["THE ALLIES INVADE THE REICH The instinct to push on to Berlin was any effective resistance to be mounted. faith the F\u00fchrer placed in the potential strong, but the need for consolidation Many German troops had been became clear. There were signs that withdrawn to the Eastern Front; those of the Volkssturm (\u201cPeople\u2019s Storm\u201d) German forces were regrouping in who remained were concentrated in Pomerania. Meanwhile, \ufb01erce \ufb01ghting the Ruhr. An encircling movement was militia, which he had established in was still raging in Hungary, despite soon under way to trap them there. the capture of Budapest in January. While Montgomery\u2019s British Second September 1944? All males between Army spearheaded the attack from the north, crossing the Rhine around Rees the ages of 16 and 60 had to join. They and Wesel, Omar Bradley\u2019s American 12th Army Group crossed the river at were to bring their own clothes, blanket, Remagen to the south. By April 3 an entire German army group had been backpack, and cooking utensils. In trapped in the so-called Ruhr pocket. other circumstances, perhaps, a stirring Only heroism would help the German Isolated and encircled homeland now; an epic struggle on a vision, but ordinary legendary scale\u2014the stuff of myth and February had seen the Western dream, in other words. What else but Germans had seen Allies crossing Germany\u2019s frontier and extravagant fantasy could explain the advancing rapidly toward the Rhine\u2014 through their slowly at \ufb01rst but then too quickly for leader\u2019s promises by now; braced for defeat, they Closing the ring Crossing the Rhine dismissed the From January 1945 there were only defeats left for Under the cover of artificial fog an amphibious DUKW the German armed forces. Tough resistance continued (pronounced \u201cDuck\u201d) sets off across the Rhine. Carrying last-stand rhetoric everywhere along the Eastern Front but by March most troops of the US Seventh Army, it is part of Sixth Army German forces in the West were preparing for surrender. Group involved in the advance into southern Germany. of the regime with sullen cynicism. But they still had to serve in the forces\u2014 rounded up at 5 Jan 22 L AT VIA gunpoint by the Front-line Frankfurt Riga Germans evacuate ARMY GROUP Gestapo\u2014and A Nazi poster declares that Memel NORTH (KURLAND) 2ND BALTIC FRONT SWEDEN so the Volkssturm the city of Frankfurt an der did indeed take Oder\u2014now in the front c to the \ufb01eld. Never line\u2014will be held by the Sea Balti LITHUANIA properly equipped, heroic efforts of the German Memel armed, or trained, 1ST BALTIC FRONT the Volkssturm still saw military action DENMARK ARMY GROUP bq Mar 30 CENTRE (NORTH) against some of the most seasoned, Soviet forces K\u00f6nigsberg 3RD BYELORUSSIAN battle-hardened Allied troops. Over North Sea capture Danzig Gdynia E A ST FRONT 175,000 of the Volkssturm\u2019s soldiers 7 Feb 8 Kolberg Danzig P R U S S I A 2 Jan 13 were killed in all. The call-up continued, Canadians and ARMY GROUP POMERANIA Soviets begin advance ever more frantic as the weeks went into East Prussia British launch Operation Veritable bp Mar 23\u201324 Hamburg VISTULA Torun 2ND BYELORUSSIAN on, gathering up younger boys\u2014and, Stettin FRONT 21st Army Group begins Elbe eventually, even girls. 4 Jan 17 N E T H . to cross the Rhine Vistula Warsaw falls to Soviets Amsterdam Arnhem G E R M A N Y Berlin K\u00fcstrin Poznan Warsaw 1ST BYELORUSSIAN Nijmegen 1ST PARA ARMY Oder FRONT AFTER Rotterdam CANADIAN 1ST ARMY Emmerich bk Mar 2 Frankfurt an POLAND 1 Jan 12, 1945 Wesel der Oder BRITISH 2ND ARMY US troops reach the Rhine Lodz Soviets launch near D\u00fcsseldorf B E L . Roermond D\u00fcsseldorf 15TH ARMY Dresden Breslau Baranow o\ufb00ensive in Poland The defeat of Germany was all but Cologne SILESIA assured\u2014though many more lives were yet Brussels Aachen Bonn 5TH ARMY ARMY GROUP 1ST UKRAINIAN to be lost before victory could be declared. A (CENTRE) FRONT 3 Jan 16 US 9TH ARMY Remagen GERMAN PRISONERS Along with catastrophic casualties, numerous British launch Operation US 1ST ARMY bm Mar 7 9 Feb 13\/14 Cracow Dniester German soldiers were taken prisoner in the last months of the war. Many were to spend months, Blackcock to clear US 3RD ARMY Coblenz Frankfurt US troops cross the Rhine at Prague British and Americans Carpathians Roermond triangle Oppenheim Remagen. By the 21st they 300 THOUSAND German troops US 7TH ARMY L U X . were captured by the Allies have established a 19-km bomb Dresden in the \u201cRuhr Pocket.\u201d bo Mar 22 Mannheim (12-mile) bridgehead SLOVAKIA 4TH UKRAINIAN 2 MILLION Germans were ARMY GROUP FRONT taken in the Soviet advances Troops of Patton\u2019s 3rd Moselle Germersheim Danube SOUTH of 1944\u201345. Army cross the Rhine Strasbourg 1ST ARMY 2ND UKRAINIAN 8 Feb 13 even years, in captivity\u2014sometimes in the concentration camps that their own country FRENCH 1ST ARMY bl Mar 5 FRONT Soviet forces had created; of those in Soviet hands, thousands Germans launch Spring of soldiers simply disappeared 334\u201335 gg. 19TH ARMY br Mar 31 Awakening o\ufb00ensive Vienna take Budapest Colmar RESIGNED TO DEFEAT French cross Despite Hitler\u2019s desperate exhortations, the Rhine Budapest enemy advance convinced the German people 6 Feb 5 the Rhine at Lake 3RD UKRAINIAN bn Mar 15 that the war was over. They ignored their leader\u2019s Basel Germersheim Balaton demented de\ufb01ance and prepared to face the Allies clear Spring Awakening is halted consequences of defeat 338\u201339 gg.\u0001 Colmar pocket AUSTRIA FRONT by Soviet counterattacks SWITZERLAND FRANCE Alps HUNGARY ARMY GROUP E Drava Trieste Zagreb Milan Venice ARMY GROUP F Po I TA LY Belgrade Genoa Bologna 10TH ARMY YUGOSLAVIA Ravenna 14TH ARMY Adr US 5TH ARMY BRITISH iatic 8TH ARMY N Sea 299","","LI B ER ATI NG TH E DEATH C AM P S Liberating the AFTER Nazi Death Camps For millions of victims, there was to be no The opening-up of the Nazi concentration camps has come to seem a defining event of World War II; \u201cafter,\u201d but their liberators gave what help those who saw these dreadful sights would never be the same again. But life went on in the midst of they could. They also made efforts to bring death: Germany had still to be defeated and Hitler and his henchmen punished for their crimes. their Nazi persecutors to justice. PUNISHING THE GUILTY I n July 1944 Soviet troops had evacuated camps lying in the invaders\u2019 designed to hold no more than about Only much later would the Shoah (in Hebrew, entered an abandoned installation way. Already weakened by months and 2,000. No adequate attempt had been \u201cThe Calamity\u201d) come into clear focus as a at Majdanek in Poland and found years of abuse and malnutrition, inmates made to feed the prisoners, who had single historical event, the Holocaust (literally evidence of Hitler\u2019s \u201cFinal Solution.\u201d had been forced into gruelling journeys wasted away through sheer \u201csacri\ufb01cial burning\u201d). Yet it was already obvious Everywhere they looked there were on foot\u2014many thousands more would starvation\u2014some resorted to that massive, monstrous crimes had been bodies. The Germans had been well committed. They were to \ufb01gure prominently aware just how vile their deeds had \u201c Their legs and arms were sticks with in the case brought against the leading Nazis been: they had started dismantling huge bulging joints, and their loins at the Nuremberg Trials gg 338\u201339. Various their gas chambers before being forced were fouled by their own excrement.\u201d to \ufb02ee by the Allied advance. JOSEF KRAMER (LEFT), COMMANDANT OF NEW YORK TIMES CORRESPONDENT, PERCY KNAUTH, ON BUCHENWALD\u2019S INMATES, APRIL 1945. BELSEN, BEFORE HIS EXECUTION IN 1945 To try to hide what they had done and to prevent their inmates from falling concentration and extermination camp guards into Allied hands, the Germans had and commandants were also tried and convicted for their crimes. Many leading Nazis escaped Disbelief not survive new brutalities on these cannibalism. Nor was there any justice, however, either \ufb02eeing to sympathetic US troops and inmates at Buchenwald talk after the countries like Argentina or simply through not liberation of the camp on April 11, 1945. The inmates\u2019 horrendous \u201cdeath marches.\u201d By 1945, sanitation to speak of. The \ufb02oors of the being pursued vigorously enough by the Allies. expressions show that, after such a nightmare, they can A NEW NATION hardly believe that relief has come at last. however, the German war machine inmates\u2019 huts had become latrines. In Ultimately, the Holocaust was far-reaching in its e\ufb00ects, giving new and crucial impetus to the BEFORE was imploding. There simply was not such conditions, typhus had taken hold Zionist project. Campaigners had been calling for a Jewish homeland in Palestine since the late The death camps had been a central part the time to cover up their horri\ufb01c and was spreading fast. One British 19th century, and the British had gone some way of Hitler\u2019s police state. Now they became toward meeting that aspiration with the Balfour a damning piece of evidence, revealing crimes effectively. At Auschwitz there of\ufb01cer wrote that the inmates of Belsen Declaration of 1917. Now change in the region the full extent of Nazi evil. was unstoppable: the state of Israel was were still more than 2,189 people were freed were \u201clittle more proclaimed in 1948 gg 344\u201345. RACIAL MISSION 2,000 prisoners from Auschwitz. From the beginning, Hitler had claimed to be left to report what than living skeletons 301 \ufb01ghting for the cause of the Aryan race and had happened. with haggard yellow resisting the \u201cJewish international world And with them conspiracy\u201d ff 26\u201327. One of the main goals 836,255 women\u2019s coats faces.\u201d Many were were found there. on the edge of NAZI EAGLE FROM a few remaining survival: in the next A BELSEN TRAIN warehouses full 6 tons of human hair were found few weeks 500 of clothes, carpets, stored in bales in warehouses. people a day died. of the Nazi regime was to wipe out Europe\u2019s Jews and other \u201cundesirable elements\u201d so that spectacles, arti\ufb01cial limbs, and more \u201cThere were men and women lying in only a \u201csuperior\u201d Aryan race remained. that imparted their own account of a heaps on both sides of the track,\u201d he Hitler\u2019s answer was the concentration camp and the \ufb01rst one was established within days of crime beyond comprehension. recalled. \u201cOthers were walking slowly his coming to power. The early camps treated their prisoners brutally and it mattered little A vision of hell and aimlessly about\u2014a vacant to the Nazis if they lived or died. But from 1941 expression on their starved faces.\u201d new camps whose sole aim was mass murder were established ff 176\u201377. In April 1945 soldiers of the US Third Army came upon Ohrdruf, part of the Buchenwald complex. Over a quarter of a million prisoners had passed through Buchenwald since it opened in 1937\u2014not just Jews, but Roma, Communists, male homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped, and \u201casocials.