubted complicity in barbaric policies, had actually broken no existing international laws. The proceedings were, thus, a retroactive or ex post facto type, which neither the British nor the American legal system recognized. There was also the question of Allied behavior during the war. Were the Russians not guilty of aggression against Poland, the Baltic states, and Finland? Did they not commit mass murder in the shooting of the Polish officers in the Katyn Forest as well as atrocities against the population of eastern Germany? Did they not attack Japan without provocation in the last days of the war? What of the Anglo-American terror-bombing raids against Germany and the American firebombing of Japanese cities? What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Former occupied countries of Europe also took action against leaders who had collaborated with the Germans. In Norway, Quisling, the man whose name had become synonymous with treason, died before a firing squad. In France, Pierre Laval, the chief collaborator during much of the Vichy regime's existence, met a similar fate. A French court also found Marshal Petain, the World War I hero and Vichy's head of state, guilty of treason and sentenced him to death. But Charles de Gaulle, France's provisional president, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in recognition of Petain's earlier service.

POLITICAL REPERCUSSIONS

The war also transformed the power structure of the world. World War I had started this process with the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. World War II banished five other countries from the ranks of the great powers - France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and even Britain.

SOVIET INFLUENCE IN EASTERN EUROPE

U.S. AID TO WESTERN EUROPE

THE COLD WAR

THE SPREAD OF DEMOCRACY

CIVIL WAR IN CHINA

EVENTS IN KOREA LEAD TO WAR

WITHDRAWAL FROM EMPIRE

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND BEYOND