Events and Changes of the Postwar Era

From the war with all the bombings and land wars, Europe and Japan changed after the war. Europe after the war suffered from many things. The much of the countryside was destroyed, agriculture was disrupted,transportation system was destroyed. With agriculture being disrupted by the countryside being destroyed a famine came and many starved and as people were fighting the famine diseases started to come and cause even more death. In Europe after the bombings were done it left many people living in cellars and caves under the rubble. They had no water, electricity and very little food. The bombs destroyed the factories and the countryside leaving many people jobless and very poor.

Japan after the war was controlled by America for a bit. General Douglas MacArthur was the leading person who setup Japan after the war. He began the process of demilitarization, disbanding the Japanese armed forces, so that they could not launch an another attack on a country. He started a democratic government which is new to Japan, since they always had an Emperor as a dictator. He drew up a constitution that was like Great Britain's and it went into affect May 3, 1947. To help with the economy he made large land owners sell their land at a reasonably price which led to more land ownership and increase of participation of workers and farmers.

The Holocaust and Japanese Internment Camps

The Holocaust was Hitler's "Final Solution" plan in action. It first started with kristallnacht which is when Nazi troops started to attack Jewish homes, stores, synagogues. The next thing that led to the Holocaust was emigration, where Hitler was trying to have other countries take the Jews into their land. After awhile of emigration countries stopped taking in the Jews and closed off their borders to them. Then Hitler had no other way of getting rid of the Jews in Germany, that is when Hitler started the "Final Solution". Hitler had concentration camps and extermination camp built. The concentration were meant to capture and hold the Jews and the extermination camps were meant to kill them in mass numbers. At the end of this 11 million people were kills, 6 million of them being the Jews.

The Japanese Internment camps were started after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. March 1942 the U.S. military rounded up Nisei and other people that they felt were a threat to America and put them in internment camps. Nisei is the name given to Japanese Americans who were native born Americans citizens. Of all the people in these internment camps 2/3 of them were Nisei. These camps were not like concentration or extermination camps where they starved the people in them or killed them, they just held them there so they could not do nothing that would hurt America in the war.

Stalingrad and its Importance During the War

Stalingrad is important for many reasons in World War II. It was the capital of U.S.S.R. and their fight to defeat it showed how strong they are and this battle made Germany go into defensive mode afterwards. The Battle of Stalingrad began August 23, 1942 and Germany surrendered February 2, 1943. Germany controlled 90 percent of it during the battle for it. As the battle went on and Germany kept bombing it and destroying more of it the Soviets kept defending it. So, when Germany surrendered from the Battle of Stalingrad it was the end of their military advancements on other countries. Germany managed to destroy 99 percent of the city and kill over 1,000,000 Soviets as they lose around 240,000 Germans. For the U.S.S.R. this showed how they can defeat the Germans and how strong they were.

The U.S. involvement and Dropping the Atomic Bombs

The development of atomic bombs was created in the Manhattan Project, which was a project to create a bomb that could deal a lot of damage. It later would become known as the atomic bomb. The project was led by General Leslie Groves and chief scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. President Truman was not sure of what the damage these bombs could make deal. The reason he decided to use them was that was informed by one of his advisers that if America invaded Japan that the Allies would most likely loose over 500,000 lives. So, Truman warned Japan that if they do not surrender they could expect a "rain of ruin from the air". Japan did not surrender and Truman launched the missiles. These missiles killed over 100,000 people on impact and more later from radiation poison. Also these missiles leveled cities and town and turned them into a wasteland.

Germany as a Military State

In World War II Germany developed a new style of attack that they would use against their enemies and they called this blitzkrieg, which meant light war in German. With blitzkrieg the Germans would use fast moving airplanes and tanks which were followed up by massive infantry forces. The first time they used this was in the invasion of Poland and it was successful as they took over Poland. Another big key in Germany's military was their air force. Germany's air force was called the Luftwaffe which meant air weapon in German. The Luftwaffe first focused on Great Britain's airfields and factories. Then they started to focus on Great Britain cities, especially London. With day time bombings not being very effective the Luftwaffe switched to night bombings.