\u201d Some 20,000 emaciated inmates were still there. \u201cThey looked no more than ghosts,\u201d one witness wrote. In the days that followed more death camps were freed, all telling the same tale of horror. The British 11th Armored Division found 60,000 emaciated inmates at Bergen-Belsen, crammed into a camp Punishment detail Women guards are set to work piling the bodies of the dead into mass graves at Bergen-Belsen. Typhus was rife in the squalid conditions of the liberated camps, and thousands of \u201csurvivors\u201d died.","EYEWITNESS April 17, 1945 Discovery of Belsen The British 11th Armoured Division entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945. Not knowing what to expect, they were met by horrific scenes\u2014unburied corpses, mass graves, and nearly 40,000 \u201cliving skeletons,\u201d emaciated men, women, and children who were all starving to death. Typhus had broken out among the camp survivors, and there was no sanitation. \u201c\u2026 beyond the barrier was a swirling cloud of dust ... And with the dust was a smell, sickly and thick, the smell of death and decay \u2026 I passed through the barrier and found myself in the world of nightmare. Dead bodies \u2026 lay strewn about the road and along the rutted track. On each side of the road were brown wooden huts. There were faces at the windows, the bony emaciated faces of starving women, too weak to come outside \u2026 I have seen many terrible sights in the last five years, but nothing, nothing approaching the dreadful interior of this hut in Belsen \u2026 The dead and the dying lay close together. I picked my way over corpse after corpse \u2026 until I heard one voice that rose above the gentle undulating moaning. I found a girl. She was a living skeleton. Impossible to gauge her age because she had practically no hair left on her head and her face was only a yellow parchment sheet with two holes in it for eyes \u2026 beyond her \u2026 there were the convulsive movements of dying people too weak to raise themselves from the floor \u2026 In the shade of some trees lay a great collection of bodies \u2026 There were perhaps 150, flung down on each other, all naked, all so thin their yellow skin glistened like rubber on their bones. Some of the poor starved creatures looked utterly unreal and inhuman \u2026 \u2026 One woman, distraught to the point of madness, flung herself at a British soldier \u2026 She begged him to give her some milk for the tiny baby she held in her arms \u2026. she put the baby in his arms and ran off crying \u2026 when the soldier opened the bundle of rags to look at the child he found it had been dead for days \u2026 \u2026 Women stood naked at the side of the track, washing in cupfuls of water taken from the British Army water trucks. Others squatted while they searched themselves for lice \u2026 Sufferers from dysentery leaned against the huts straining helplessly, and all around was this awful drifting tide of \u201dexhausted people, neither caring nor watching \u2026 BBC REPORTER RICHARD DIMBLEBY, DESPATCH FROM BELSEN APRIL 17, 1945. A HEAVILY EDITED VERSION WAS BROADCAST ON APRIL 19, 1945. Shocking images To prevent the spread of typhus among survivors at Belsen, the British were forced to bury bodies in mass graves. Images such as these were relayed around the world, as proof of events at the concentration camps. 302","","ENDGAME 1945 BEFORE Final O\ufb00ensives in Europe The Russians had paused in their headlong German forces fought with the frenzy of cornered beasts, driven to acts of heroic resistance, if not by drive to Berlin. The Western Allies too had Nazi fanaticism or patriotic fervor then by desperation. But the certainty of victory did not make things taken time out to ensure that their \ufb02anks any easier for the Allied invaders, who often had to battle for every yard of conquered ground. were covered. W ith the Rhine behind them, Marching to the Brandenburg Gate the city: by April 14 there were SOVIET ADVANCES the Western Allies were in a \u201cRaise the Banner of Victory in Berlin!\u201d urged this 1.4 million men and many thousands By March the Vistula\u2013Oder Offensive had position to push on to Berlin. propaganda poster by Viktor Ivanov. By the beginning of heavy weapons. Marshal Zhukov, proved spectacularly successful, bringing the Field Marshal Montgomery urged an of May 1945, his countrymen were able to do just that. commander of the First Byelorussian Red Army within striking distance of Berlin immediate dash for the Nazi capital. Front, launched his assault from the ff 298\u201399. Some had wanted to push on and However, Allied Supreme Commander British force across northern Germany banks of the Oder on April 16. But, take the German capital, but instead Stalin had Eisenhower hesitated. Rumors were rife to protect the Americans\u2019 \ufb02ank\u2014and to despite their overwhelming strength, instructed his armies to clear the Germans out that the Nazi leadership was planning discourage the Russians from going into progress was slow and painful\u2014and of Pomerania on the \ufb02anks of the advance. to retreat to the Bavarian uplands and Denmark. For, if there was suspicion extremely costly in casualties. Marshal the \u201cAlpine Fortress\u201d from which a among the western Allies, the fear of Ivan Konev\u2019s First Ukrainian Front fared AUSTRIA FALLS rearguard action might be mounted. Soviet intentions had never gone away better\u2014crossing the Neisse River, his Further to the south, Russian and American On Eisenhower\u2019s orders, then, the entirely. This mistrust was returning armies thrust north and west to come forces converged on Vienna. Its fall to the Seventh Army struck out southward with a vengeance now that the war toward the German capital from the Soviets, at the end of March sent a shockwave through the Black Forest into Bavaria. was all but won. south. Stirred up by Stalin, the rivalry through the Reich. Since the Anschluss\u2014greeted Bradley led the First and Third Armies between the Russian generals was just with such enthusiasm in 1938 ff 42-43\u2014 in a direct assault on central Germany The race for Berlin as \ufb01erce as that between their Western Austria had o\ufb03cially been a part of Germany. south of the Ruhr, with Patton\u2019s Third counterparts: both Zhukov and Konev Army then sent east toward The Russians had already spent several were desperate to take Berlin. ANSCHLUSS ACCLAIMED IN THE REICHSTAG Czechoslovakia. weeks consolidating their position in the East. By the beginning of April they This may have had an impact on their Meeting at the Elbe Hard feelings were ready to renew their advance on handling of the attack. Though Zhukov Members of the US First Army meet Russian troops on Berlin. Infantry, tanks, and artillery proceeded cautiously, Konev\u2019s advance the banks of the River Elbe at Torgau on April 25, 1945. There was rivalry between the Allied were massed in an arc to the east of was practically a charge. After breaking Suspicion would soon set in between the Allies but, nations\u2014not to mention distrust \ufb01erce resistance in the \ufb01rst few days, for the moment, after years of fighting, the among their commanders, the clash the way to Berlin opened up before mood was of shared relief and joy. of egos continuing even under the him, and on April 19 and 20 his tanks thickest \ufb01re. Eisenhower had no wish covered 30 miles a day, making no to gratify Montgomery\u2019s desire for attempt to secure the territory they were glory. Instead, Montgomery was crossing. In his haste, Konev ended up directed to lead his Canadian and tangling with the tanks of Lieutenant- General Vasily Chuikov, once the defender of Stalingrad, and now commander of 8th Guards Army, sent south by Zhukov into Berlin\u2019s suburbs. The last stand If Russian tactics were erratic, this was nothing to the total disarray now being seen throughout the German Army. General Heinrici had saved his army group only by beating a hasty retreat from the Oder. Even so, Busse and his Ninth Army had been encircled in the woodland south of the city; Wenck\u2019s 0T 3E CBHONXO TL OI TGLYE 7 P T \/ 1 0 P T automatic mode; set to \ufb01re selectively its 7.92 mm (79.2 cm) round was accurate STURMGEWEHR 44 RIFLE to 320 yds (300 m). This was more than adequate in most combat situations, In the early part of World War II, soldiers\u2019 especially in any urban battle like those of main personal weapons were either ri\ufb02es 1945. Later assault ri\ufb02es, like the AK47 or submachine guns. Ri\ufb02es \ufb01red an Kalashnikov, were modeled on the StG 44. accurate and powerful long-range round at a low rate of \ufb01re; submachine guns had a high rate of \ufb01re but poor accuracy and short range. The Sturmgewehr (StG) 44 was something novel, combining the virtues of both previous types in a new \u201cassault ri\ufb02e.\u201d It could \ufb01re up to 600 rounds a minute in 304","FINAL OFFENSIVES IN EUROPE The Reichstag in flames \ufb01nally \ufb02own from the Reichstag. But The battle for the Reichstag, Germany\u2019s parliament not until May 2 did Chuikov receive building, was ferociously intense. By the time the the \ufb01nal surrender of the city. Russians captured it, on April 30, 200 of its 300 defenders had been killed. Friends \u2026 for now Twelfth Army had been thrown back A week before, on April 25, a crucial well beyond Berlin. Hitler hoped still encounter had taken place when US that some hero would arise to rescue and Soviet troops had met at Torgau, Germany in its hour of peril. He looked to his generals but they were paralyzed, 10 The percentage of an estimated powerless to act. 360,000 Soviet and Allied Polish troops killed in Germany that died in the Not that the battle was by any means Battle of Berlin. Losses were high because over. The Nazi high command was they were in such a hurry to beat the irrelevant but individual units fought Western Allies to the city. for their lives. With nowhere to go, the Germans fell back into Berlin itself, on the Elbe River. In its real, military defending it block by block as the signi\ufb01cance, it was negligible, enemy advanced. Groups holed up in perhaps\u2014no more than a parenthesis public buildings and at key points in to the epic narrative unfolding nearby. the city. On April 30 the red \ufb02ag was But, as the propagandists on both sides grasped at once, it summed up that 0 200 km spirit of cooperation and comradeship between the Capitalist West and the 0 200 miles N Memel Communist East, which had defeated Baltic Sea the evil of Nazism and saved Europe. SWEDEN LITHUANIA The defeat of Nazi Germany North Sea DENMARK 8 Apr 16 By the final weeks of the war the Red Army controlled Central and Eastern Europe. German forces still fought 5 Apr 10 6 Apr 11 Soviet armies restart K\u00f6nigsberg EAST fiercely to hold back its advance, while all the time advance on Berlin PRUSSIA looking, if possible to surrender to the Anglo-Americans. US 9th Army Americans reach the from the Oder and takes Hanover Elbe at Magdeburg Neisse rivers man front line Apr 1 man front line Apr 19 1 Apr 1 Danzig tern Allied front line May 7 et front line May 7 Forces from US 1st and 9th L\u00fcbeck Rostock POMERANIA 4 Apr 9 d advance armies meet at Lippstadt, Hamburg ders Sep 1939 thus encircling the Ruhr 9 Apr 0 Stettin 2ND BYELORUSSIAN FRONT Devastated city of Elbe K\u00f6nigsberg surrenders AFTER Groningen Soviet forces Torun to Soviets after two begin shelling months of \ufb01erce \ufb01ghting In the very moment of victory, Allied leaders were looking to prepare positions N E T H . Bremen central Berlin 1ST BYELORUSSIAN FRONT POLAND for the possible con\ufb02ict to come. Amsterdam Weser Berlin K\u00fcstrin Poznan Warsaw TO THE VICTOR THE SPOILS Rotterdam Arnhem Potsdam Allied leaders had agreed at Yalta that they Oder would carve out separate spheres of VistulaHanoverin\ufb02uence. But their generals on the ground had a unique chance to de\ufb01ne Europe\u2019s new Ems Lodz frontiers and did their best to take as much Ijssel territory as they could. Soviet technicians Nijmegen Emmerich Magdeburg bp May 2 went through eastern Germany like a Harz whirlwind, dismantling factories, plundering CANADIAN BRITISH Lippstadt Torgau Berlin surrenders 1ST UKRAINIAN FRONT laboratories\u2014and abducting scientists\u2014and Leipzig Breslau taking everything that might give them a 1ST ARMY 2ND ARMY Wesel Ruhr technological or industrial edge. BEL. US 9TH ARMY Kassel Dresden Baranow A SHORT-LIVED PEACE Within weeks after the meeting at the Elbe, Cologne 2 2 Apr 2 Chemnitz bm Apr 25 SILESIA the Americans and Russians were to be enemies themselves. Stalin would bring down an \u201cIron Aachen Bonn US 3rd Army Western and Soviet Cracow Curtain\u201d 340\u201341 gg\u0001across Europe. For 40 Remagen takes Kassel forces meet at Torgau years, East and West would be locked into the \u201cCold War\u201d 348\u201349 gg. US 1ST ARMY Coblenz in Prague 4TH UKRAINIAN FRONT Frankfurt 305 Moselle bk Apr 20 LUX. Ma US 3RD ARMY Oppenheim US troops take Mannheim Nuremberg US 7TH ARMY Nuremberg bq May 9 Heidelberg Soviet troops Germersheim Danube enter Prague 2ND UKRAINIAN FRONT FRANCE Strasbourg Stuttgart GERMANY Vienna 7 Apr 14 Neckar Augsburg FRENCH Lake Soviets take 1ST ARMY Munich Balaton control of Vienna Colmar Innsbruck Budapest 3RD UKRAINIAN FRONT bo 29 Apr Basel Rhine s Salzburg AUSTRIA HUNGARY US 5th Army enters Graz Milan, which is already SWITZERLAND p under the control of l Italian partisans A Adige Udine Drava Como Zagreb Trieste Milan Verona Venice Belgrade Turin Po Parma Padua 3 Apr 9 YUGOSLAV ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION Genoa Allies open o\ufb00ensive from Bologna the Senio River Ravenna Adriatic bn Apr 27 bl Apr 21 BRITISH YUGOSLAVIA 8TH ARMY Americans reach Bologna falls US 5TH ARMY Sea Genoa to the Allies I TA LY","BEFORE Deaths of the Dictators Mussolini and Hitler had transformed their In the last days of the war, the crimes of great dictators at last caught up with them. Mussolini countries, constructing political systems was captured and dealt summary justice by Italian partisans. Hitler took his own life, cheating around the cults of their leadership. his enemies of a precious prize, but forced to confront the final failure of his schemes. FASCISM AND NAZISM T hough the news had been bad of the German state. In the last Hitler\u2019s bunker Both ideologies had claimed to bring order, for many months, and worsening days, shells thumped down above Two Russian soldiers check the scene in the gardens of national revival, and a new sense of purpose. by the day, Hitler had remained them and the streets outside the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, where Hitler\u2019s remains But Fascism had drawn its deeper energy from convinced of \ufb01nal victory. Germany, resounded with small-arms \ufb01re, were destroyed after his suicide. The jerrycans had at bay, would \ufb01nd new reserves of but in the bunker an uncanny contained gasoline, used to burn the F\u00fchrer\u2019s body. 65 PERCENT of Italian voters resources and courage; new heroes peace prevailed. It was broken at supported Mussolini\u2019s Fascists who would bring salvation at the last. intervals by the news of this or in Italy\u2019s 1924 election. As the Western Allies streamed across that reversal or defection\u2014most the Rhine, he had comforted himself notably that of his trusted SS 43 PERCENT of voters supported with the thought of the rude reception leader, Heinrich Himmler, who Hitler in Germany\u2019s March that awaited them once his forces had had been seeking secret 1933 election. sorted out their dif\ufb01culties on the negotiations with the Allies. Eastern Front. And even as the Soviet the desire for destruction; Nazism had been a Army rampaged through Berlin, he Exchanging vows philosophy of death. Mussolini\u2019s impressive harbored hopes of a counterattack. electoral support had been based on violence For the most part, though, Hitler was and intimidation ff 20\u201321; Hitler\u2019s party had Meanwhile, steadfastly staying at his calm: at around 11:30pm on April 28 pledged racial purging and a purifying war post, Hitler remained holed up with his he sat down with his secretary, Traudl ff 26\u201327. On these commitments, the dictators closest con\ufb01dants in a bunker beneath Junge, to dictate his will\u2014and with it had delivered, dragging their countries, Europe, the Reich Chancellery, the very center an extraordinary \u201cPolitical Testament.\u201d and much of the wider world into a \ufb01ve-year nightmare\u2014only now approaching its end. 306","DEATH OF TH E DICTATOR S from arrest by the Germans, Mussolini D\u00f6nitz takes charge AFTER had enjoyed a second career of sorts as Grand Admiral Karl the \ufb01gurehead for a Nazi-dominated D\u00f6nitz presided over Excitement at Germany\u2019s defeat was tinged \u201cItalian Social Republic.\u201d a short-lived German with grief and anger\u2014and concern about government after the the continuing con\ufb02ict in the Paci\ufb01c. Now, with Axis forces in Italy in F\u00fchrer\u2019s death. retreat, Mussolini tried to \ufb02ee to the WAR CONTINUES IN THE EAST safety of Switzerland. From there he injection. It was all a loving mother If there was despair in Germany, there was hoped to \ufb02y to Spain, where he would could do, Magda wrote: \u201cThe world jubilation in the rest of Europe and the US. But be assured a warm welcome from his that will come after the Leader and at the same time all were mindful that the war old friend and ally, General Franco. On National Socialism will not be worth with Japan had not yet been won. Not until April 27 he was caught near Lake Como living in, and therefore I have taken June would the island of Okinawa be taken by partisans and taken to Mezzegra, my children away. They are too dear 312\u201313 gg, after some of the most frenzied where his mistress, Clara Petacci\u2014also to endure what is coming next.\u201d \ufb01ghting of the war. And only then could the screw captured\u2014was brought to join him. \ufb01nally be tightened on Japan itself 314\u201315 gg. On April 28 they were executed and Meanwhile, before \ufb02eeing for their their bodies hung up in public with lives, Hitler\u2019s attendants had taken UNFINISHED BUSINESS those of other Fascist leaders in Milan the bodies of their leader and his wife Amid the euphoria over Germany\u2019s defeat, the next day. Though news did reach outside. Dousing them in gasoline, moreover, there was an unsettling sense of Berlin of Mussolini\u2019s death, it is not incompleteness\u2014a feeling that justice had been they set them both on \ufb01re. It was a left undone. The invasions of Western Europe, 20 Percentage of Nazi Gauleiters the attacks on Britain\u2014and still more the that committed suicide in 1945; scorched-earth campaign in the East and the 10 percent of Army generals, 14 percent extermination camps: so many Nazi outrages of Luftwaffe generals, and nearly 20 cried out for punishment. One of the main percent of admirals followed suit. priorities for the victorious powers was to be the establishment of an international tribunal clear whether Hitler ever heard the 338\u201339 gg\u0001that would be able to administer circumstances. But he was all too well justice for these crimes. aware of the fate that awaited him if he should fall into his enemy\u2019s hands. By the early hours of April 30, Hitler had crude cremation but a very than falling into what they knew would be the unforgiving hands of \ufb01nally acknowledged to effective one: when the charred the Russians, they might surrender to the Americans or British. An ignominious end himself that his cause was bodies were later found and German troops in Italy and western The bodies of Benito Mussolini, his mistress, Clara lost. Far more than death, examined by the Russians, Germany surrendered in the \ufb01rst days of May, and on May 7, D\u00f6nitz\u2019s Petacci, and other members of Italy\u2019s Fascist leadership Hitler now feared public the remains could not be representatives signed an unconditional overall surrender to the Allies at General hang by their feet from meat hooks beneath the indignity and degradation. identi\ufb01ed except by the Eisenhower\u2019s headquarters in Reims. The ceremony was repeated in Marshal forecourt canopy of a gas station in Milan. Accordingly, having F\u00fchrer\u2019s dental records. Zhukov\u2019s Berlin headquarters the following day and \u201cVictory in Europe\u201d He was dying in a noble cause, Hitler extracted promises from A lost cause was proclaimed, sparking celebrations his minions waiting with in all the Allied countries. insisted. A man of peace, he had led his him in the bunker beneath The eagle has fallen Despite its leader\u2019s death, Happy crowds London\u2019s Piccadilly Circus was the scene of rumbustious nation in self-defense; the cause of the the Reich Chancellery that Battle scarred, this Nazi Nazi Germany was \ufb01ghting VE-Day celebrations, repeated in towns and cities across Britain, the Allied countries, and the United States. The con\ufb02agration had been the Jews. Then, they would destroy his emblem was found amidst on\u2014at least in theory. As mood in Berlin could hardly have been more different. in the small hours of April 29, Hitler body, the Nazi leader made the rubble of the Reich Hitler had wished, Grand and his mistress, Eva Braun, exchanged preparations for his suicide. Chancellery. Admiral Karl D\u00f6nitz became marriage vows before a city of\ufb01cial. When his aides looked Reich President on May 1. In Italy, meanwhile, things were into his room a few minutes later, D\u00f6nitz\u2019s loyalty to his country was looking no brighter for Mussolini. Hitler and his mistress were dead. unquestioned, and his navy had not Il Duce\u2019s authority had crumbled away Eva had taken poison; Hitler had shot failed so obviously and spectacularly to nothing many months before. On himself. Before taking their own lives, as the German Army and Air Force had in the latter part of the war. \u201c Resist pitilessly the world-poisoner The reality was that D\u00f6nitz saw his role as that of presiding over the Nazi of all peoples, international Jewry.\u201d surrender, trying to ensure the most advantageous terms for a nation that HITLER\u2019S \u201cPOLITICAL TESTAMENT\u201d, APRIL 29, 1945 had only too clearly lost the war. Fierce resistance continued on the Eastern Front, but the aim of most German July 24, 1943, he had suffered the propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels, soldiers was now no longer to defeat indignity of being dismissed by King and his wife, Magda\u2014penned up with their country\u2019s invaders but to \ufb01nd a Victor Emmanuel\u2014for many years their late leader in the bunker\u2014had way of breaking through toward the the dictator\u2019s pathetic puppet. Rescued their six children killed by morphine West. Their last hope was that, rather 307","","EYEWITNESS May 8, 1945 VE DAY When Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on May 7, 1945, at the American advance headquarter in Rheims, France, the war in Europe was officially over. The following day was designated VE (Victory in Europe) Day, and victory celebrations took place in Paris, London, and throughout Europe. \u201c This is it \u2026 This time this is Victory in Europe day \u2026 The Air Corps is really going to town and C-47 cargo planes, fighters, and even fortresses and other bombers are flying back and forth and buzzing the city. We\u2019re all dashing out on the balcony\u2014it\u2019s a warm, warm day and the French windows are wide open. Everyone confesses to feeling a bit unable to concentrate \u2026 I actually knew yesterday morning \u2026 \u2019cause we\u2019d seen the radio message from SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] \u2026 but it was confidential so we\u2019d just go round grinning like cats that swallowed canaries \u2026 When we got off the metro by the Arc [de Triomphe], then we knew it for sure. People were milling around the Etoile, up and down the Champs Elys\u00e9es, and they were shooting off fireworks while planes dropped flares. I was really excited then and I said I wasn\u2019t going to be in at any 12 o\u2019clock \u2026 There was celebration up and down our street and up on the corner by the Arc people were singing and fireworks were still going on \u2026 As a matter of fact, they kept on all night. At three am, when Dorothy went on guard duty, she said it was still noisy and about \u201d5 [am] I woke to hear a few \u2018yippees\u2019 up and down the street \u2026 AMERICAN BETTY M. OLSON, 29 TRAFFIC REGULATIONS GROUP, STATIONED IN PARIS \u201c\u2026 American sailors and laughing girls formed a conga line down the middle of Piccadilly and cockneys linked arms in the Lambeth Walk. It was a day and night of no fixed plan and no organized merriment. Each group danced its own dance, sang its own song, and went its own way as the spirit moved \u2026 soldiers swung by one arm from lamp standards and laughing groups tore down hoardings \u2026 The young servicemen and women who swung arm in arm down the middle of every street, singing and swarming over the few cars \u201drash enough to come out were simply happy \u2026 ENGLISH WRITER MOLLIE PAINTER-DOWNES\u2019S DESCRIPTION OF VE DAY IN LONDON, FILED FOR \u201cNEW YORKER\u201d MAGAZINE Victory celebration Parisians and Allied soldiers make their way together down the Champs Elys\u00e9es, Paris, on May 8, 1945, to celebrate Victory in Europe (VE) Day. Celebrations continued well into the night. 309","ENDGAME 1945 BEFORE The Battle for Iwo Jima Iwo Jima, a barren Paci\ufb01c island a mere In February and March 1945, Iwo Jima\u2014a volcanic Japanese island lying some 760 miles (1,220 km) 8 sq miles (21 sq km) in area, was under southeast of Tokyo\u2014became the most bitterly contested spot on the planet, as US Marines fought the control of Japan until February 1945. to evict resolute Japanese soldiers from a network of tunnels and bunkers hewn deep into the rock. A SECONDARY TARGET A t 8:59am on February 19, 1945, Lieutenant-General Kuribayashi The landing beaches After the American conquest of the Marianas US Marine landing craft began Tadamichi had decided to hold his US Marines of the Fifth Division begin the slow crawling in the summer of 1944 ff 238\u201339, Okinawa to unload men onto the black men and guns hidden in long-prepared advance inland from the shore of Iwo Jima on the first was the next major objective. Iwo Jima was to volcanic sand of Iwo Jima. As they defensive positions, waiting for the best day of the battle. The terrain gave a narrow strip of cover be taken as a prelude to the Okinawa operation. spread out on the shore, there was at moment to open \ufb01re. at the water\u2019s edge but then became very exposed. \ufb01rst an eerie lack of enemy resistance. JAPANESE PREPARATIONS Attempting to move off the beaches, US commanders gravely underestimated the The men of Fourth and Fifth Marine the US Marines were soon in dif\ufb01culty. di\ufb03culty of taking Iwo Jima. They believed the Divisions might have been tempted to The assault forces, under the command \ufb01ghting would last only four days. But from the believe that the scale of the preparatory of General Harry Schmidt, were aided bombardment\u2014two months of air by an array of ingenious amphibious 23,000 The estimated attacks, three days of intensive shelling vehicles, but many of these bogged down number of Japanese by US Navy warships, and a further in the volcanic ash on the shoreline. Army and Navy troops on Iwo Jima who barrage from offshore since 2:00am Within a couple of hours the beaches were killed in the fighting or who that morning\u2014had succeeded in were a clogged mass of men, vehicles, committed suicide. All the island\u2019s devastating the Japanese defenses. But and equipment. When the Japanese civilians had been evacuated. this was far from the case. Japanese artillery, mortars, and machine guns military engineers had burrowed into \ufb01nally opened up, it was carnage. The summer of 1944, the Japanese had begun turning the volcanic terrain to create a network Marines, advancing unsuspectingly Iwo Jima into a defensive stronghold, intending of underground passages that kept the toward well-concealed machine-gun to in\ufb02ict maximum casualties on the US forces defenders safe from bombs and shells. posts, were mown down. The beaches and delay their progress toward the mainland.","BAT TLE OF IWO J I MA American rocketeers in action AFTER Truck-mounted rocket launchers are used to pound the final Japanese positions in Bloody Gorge near the US Marines suffered 23,573 casualties on north end of the island on March 23. This was the last Iwo Jima\u20145,885 of those killed. US Navy Japanese position to be captured. losses were 881 dead and 2,000 wounded. became a chaotic mass of burning JAPANESE SURVIVORS vehicles and equipment, the infantry A number of Japanese soldiers managed to seeking shelter in shallow foxholes. survive in tunnels and caves after the battle ended, coming out at night to scavenge for food. After the landings The last two gave themselves up in 1949. The island remained under US occupation until 1968. Yet, despite heavy casualties\u2014some AN ISLAND AIRFIELD 2,500 men were killed or wounded on The attack of Iwo Jima had been partly motivated by the desire to \ufb02y long-range P-51 the day\u201430,000 Marines landed on Mustang \ufb01ghter aircraft from the island to Iwo Jima on February 19. By nightfall US CARRIER AIRCRAFT ON THEIR WAY TO ATTACK THE TOKYO AREA ON JULY 9, 1945 they had fought their way across the escort B-29 bombers in daylight raids on island to the west coast. Their next Japan. This proved unnecessary when the USAAF resorted to low-altitude night major objective was Mount Suribachi, raids 314\u201315 gg\u0001that met with no signi\ufb01cant Japanese resistance. The island\u2019s air\ufb01elds did the island\u2019s dominant volcanic feature, provide an emergency landing strip for American bombers. from which Japanese artillery\u2014sited in the battle for Iwo Jima\u2014mostly men positions protected by thick steel kamikaze pilots, who on February 21 However, the weaponry most feared too badly wounded to avoid capture. The rest fought courageously to the doors\u2014\ufb01red down upon the Americans. sank the escort carrier USS Bismarck by the Japanese were the \u201cZippo\u201d death, committed suicide, or simply went into hiding. Of the US Marines The American \ufb02eet sitting off the island Sea and damaged several other ships, tanks\u2014eight modi\ufb01ed Shermans that who fought on the island, one in three was either killed or wounded. The also came under attack from Japanese in\ufb02icting over 500 casualties. Mount could project a jet of \ufb02aming liquid up Medal of Honor, America\u2019s highest military decoration, was awarded \u201c\u2026 on Iwo Jima, uncommon to a distance of 490 ft (150 m). to 27 of those who took part. Kuribayashi had ordered his men to avoid the costly \u201cbanzai\u201d suicide valor was a common virtue.\u201d charges that the Japanese had employed in earlier battles. But as the defenders were squeezed back into an ever smaller FLEET ADMIRAL CHESTER W. NIMITZ AFTER THE BATTLE OF IWO JIMA area, they increasingly gave up their tactics of holding Suribachi was taken by out in forti\ufb01ed positions, February 23, but \ufb01erce instead emerging at resistance went on in night for desperate the north of the island. attacks on their Ongoing resistance enemy. The last of these, an attack on At this point Third an American-held Marine Division joined air\ufb01eld on the night the battle, bringing the of March 25\/26, may number of Marines have been led by engaged up to 70,000. General Kuribayashi in The outnumbered person. After its failure, Japanese fought on for American commanders \ufb01nally another month. None US M2 flamethrower declared that the island expected to survive. The US Marines used the manpack of Iwo Jima was secured. \ufb01ghting was grim, close- flamethrower. It had a range of Only 216 Japanese quarters infantry warfare. 130 ft (40 m) and weighed soldiers are recorded as The Marines had to take a hefty 68 lb (31 kg). having surrendered during each Japanese strongpoint by assault, across desolate, bare terrain KEY MOMENT that offered no cover. The network of tunnels that the Japanese had dug VICTORY ON MT. SURIBACHI meant that they were often able to reoccupy a position that had been The Marines captured the key strongpoint cleared by the Marines at great cost, of Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945. reappearing on the \ufb02anks or at the rear The \ufb01rst Stars and Stripes \ufb02ag planted on the of an advance. Japanese defenses were summit was too small to be seen by other so deeply embedded in the rock that one troops on the island, and was replaced later US of\ufb01cer noted: \u201cThe Japanese were in the day. This second \ufb02ag-raising was not on Iwo Jima. They were in it.\u201d captured by news photographer Joe The key weapons for clearing out Rosenthal in a photograph immediately underground positions were the recognized as a classic image of the Paci\ufb01c \ufb02amethrower and the hand grenade. campaign\u2014and later used as the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Fixing a Japanese position Washington D.C., shown here. Of the six Even once a Japanese position had been located it was men who raised the \ufb02ag, three died on Iwo not always easy to identify its position exactly enough Jima. The rest were brought home for public in the featureless terrain so that supporting US artillery appearances to raise funds for the war e\ufb00ort. could target it accurately. 311","ENDGAME 1945 Okinawa Unlike previous Japanese naval fighters, the \u201cZero\u201d had an enclosed American strategists decided to capture Okinawa as a forward base for the Allied invasion of Japan. cockpit. A complete radio set allowed The result was what some called \u201cthe cruelest battle\u201d or, to the Japanese, the \u201cwind of steel.\u201d The fight for Okinawa was awesome in its intensity, even for hardened veterans of the Pacific War. not just communication but long-range direction-finding. The \u201cZero\u201d was highly maneuverable, Radio aerial leading enemy fighters a dance in dogfights. Ultimately, it could not compete with the faster, more robust, and far more numerous Allied aircraft of 1943\u201345. T-7178 aluminum body Aileron \u201cMy grave will be the sea around Okinawa Low wing-loading gave the \u201cZero\u201d a \u2026 I have neither regret nor fear \u2026\u201d stalling speed of under 60 knots, making for extremely tight turns and enabling it to KAMIKAZE PILOT, ENSIGN TERUO YAMAGUCHI, FROM A LETTER TO HIS FATHER, MARCH 1945 outmanoeuvre all Allied fighters for at least the first half of the war. BEFORE T he largest island of the Ryukyu True to the death group, Okinawa was only 340 Kamikaze pilots bow during ceremonies before setting Ushijima\u2019s staff. One group wanted an The war in the Paci\ufb01c was going the miles (550 km) from Kyushu, the off into action. \u201cIt is our glorious mission to die as aggressive approach. A second faction Allies\u2019 way\u2014but painfully slowly and southernmost of Japan\u2019s main islands. shields of His Majesty. Cherry blossoms glisten as they favored a more cautious strategy: at excruciating cost. The Japanese were It would make an ideal base for a \ufb01nal open and fall,\u201d one pilot wrote. that they should dig in as deeply as making them \ufb01ght for every inch. assault on the Japanese home country they could on ground of their choosing \u2014but the American forces were going students were conscripted: the boys and prepare to resist the Americans BOX AND to have to take it \ufb01rst. as soldiers of the \u201cBlood and Iron\u201d inch by inch. This was the strategy the SPOON USED BY AN Student Corps; the girls as nurses in Japanese followed. They would do little ALLIED POW To this end, they mounted what was the Himeyuri Student Corps. General to defend most of the island but would to be the greatest amphibious assault Ushijima Mitsuru led the defense. fortify the south end and the Motobu SUICIDE ATTACKS of the Paci\ufb01c War. General Simon peninsula further north. Victory seemed within reach for the Allies\u2014the Bolivar Buckner, Jr. led the attack with Japanese divisions only question was whether they could pay the his Tenth Army\u2014with over 100,000 That determination was one thing horrendous price the struggle was going to exact. US Army soldiers and 80,000 Marines. Left stranded, outnumbered, and in which the Japanese were well That the Japanese were prepared to do anything They were landed and backed up by outgunned, the Japanese were also equipped became clear once the battle to win was evident in their introduction of the a formidable \ufb02eet of 1,600 ships. No hampered by tactical disputes among began in earnest. On Easter Sunday\u2014 kamikaze suicide tactic during the \ufb01ghting for fewer than 40 US aircraft carriers were 1 April\u2014the main US force began the Philippines in late 1944 ff\u0001240\u201341. present to provide air support; planes landing almost unopposed. The came too from the British Paci\ufb01c Fleet. northern two thirds of the island was 312 quickly captured, though it did take Impossible odds some days of heavy \ufb01ghting before the Americans took entrenched positions The US faced a big but motley Japanese on the Motubu peninsula. defending force: along with 70,000 Army troops, there were 9,000 Navy But, if the \ufb01ghting was \ufb01erce in soldiers. Nearly 40,000 indigenous the north, further to the south it was Okinawan islanders, mostly raw\u2014and frenzied. The defenders were well unwilling\u2014recruits, were pressed into dug-in and able to make use of a service. In addition, over 2,000 school warren of natural caves to elude and ambush the disorientated US soldiers.","OKINAWA twice that number of Japanese are AFTER believed to have died. Many thousands of civilians were caught up among the The loss of Okinawa deprived imperial casualties: hundreds, forced to fetch Japan of its last important Paci\ufb01c outpost. and carry for the defenders, were shot The question now was whether it could as combatants; others died in artillery successfully mount its own self-defense. bombardments or bombing raids; while ENDING JAPAN\u2019S RESISTANCE others, in many cases, committed The taking of Okinawa and the other islands suicide. Japanese propaganda warned of the Ryukyu group left only clear blue water that, in the event of victory for the between the Allies and Japan. A concerted e\ufb00ort American \u201csavages,\u201d Okinawan women could now begin to cut the country off, both and girls would be viciously raped and from its overseas forces and its essential supplies\u0001314\u201315 gg. their menfolk murdered. To prevent A SUICIDAL STRATEGY this happening, thousands To this day, controversy continues on the killed their children before island over Japanese denials that their soldiers killing themselves\u2014often compelled Okinawans to kill themselves. A apparently forced to do so Japanese court case in 2007 found that the army had indeed been culpable. by Japanese troops. ATOM BOMB DECISION So heavy had US casualties been, so severe the Divine wind accompanying losses in aircraft, ships, tanks, and equipment, that commanders viewed the Kamikaze suicide attacks had forthcoming \ufb01ght for Japan itself with mounting wariness. If the price paid was not to be become a planned component of The rocket\u2019s red glare unimaginably high (in Japanese as well as Allied lives), the \ufb01nal battle for the Japanese homeland Japanese tactics since the Battle A US LCI(R) (Landing Craft, Infantry [Rocket]) releases 1,465 kamikaze attacks were of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, but a fusillade as it approaches Okinawa\u2019s shores. Rocket- made off Okinawa. 36 Allied ships were sunk, now they were developed to their armed landing craft could lay down a devastating chiefly destroyers. 368 vessels were damaged, full extent. The custom of kamikaze concentrated weight of fire in a landing area. including carriers. would have to be approached with extreme (the word means \u201cdivine wind\u201d) was caution. Hence, perhaps, the resolution that, whatever doubts might remain, the super- Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter rooted in the ancient Japanese Samurai casualties, yet the position of the weapon under development would be The \u201cZero\u201d downed over 1,500 Allied aircraft in the deployed. The ferocity of Japanese resistance course of the Pacific War. A top-secret aluminum alloy tradition\u2014the idealistic ardor of the Japanese was becoming more hopeless at the Battle of Okinawa may well have helped (T-7178) was used to build the body. Light construction bring about the detonation of the atomic bombs was one of the secrets of its maneuverability. young men who gave up their lives this by the day. Tens of thousands had over Hiroshima and Nagasaki 320\u201321 gg. Behind every boulder, it sometimes way, recorded in their \ufb01nal letters, is already been killed\u2014many walled up 313 seemed, was a machine-gun nest or a booby-trap. The Americans pressed on, very striking. But \ufb02ying an explosives- in the caves they had been operating but they took terrible casualties. And, inevitably, in\ufb02icted them: an estimated laden plane or piloted bomb into an from. As they were thrown back, many 1,500 Americans were lost taking the strategic \u201cCactus Ridge\u201d alone, but enemy ship to certain death was a committed suicide to avoid capture. For 0T 3E CBHONXO TL OI TGLYE 7 P T \/ 1 0 P T brutal, ugly way to 110,000 Japanese troops the \ufb01rst time in any meet one\u2019s end. were killed. of the Paci\ufb01c War\u2019s OHKA PILOTED BOMB 45,000 or more campaigns, Even Japan\u2019s Okinawans died. however, following The name Ohka meant \u201ccherry blossom\u201d, largest remaining a propaganda which was an emblem of purity and warship, the giant hence of Japan itself, but there would be nothing light or delicate about the battleship Yamato, 12,500 American sailors campaign promising Ohka\u2019s \ufb02ight. In e\ufb00ect a large bomb with was to be used and soldiers fell. fair treatment for wooden wings and rocket motors or a in a \ufb01nal suicide those who yielded jet engine in the tail (depending on the type), it was to be carried into action by mission, Operation Ten-Go, leading a peacefully, hundreds were allowing a \u201cmother\u201d aircraft before being released at a distance from the target. naval task force from Japan with only themselves to be taken prisoner. On The plane would then glide, guided by enough fuel aboard for a one-way trip. June 18 General Buckner was killed, its pilot, until that target was within range, at which point the engine would be \ufb01red. Its dispatch, however, was more caught by the blast from an enemy At the speeds it reached then, the plane was virtually unstoppable. In practice, dramatic gesture than serious artillery round, but within four days though, the Ohka was very vulnerable in the moments after launching, and intervention. Quickly\u2014and his victory had been won. di\ufb03cult to aim when under power. Most of its pilots died in vain. The Americans inevitably\u2014sighted, the ships had to called it \u201cthe Baka\u201d\u2014 run the gauntlet of relentless attacks \u201cidiot bomb.\u201d from US submarines and carrier-borne aircraft. The Yamato was sunk after a two-hour blitz of bombs and torpedoes. Like most kamikaze attacks, its loss was ultimately pointless. Not that these kamikaze attacks can have seemed that way to the comrades and families of the more than 4,000 US and Allied sailors killed. Over 400 Allied warships were sunk or damaged. Despite these Japanese heroics, the Americans held on with tenacity; by the beginning of June it was clear that they were prevailing. Progress was cruelly slow and hideously costly in Japanese surrender Badly wounded, a Japanese naval lieutenant surrenders to US troops at Okinawa. Japanese soldiers were more ready to surrender after a broadcast by a captured comrade, assuring them of his own good treatment.","ENDGAME 1945 Japan under Siege Iwo Jima and Okinawa had left the Americans under no illusions as to what it would cost to take Hokkaido Japan\u2019s \u201chome islands\u201d by storm. But Japan was not just protected by the sea\u2014it was completely cut off by it. The Allies began to make preparations for a siege. T he codename did not beat about Paci\ufb01c Fleet but also commander of \u201c There are Sapporo the bush: Operation Starvation Allied forces in the Paci\ufb01c. It looked no innocent was to bring Japan to its knees by like a naval operation, but Nimitz felt civilians.\u201d Muroram cutting off all essential supplies from that it was an operation best carried Hakodate the outside world. Begun in March out from the air, so much of the work MAJOR GENERAL CURTIS LEMAY, 1945 1945, it was also intended to prevent fell to Major General Curtis LeMay and Aomori Hachinobe the provisioning of Japan\u2019s \ufb01ghting his \ufb02iers. While many mines were laid N Hirosaki forces overseas. The operation was by submarines, most were dropped the brainchild of naval chief Admiral from 160 specially adapted B-29s. Chester Nimitz, who was not only commander-in-chief of America\u2019s Unspectacular, discreet\u2014and inevitably overshadowed by subsequent events\u2014 BEFORE the operation was one of the great unsung successes of the war. In all, Japan\u2019s Paci\ufb01c possessions had been picked 670 ships were sunk or damaged\u2014 J A P A N Kamaishi off by the Western Allies, who now had the over a million tons. Traf\ufb01c in most of perfect base for a \ufb01nal assault in Okinawa. the main shipping lanes was halted, Japan\u2019s ports were left unusable. Fire from the sky For the moment, the success of the Sakata HEAVY GOING campaign overshadowed what was 6 May 23 Sendai supposed to be the main business of Victory might be in sight, but Allied celebrations Tokyo su\ufb00ers another devastating attack in which 4,500 tons of bombs were muted. The war was being won, but it was LeMay\u2019s Air Force: the bombing with are dropped on the city. Over 3 million Fukushima which he had hoped to pound Japan of its citizens are now homeless not easy. The British advance down Burma into submission. The results so far had Sado ff\u0001248\u201349 had been a bloody slog under f Niigata 1 Mar 9\/10, 1945 Japan appalling conditions. been disappointing. B-29s based in Nagaoka USAAF launches \ufb01rst China had made several large-scale major incendiary raid. The Americans had 279 B-29s attack Tokyo. faced the sheer raids but too many of their bombs had Utsunomiya Hitachi Firestorm obliterates gone astray. Forced to \ufb02y high by the Mito 16 sq miles (40 sq km), determination o leaving 84,000 dead of the Japanese Sea Maebashi Kawagushi ever since starting The home islands Takaoka Isezaki Choshi The bulk of Japan\u2019s population lived on the main island Kumagaya their central Toyama Paci\ufb01c offensive of Honshu, on whose east coast lay the capital, Tokyo. 4 Mar 16\/17 Honshu Tokyo Chiba But key centers\u2014and military installations\u2014were also to Hachioji Kawasaki ff\u0001230\u201331 toward be found on Kyushu, to the south. Center of Osaka reduced to ashes Fukui Kofu Yokohama the end of 1943. JAPANESE PRAYER FLAG in \ufb01rebomb raids Hiratsuka 5 Apr 15\/16 Tsuruga Gifu Shimizu Fujisawa 129 B-29s bomb Ichinomiya Kawasaki, while 109 HOLY WAR Ogaki Numazu others hit Tokyo The Japanese would not just be \ufb01ghting for Kuwana their lives now but for a homeland they held Tottori Nagoya Shizuoka sacred. The Allies could not expect them to yield Okazaki an inch. Their objective had to be to create so 8 Aug 6 Yokkaichi much disruption on the home front that the Matsue Kyoto Hamamatsu resistance in the \ufb01eld could not be sustained. First atomic bomb dropped Nishinomiya-Mikage Toyohashi In the second half of 1944, therefore, a campaign Izu Islands of sustained bombing had begun. on Hiroshima, exploding 2,000 ft (600 m) above Okayama Himeji Osaka Tsu Uji-Yamada 7 May 29\/30 ground, devastating the city Kobe Sakai Akashi Business district of Yokohama and killing 70,000 people Fukuyama 2 Mar 11\/12 (one third of the city) burned out after raid by 454 B-29s Wakayama Nagoya \ufb01rebombed by Hiroshima Takamatsu 258 B-29s. City su\ufb00ers Kure second raid on Mar 18\/19 Tokushima Ts u s h i m a Imabari Shimonoseki Ube Matsuyama Shikoku Yawata Kochi Aki Kita-Kyushu Moji East China Fukuoka Uwajima PACIFIC Sea OCEAN Saga Omuta Oita Sasebo Nobeoka 3 Mar 13\/14 from the Marianas Kumamoto Nagasaki Kobe \ufb01rebombed by 331 B-29s Kyushu 9 Aug 9 Kagoshima from Carrier Task Force 38 Second atomic bomb explodes over Nagasaki, destroying over 40 percent of the city and killing around 50,000 people 314","JAPAN UNDER SIEGE AFTER Working for the enemy results, LeMay planned a much larger recalled Dr. Kuboto Shigenori. As far as The last months of the Japan campaign were Curtis LeMay was concerned, his overshadowed by the events of August and A captured Japanese officer helps direct US bombing attack for the night of March 9\/10. \ufb01restorm operation had been an the detonation of the \ufb01rst atomic bomb. unquali\ufb01ed triumph, and he was now attacks against his homeland. Captive troops also acted Rather than ask his crews to aim for a determined to follow through with ETHICAL SHIFT But the period was more important than is as translators, making sure the Japanese held their fire. particular factory or military installation, 334 B-29S took part in the Tokyo appreciated in shaping the outcome of the Paci\ufb01c raid of March 9\u201310 1945. War. LeMay\u2019s logic\u2014accepted by his masters\u2014 he designated a target area of 90 THOUSAND civilians were that civilians could be killed if this might help killed in the raid. to save the lives of Allied servicemen, represented weather conditions and over 12 sq miles (30 sq km). 40 THOUSAND civilians died an important ethical shift. If there had ever as the firestorm spread. been a taboo on the bombing of civilians, it had by the air defenses on the In all, 334 B-29s took part, now been explicitly lifted, and the way was further raids on Japan\u2019s home islands clear for the atomic bombs to be dropped on ground, they ended up a lead wave dropping in the weeks to come. The sooner the Hiroshima and Nagasaki 320\u201323 gg. Japanese woke up to the fact of their scattering their payloads napalm to illuminate the defeat, the fewer Allied lives would 50 The percentage of have to be lost \ufb01ghting them. Tokyo\u2019s urban area that ineffectively. The massive area, while the had been destroyed by Desperate measures fire by the war\u2019s end. air raids that had played remainder followed up Unexploded bombs were still found The reality appears to have been that in Japan in 2008. so important a role in with M-69 magnesium the raid left the people of Japan too stunned to even comprehend what had WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN bringing Nazi Germany cluster bombs and happened. But there is no doubt that, Operation Starvation had been so e\ufb00ective between Operation Starvation and the that, had it been introduced earlier, it has to devastation and defeat oil-based incendiaries. The incendiary campaign, their leaders\u2019 been argued, it might have achieved Japan\u2019s scope for effective action had been defeat all on its own. But the horrors of the showed little promise of doing entire area went up in dramatically curtailed. Paci\ufb01c War had been such that it is hard to imagine such a solution satisfying Japan\u2019s the same for imperial Japan. \ufb02ames, and much of the rest of However, there had been signs that enemies. The country had \ufb01rst to be put to the Japanese high command had been sword and \ufb01re and then brought low. But LeMay made a virtue of eastern Tokyo besides. People clutching at straws since the end of 1944, when they had released US AIR FORCE CHIEF (1906\u201390 ) necessity, recognizing that if found their skin seared, their the \ufb01rst of the \u201cballoon bombs\u201d from CURTIS LEMAY incendiaries were used instead of clothes igniting on their backs in Honshu. These were gas balloons, armed with By the time America\u2019s war began, LeMay high-explosive bombs, there was the scorching winds. \u201cHell could be anti-personnel and was already in command of the 305th incendiary devices. Over Bomb Group. He led from the front, \ufb02ying less need to hit the target. This, no hotter,\u201d wrote French reporter 9,000 of these weapons were missions over Germany and North Africa launched, of which few before being sent to the Far East in 1944. he appreciated, had become Robert Guillain. reached their intended Successful commands in China and the destination in the northwest Paci\ufb01c led to LeMay\u2014now MajorGeneral\u2014 a campaign against national Rivers and canals offered of America. Beyond being given responsibility for air strategy con\ufb01rming to the Americans against Japan itself. Here, he oversaw morale, which meant it was no escape; people had to their view that they were the switch from high-altitude precision \ufb01ghting a foe of diabolical bombing\u2014used e\ufb00ectively in Germany a campaign against civilians. Impotent gesture choose either to drown or cunning, they had no impact but failing in Japan\u2014to a strategy of on the course of the war. low-altitude night-time area bombing. Japan\u2019s rugged interior was A number of Japanese cook their lungs in the 315 relatively inhospitable, most \u201cballoon bombs\u201d reached super-heated air. Rescuers people were crowded into the United States, causing a clearing up in the aftermath densely populated urban stir, but very little damage. could not identify even the centers along the coasts. sex of the bodies they found These were largely of timber in the Sumida River. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t construction: \ufb01re had always been a even tell if the objects \ufb02oating by were problem, so why not make it the main arms or legs or pieces of burned wood,\u201d instrument of his attack? The Tokyo firestorm The \ufb01rst successful incendiary attack on Japanese-occupied Hankow, China, in December 1944, had been followed by a small-scale raid on suburban Tokyo in February 1945. Encouraged by the Inspecting the damage Emperor Hirohito visits the scene of devastation following the firestorm of March 1945, in Tokyo. Although it was easy to talk of resolve, it was much harder to maintain it.","ENDGAME 1945 BEFORE Subjects of the Emperor When Japan entered World War II, the Life for the Japanese people on the home front was dreadful during the last few months of war. Allied country had already been at war for bombing raids brought death and destruction to all the major cities. By summer 1945, Japan was facing some years in Manchuria and China. defeat but military leaders and some elements within the government refused to surrender. EMPIRE BUILDING I n 1941 Japan had not been prepared Shipping losses Millions of tons 7 During the 1930s Japan, needing natural for a long war. Con\ufb02ict with China Japan went into the war with some six million tons of 6 resources for industry, set out to create an had already stretched the country\u2019s ocean-going metal-hulled ships, and added four million 5 empire in Asia and the Paci\ufb01c. In 1931 Japan resources and the nation relied heavily during the war. Their shipping losses, however, were 4 seized Manchuria and, in 1937, began a war on supplies from outside; more than dire. By August 1945 scarcely any were still operating. 3 20 percent of rice and over 70 percent 330 The amount of rice in grams allocated to every member of soybeans, for instance, were bombloads on cities such as Osaka, 2 of the Japanese population from 1942. As a result, many people opted to imported. Raw materials, such as oil, Kobe, and Tokyo, killing thousands 1 purchase goods from the black market. rubber, and bauxite, also had to be and making thousands more homeless. 0 against China ff\u000140\u201341. Japan entered the war in 1941 and, with victories in Burma, imported. The Japanese government The government had made virtually Jan Jan Jan Jan Aug Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies 1942 1943 1944 1945 1945 ff\u0001158\u201359, and the Philippines ff\u0001160\u201361, introduced food rationing, but supplies no provision for air-raid shelters so had soon taken control of Southeast Asia. KEY Japanese society was highly organized at the were precarious. By 1944 the American families were forced to make their own, Tonnage afloat time. Constant propaganda focused on the message that the individual was less important naval blockade of Japan prevented food sometimes little more than a trench in Tonnage laid up than the collective good. and raw materials from entering the the garden. City homes made of wood Shipping lost during year TURNING POINT With defeats at Midway and Guadalcanal, Allied country, while strategic bombing victories in the Philippines ff\u0001240\u201341 and Burma ff 248\u201349, and the capture of Iwo disrupted transport services and food Jima and Okinawa, by 1945 the country was expecting invasion. supplies, causing severe hardship. EMPEROR OF JAPAN (1901\u201389) Starvation and bombing MICHINOMIYA HIROHITO By 1945 staple foods such as \ufb01sh had disappeared and rice rations were Presented as a divine being, Hirohito was miniscule; the daily ration was around emperor of Japan from 1926 until his one third of an average person\u2019s daily death. Although he was supreme ruler, needs, and some of the population he had little practical power: his function were on the edge of starvation. Average was e\ufb00ectively to legitimize decisions calorie consumption dropped sharply made by the Japanese government and from a pre-war average of 2,265 to military leaders. Privately he had been 1,900 in 1944, and 1,680 in 1945. reluctant to go to war but did nothing People supplemented their diet with openly to prevent it. By 1945, however, pumpkins and grasshoppers, and city he had determined that the war should dwellers left regularly on trips to the be brought to an end. Following the countryside hoping to exchange attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, clothes and other items for fruit and he urged the Japanese to accept the vegetables. Despite government controls, unacceptable, namely surrender. prices of goods such as shoes soared to astronomical heights on the black 316 197,000 The number of dead and missing Japanese civilians following the US bombing raid on Tokyo on the night of March 9\/10, 1945. market. Malnutrition was widespread and the weight of newborn babies dropped alarmingly. With all available arable land already under cultivation, people grew meager crops on thin strips of land by rail lines. Mass bombing added to the chaos and social breakdown. From March 1945 the US conducted a series of intensive bombing raids against Japanese cities. Thousands of B-29s\u2014known to the Japanese as \u201cB-San\u201d\u2014dropped massive Schoolgirls at the lathe Toward the end of the war, the labor shortage in Japan was so desperate that schoolgirls were recruited into factory work to help the war effort. Here, students from the Girls\u2019 National School are trained to use lathes.","SUBJECTS OF THE EMPEROR and paper offered little protection slogan \u201cMen to the Front, Women to the war, and approached the Soviet Union to negotiate peace terms with against incendiary bombs; in March the Workplace,\u201d the government had the United States. However, other members of the government and the 1945 Tokyo suffered dreadfully when started recruiting women; by 1945 \ufb01ercely nationalistic army opposed any form of surrender. They argued that a \ufb01restorm swept through the city. women, Koreans, prisoners of war, old Japan should accept \u201cthe honorable death of a hundred million\u201d and Industry too had collapsed by 1945. men, and children were being drafted in proposed a civilian defense force, armed with bamboo spears if necessary, to repel There had been a 2 THOUSAND tons of incendiary to help in factories, an invasion by the United States. One growth in industry bombs were dropped on Tokyo. on the land, or in of the dif\ufb01culties was that America had between 1942 home defense. insisted on unconditional surrender and 1944 but the 8-10 MILLION civilians were and no guarantees had been offered war effort was evacuated from their homes. Final stages for maintaining the emperor\u2019s status. The Allied use of atomic bombs on hampered by poor 950 THOUSAND Japanese civilians By spring 1945 it Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Soviet planning, rivalry were killed in the war. was clear Japan Union\u2019s entry into the con\ufb02ict against between the army Japan, intensi\ufb01ed the situation. was facing certain Finally, in August 1945, Emperor and navy, and lack of co-operation defeat. Its navy was \ufb01nished, its armies Hirohito, normally viewed as above politics, made a personal intervention between government and big business. were scattered throughout Asia, and and stated that for Japan\u2019s sake the war needed to end. On August 15 he The government, under prime minister most major cities had been levelled to broadcast the decision to the Japanese people. While for many Japanese the Tojo, established a munitions ministry, the ground. Despite the loss of Okinawa idea of surrender was anathema, for others the end of the war was a relief. but with raw materials unable to enter and overwhelming American military AFTER the country, production declined. superiority, propaganda continued to Absenteeism was also a problem as urge the population to resist, and the Honoring the dead Citizens on the home front were expected to honor workers \ufb02ed into the government was deadlocked. Prime Japan\u2019s war dead. Women from the National Defense Association lined up to pay tribute to the casualties countryside to escape minister Suzuki (who took up whose bodies were brought home by train. the bombing. In of\ufb01ce in April 1945) and other 1943, under the leaders were desperate to end \u201c The war situation has developed not \u2026 to Japan\u2019s advantage.\u201d EMPEROR HIROHITO, ANNOUNCING JAPAN\u2019S SURRENDER, AUGUST 15, 1945 When the war ended, Japan was ruined: more than 60 cities had been devastated and more than 40 percent of Japan\u2019s industry was destroyed. SURRENDER Japan of\ufb01cially surrendered on 14 August 1945 324\u201325 gg, but many troops continued \ufb01ghting. It was not until September that Japanese forces in Southeast Asia \ufb01nally conceded defeat. NAGASAKI AFTER THE ATOMIC BOMB LIBERATING WOMEN Some 2.5 million women entered the work force between 1940 and 1945, although even as workers Japanese women were regarded as second-class citizens. However, in the postwar period under American occupation, women achieved a considerable degree of emancipation. POSTWAR RECONSTRUCTION Following the war, American occupying forces worked to rebuild Japan\u2019s economy 342\u201343 gg to serve as a bulwark against Soviet aggression. 317","ENDGAME 1945 Potsdam Conference Germany had been defeated. Now it was time to divide up the spoils\u2014and to decide upon the destiny of Japan. The negotiations conducted at Potsdam by the leaders of the victorious powers were to play an important part in shaping the postwar world. N one of the leaders was under Feeding the hungry any illusion about the likely Germany had been left devastated\u2014and destitute\u2014in dif\ufb01culty of \ufb01nding common defeat. One of the first tasks facing the Allies had been ground when the conference got to set up soup kitchens, like this one in Mannheim. under way on July 17. This had been trying enough under the it.\u201d Winston Churchill, he found necessities of war. They already \u201cgood but patchy \u2026 perhaps knew that, in the peace to come, too ready to indulge in long they would each have different dissertations, which were objectives and priorities; already, evidently not to President each was coming under different Truman\u2019s taste.\u201d Joseph Stalin, domestic pressures. he wrote, \u201cspoke quietly, shortly, in little staccato sentences.\u201d He Power and preoccupation was \u201coften humorous, never offensive; direct and uncompromising Quite how compelling these might \u2026 His eyes looked to me humorous, be was brought home to all when, and often showed as mere slits, but he halfway through the conference, had a trick of looking up when he was on July 26, the news came in of thinking or speaking, to the ceiling to Churchill\u2019s defeat in the General the right, and much of the time he Election. He might be his nation\u2019s would be pulling at a Russian cigarette.\u201d hero, but he was no longer to be The Soviet leader had been portrayed in their prime minister: his successor, the Western propaganda of the pre-war the Labour leader Clement Attlee, period as a blood-soaked tyrant\u2014and immediately took his place at the not without reason as spectacular conference negotiating table. BEFORE \u201cI can deal with Stalin. He is honest\u2014but smart as hell.\u201d Victory in Europe was not surprising. Since America\u2019s entry into the war, and German HARRY S. TRUMAN, FROM AN ENTRY IN HIS DIARY, JULY 17, 1945 defeats at Stalingrad, Kursk, and in Africa, it had been a question not of \u201cif\u201d but \u201cwhen.\u201d Stalin also had worries. His intelligence crimes had been documented against A NEW EUROPE chiefs had already brought news of the The Allied nations had long been making careful Americans\u2019 new bomb: the developing him even then. Westerners were so The victors plans for victory ff\u0001202\u201303 but, while Stalin situation was going to require the most and the Western leaders had managed to put careful handling. As for Truman, he had surprised to discover this monster was Since the \u201cBig Three\u201d met at Yalta, Harry S. Truman their differences to one side for the moment, to manage his negotiations with Stalin as \ufb01rmly as he could, securing the best even halfway human that they allowed (center) had followed Franklin D. Roosevelt into the CAPTURED GERMAN STANDARDS possible outcome for the United States and its Western allies. At the same time, themselves to be charmed by this presidency weeks before the conference, while British it seemed likely that they would disrupt the it was important not to let it be known postwar peace. Germany had been divided exactly how strong a hand he thought affable \u201cUncle Joe.\u201d premier, Clement Attlee (left), replaced Winston Churchill into de facto zones after the war. Now the he had, lest it become too clear, too victorious Allies were going to try to put the soon, what the US was planning. halfway through. \u201cUncle Joe\u201d was apparently a fixture. beleaguered country back together as a preliminary to reconstructing devastated Personal relations Clearing up the mess Europe as a whole. The leaders also differed greatly in their In the course of their journey to the Here too, though, perspectives differed: 318 personal styles. The British Solicitor- General, Walter Monckton\u2014a witness conference, the leaders had been given the German assault on the Soviet Union of the talks\u2014recorded his impressions of the leaders taking part. Harry S. ample opportunity to see the shattered had left whole cities plundered and vast Truman was brief and to the point, he said: he \u201chad come prepared on each state that Germany was in. Major cities areas laid waste. The Russians were less subject with a short, \ufb01rm, declaratory statement of US policy, and when he had lost up to 40 eager to rebuild had said his little piece he did little in subsequent discussion except reaf\ufb01rm percent of their Potsdam, situated southwest of Berlin, Germany than to homes; displaced was famous in German history as a take down any persons wandered favorite spot of King Frederick the surviving factories about, and feral Great\u2014the monarch who had built up they could \ufb01nd and children lived in Prussian militarism in the 18th century. ship them back east packs among the for reassembly in ruins. The country\u2019s industrial the USSR. It was an understandable infrastructure had largely been reaction, Westerners admitted. destroyed and most of its people did The dismantling of the Nazi state might not have enough to eat. While all agreed have been considered uncontroversial, that Germany had to be punished, it but here too important differences soon nevertheless seemed important that emerged. All agreed on the \u201cFour reconstruction should be a priority. Ds\u201d\u2014demilitarization, de-Nazi\ufb01cation,","POTSDAM CONFERENCE AFTER The immediate business of the Potsdam Conference concerned the reconstruction of Germany\u2014and the defeat of Japan. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST The main protagonists were looking to the future, and seeking to shape the postwar world to their advantage. The longer negotiations went on, the clearer it became that the parties could never agree\u2014even on the most apparently uncontentious issues. As the wrangling over Germany\u2019s reconstruction went on, the East and West administered their respective zones in their own way: the resulting partition 340\u201341 gg was to last for 40 years. A NEW REALITY Despite warm words at Potsdam, the chill between East and West was palpable: the Cold War 348\u201349 gg\u0001was already under way. The Soviet Union would now spend the next half century trying to overtake the Americans in the \u201carms race.\u201d This was to be half a century in which the world would be living in constant fear of a nuclear war. THE TOP ALLIED GENERALS IN BERLIN democratization, and decartelization\u2014 even if the Americans had been willing A few days into the conference, on July US PRESIDENT (1884\u20131972) but there was no overall consensus on what these meant. If the Soviets\u2019 idea to agree to such a deal, it would have 21, Truman received a telegram from HARRY S. TRUMAN of \u201cdemocratization\u201d was at odds with those of the Western Allies, so was found no favor with the fanatics in the New Mexico desert con\ufb01rming that A farmer\u2019s son from Missouri, Truman their interpretation of the word served as an artillery captain in WW1 and \u201cdecartelization.\u201d To Western capitalists government and the military, who a US atom bomb had successfully been went into politics after it. He faced many it meant the breaking up of the big, economic problems in his \ufb01rst term, but state-supervised corporate cartels of were resolved that the country should tested. On July 24 he took Stalin to one fought a barnstorming campaign to come the Nazi era and their opening up to from behind and win reelection in 1948. free-market competition. To the Soviets, go down \ufb01ghting. side and told him His second term was grueling, and he however, it meant an increase in state decided not to run again in 1952. involvement through a program of When they had 31,000 The number of the news. Stalin wholesale nationalization. \ufb01rst met at Potsdam, Soviet factories was not particularly 319 The other war Stalin made a point destroyed during the war. Stalin was impressed, much to Meanwhile, no one needed reminding of telling Truman anxious to begin rebuilding fast, and the shock of the that war still raged in the Far East, with Japan still de\ufb01ant as the bombs rained that he would now at Germany\u2019s expense. Western delegates, down. Operation Starvation had placed a noose around Japan\u2019s neck which pursue the war in who assumed that was steadily tightening. Some were now having second thoughts and had even the Far East. The president thanked him he had failed to see the signi\ufb01cance of put out secret feelers offering peace in return for retaining the monarchy. But politely; America no longer anticipated the bomb. But he had been aware of its needing help against Japan\u2014nor did it development for some time and had want to be beholden to the Soviets. But already taken steps to set up a similar Roosevelt had pressed the dictator to program in the Soviet Union. make a commitment months before at However, the arms race was a contest Yalta, when the outlook in the East had for the future. Right now, all sides still been in doubt. Stalin was positively agreed that there was a war waiting to eager to undertake a campaign against be won. At the conference\u2019s conclusion, Japan, which, at this stage in the war, on August 2, the \u201cPotsdam Declaration\u201d could have only one outcome\u2014that of was announced. Japan could choose, it bringing the Soviet Union an important said, between \u201cunconditional surrender\u201d territory, on the Paci\ufb01c, at little cost. or \u201cprompt and utter destruction.\u201d","ENDGAME 1945 Medals O7 ARMY MEDAL OF HONOR (US) O5 ASIATIC-PACIFIC The global conflict involved countless individual stories\u2014not just of outstanding gallantry but of quieter courage, of dedicated service and self-sacrifice. All sides CAMPAIGN MEDAL (US) issued medals to acknowledge these contributions. Attitudes amongst the nations varied, as did the significance of the awards: only 180 received the British Victoria Cross, for example, whilst almost 15 million got the \u201cWar Medal\u201d of the Soviet Union. O1 France and Germany Star, issued to all British Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, Hitler forbade his O6 PURPLE HEART (US) Commonwealth personnel who served in France, Belgium, troops from wearing it. Obl War Merit Cross with swords, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Germany after D-Day. awarded by Germany for exceptional service in battle. A cross O2 Africa Star, given by Britain to Commonwealth troops for without swords was awarded to civilians aiding the war e\ufb00ort. service not only in the North African Campaign, but also in Obm Croix de guerre, a French award for bravery in combat. East Africa\u2014and even Malta and Syria. O3 Commemorative Di\ufb00erent degrees of the award are denoted by the various Medal of the Battle of Dunkirk, instituted by Britain in 1948 symbols attached to the ribbon. Obn German Cross Gold to honor those who took part in the Allied evacuation of Class, an award for bravery of a higher rank than the Iron 1940. O4 Burma Star,a British medal issued to all Cross 1st Class. Silver Class was a continuation of the War Commonwealth personnel serving in the Burma campaign. Merit Cross, being an award for exceptional service. O5 Asiatic-Paci\ufb01c Campaign Medal, a US medal, honored Obo Order of the Red Banner, awarded for distinguished all who had served in the Paci\ufb01c Theater. The \ufb01rst medal was service in the Soviet military. The banner reads \u201cWorkers of issued to General Douglas MacArthur. O6 Purple Heart, the World, Unite!\u201d Obp 7th Class, Order of the Rising Sun, awarded to all US personnel wounded or killed in action decorated with three paulownia leaves. Membership of the since April 1917, when the US entered World War I. The order was bestowed for conspicuous service to the Japanese obverse of the medal depicts General George Washington. cause. Obq Medal for the Defense of Stalingrad, awarded by O7 Army Medal of Honor, the most prestigious decoration the USSR to more than 750,000 soldiers and civilians who awarded by the US government, along with versions for the took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, July\u2013November 1942. Navy and Air Force. The Medal of Honor was awarded 464 Obr Medal for the Defense of Leningrad, given by the USSR times during World War II. O8 Silver Star, an American to all those who helped defend the city; over one million medal awarded for special valor in the face of the enemy. were issued. Obs Order of the Red Star, which recognized O9 Iron Cross 2nd Class, a German award for bravery which \u201cexceptional service\u201d in the defense of the Soviet Union\u2014 had to be held before the Iron Cross 1st Class could be though ultimately it had two million recipients. Obt Medal for earned. Obk North African Medal, a German\/Italian medal the Victory Over Germany in the Great Patriotic War, issued to commemorate cooperation in North Africa. When 1941\u201345, given by the USSR to all who fought in the war. O1 FRANCE AND GERMANY O2 AFRICA STAR (BRITAIN) STAR (BRITAIN) O3 COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL OF O4 BURMA STAR (BRITAIN) THE BATTLE OF DUNKIRK (BRITAIN) 320","MEDALS Obm CROIX DE GUERRE (FRANCE) O8 SILVER STAR (US) O9 IRON CROSS 2ND Obp 7TH CLASS, ORDER OF CLASS (GERMANY) THE RISING SUN (JAPAN) Obu NORTH AFRICAN MEDAL Obl WAR MERIT CROSS (GERMANY\/ITALY) WITH SWORDS (GERMANY) Obn GERMAN CROSS, GOLD CLASS (GERMANY) Obo ORDER OF THE RED BANNER (USSR) Obr MEDAL FOR THE DEFENSE OF LENINGRAD (USSR) Obq MEDAL FOR Obs ORDER THE DEFENSE OF OF THE RED STALINGRAD (USSR) STAR (USSR) Obt MEDAL FOR THE VICTORY OVER GERMANY IN THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR, 1941\u201345 (USSR) 321","ENDGAME 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki The dropping of \u201cLittle Boy\u201d and \u201cFat Man\u201d in August 1945 were unprecedented (and so far unrepeated) acts of atomic war. For the world, these historic events marked the beginning of the nuclear age\u2014 for Japan and its people, the impact was immediate and cataclysmic. M ajor John E. Moynihan wrote Enola Gay The \ufb02ash came \ufb01rst, and then a gigantic \u201cNo white cross for Stevie\u201d on The pilot, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., waves from the boom: \u201cthe sky split open over the city,\u201d the bulging body of \u201cLittle Boy\u201d cockpit of his B-29. Below him, his mother\u2019s name, \u201cEnola said one survivor. Within a 1,100-yd before it was loaded on board the B-29. Gay,\u201d has been inscribed on the bomber\u2019s fuselage. (1-km) radius, human bodies literally His young son should surely now be melted in temperatures approaching spared the trauma of receiving news altitude of 1,850 ft (560 m). Then came 5,432\u00b0F (3,000\u00b0C). Further away a of his father\u2019s death: this most lethal of a blinding \ufb02ash, and the plane gave a compression wave destroyed their weapons, he hoped, would ultimately violent judder as the shockwave hit it. internal organs. Survivors staggered in save lives. Then, in the early hours of A second wave followed. \u201cThe city was a daze, stripped of their clothes, their August 6, the plane took off from the hidden by that awful cloud,\u201d Colonel skin \ufb02ayed by the force of the blast. No Paci\ufb01c island airbase of Tinian. Only Tibbets said, \u201cboiling up, mushrooming, one knew to worry about the radiation then did Colonel Paul Tibbets tell his terrible, and incredibly tall.\u201d His tail that was to come. crew just what sort of weapon it was gunner recalled: \u201cA column of smoke that they were carrying in the bomb bay. is rising fast. It has a \ufb01ery red core. Facing defeat Fires are springing up everywhere.\u201d Two other aircraft joined them as they Whether de\ufb01ant or simply dazed and passed Iwo Jima: one with monitoring Hiroshima devastated in denial, Japan\u2019s rulers made no move equipment to collect data on the blast, to meet the demands of the Potsdam the other to take photographs. The two Down below, the people of Hiroshima Declaration. But calamity on this sort peeled away as the plane made its \ufb01nal had been going about their normal lives. of scale could not long be disregarded. approach to Hiroshima and climbed to Defenders had spotted the planes, but Some 70,000 had died at Hiroshima (a a bombing height of 31,000 ft (9,500 m). assumed they were on reconnaissance. \ufb01gure that tripled when radiation took its toll in the years to come). Meanwhile, The bomb was released \u2014and, for what the incendiary raids continued, and the seemed an eternity, nothing happened; Soviets had entered the war with Japan. \u201cLittle Boy\u201d was set to detonate at an This was the \ufb01nal straw. Until now, the BEFORE Soviets had not been at war with Japan. However, in the early hours of August 9, Scientists had for some years speculated on the Red Army crossed into Manchuria in the possibility of harnessing the explosive power of nuclear \ufb01ssion for military use. \u201c I can still picture them in my AMERICA LEADS THE WAY mind\u2014like A number of countries, including Germany, had walking ghosts.\u201d carried out preliminary research. The US e\ufb00ort was stepped up with the building of a top-secret A HIROSHIMA GROCER ON THE VICTIMS, 1945 National Laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1943. Under the direction of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, a team of scientists worked frantically to build\u2014and successfully test\u2014an atomic bomb as part of the \u201cManhattan Project.\u201d The uranium-235 for the \ufb01rst (Hiroshima) bomb was enriched at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; plutonium was used for the second (Nagasaki) device. THE MANHATTAN PROJECT \u201cFat Man\u201d Weighing in at 10,200 lb (4,630 kg), the plutonium 322 bomb dropped on Nagasaki was some 1,300 lb (600 kg) heavier than Hiroshima\u2019s \u201cLittle Boy.\u201d","HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI TECHNOLOGY B-29 SUPERFORTRESS The B-29 was the workhorse of the Japan altitude. The B-29\u2019s high-altitude capabilities campaign, demonstrating its value in came in useful for the attacks on Japan: \u201cLittle Operation Starvation and in the bombing Boy\u201d was dropped from 31,000 ft (9,500 m), of Japan\u2019s cities. A heavy bomber with four and \u201cFat Man\u201d from 29,000 ft (8,800 m). propellers, it was designed for high-altitude, daytime bombing raids. Flying at a height of 40,000 ft (12,000 m), it was out of reach of Japanese \ufb01ghters, so in theory could ply back and forth at will. The reality was that weather seldom allowed su\ufb03cient visibility for e\ufb00ective high-altitude raids. The B-29 could carry a load of 9 tons (20,000 lb) and had a range of 3,750 miles (6,000 km). Later, as Japan\u2019s air defenses were degraded, LeMay increased its range by dispensing with the tail gunner and ordering a lower \ufb02ying Time stood still Hirohito was now waking up to reality. This victim\u2019s watch stopped in the But military fanatics were \ufb01ghting very instant of the blast at Hiroshima on\u2014and even staged an on the morning of August 6. attempted coup. On August 14, Hirohito made force. Defeat was now a radio broadcast in which fast-approaching and he called on the Japanese guaranteed. \u201cIt is to lay down their arms. necessary,\u201d the emperor But his plea reached the said as that day dawned, \u201c people. who reacted \ufb01rst to study and decide on the with disbelief, then broke termination of the war.\u201d down as what he said sank in. In truth, there was little for the \u201cSomething huge had just cracked,\u201d emperor to study and no scope for him wrote French reporter, Robert Guillain, to \u201cdecide\u201d on anything\u2014apart from the \u201cthe proud dream of a greater Japan.\u201d abject surrender the Allied nations had demanded. Just what \u201cutter destruction\u201d AFTER might feel like was brought home that afternoon, when the United States Japan had brutally built an empire, which dropped a second atom bomb, this one it sought to defend to the death. Now, all on the southwestern port of Nagasaki. it could do was submit to occupation. Second time around JAPAN\u2019S FATE Japan had been saved from \u201cutter destruction,\u201d Major Charles W. Sweeney piloted but not before months of heavy bombardment another B-29, named Bock\u2019s Car. \u201cFat had taken its toll. The Allied occupiers now had to Man,\u201d signi\ufb01cantly heavier than \u201cLittle restore order. An occupation government was Boy,\u201d had been armed with plutonium established 304\u201305 gg\u0001under General Douglas rather than uranium-235. It killed some MacArthur, which ruled for the next six years. 50,000 people (again, a \ufb01gure that rose dramatically over the next few years). VICTIMS OF THE REBIRTH OF JAPAN NAGASAKI BLAST The completeness of Since the war was by now all but Japan\u2019s defeat may have over, it has been mooted that this been key to the success bomb was dropped either of its eventual recovery, for scienti\ufb01c reasons\u2014as a as it reinvented itself, macabre true-life test\u2014or \ufb01rst as a constitutional for diplomatic ones\u2014to monarchy, then as an send a warning message to industrializing nation. the Soviet Union. And yet, Within one generation, three days after Hiroshima, an economic rebirth there had been no hint of 342\u201343 gg\u0001would a Japanese surrender. make Japan one of the world\u2019s most important Even now, surrender was manufacturing nations. slow in coming, although the party around Emperor Mushroom cloud Now a macabre emblem of modernity, the smoke sent up by the blast over Nagasaki rose more than 60,000 ft (18,000 m) into the air. 323","EYEWITNESS August 6, 1945 08:15am Hiroshima On the morning of Monday August 6, 1945 an American B-29 known as Enola Gay, flown by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Most of the city was destroyed and more than 70,000 inhabitants were killed instantly from heat, bomb blast, and radiation. Thousands more died later from burns and radiation sickness. A second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki three days later, killing perhaps as many as 50,000 people and destroying nearly half the city. \u201cI had been on student mobilization working at a factory located about four kilometers to the east of here. At 8:15am, I saw a strong flash and felt intense heat \u2026 the window panes in the factory blew up with a huge sound and women screamed in the workshop \u2026 People who were near the windows were bathed in blood. I thought that a bomb [had] directly hit the factory \u2026 To the west, a mushroom cloud was forming over the city of Hiroshima. It was snow-white and rising fast up in the air \u2026 While we were telling each other that something terrible had happened \u2026 and discussing what we should do, crowds of people fleeing the city came in our direction \u2026 We were speechless at the sight of this strange procession \u2026 People looked like they were wearing rags, but what we thought to be rags was actually their peeling skin. As they walked on with wobbly steps, blood dripped from their wounds, deep and wide open, as if somebody scraped out parts of their flesh \u2026 We departed for the city to rescue survivors. Hiroshima had been turned into a hell. When I tried to help up a man lying on the ground, his burnt skin peeled and stuck to my hands. I found a man groaning under a fallen house, but I could not save him because of the approaching fire. Bodies burnt black, people lying dead on the ground like objects, in agony or already dead \u2026 I spent several days in that hell trying to rescue people. In mid- September, I suddenly developed acute A-bomb disease and began \u201dsuffering from high fever, bleeding and loss of hair \u2026 NORI TOHEI, HIROSHIMA HIBAKUSHA (SURVIVOR) Devastated city The atomic bomb completely devastated Hiroshima. Every building within 1 mile (1.6 km) of the impact was destroyed and virtually every building or structure within 3 miles (5 km) was damaged. 324","","ENDGAME 1945 BEFORE Japan Surrenders Japan had entered the war hoping to expand The Pacific War had been a race war, spectacular in its savagery, but it had ended in apocalyptic the empire it had been building through the slaughter. There were real questions as to whether a genuine accommodation between winners and 1930s, and consolidate the power it had achieved as head of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere ff 146\u201347. AN ABRUPT END losers would be found; whether peace was going to be possible between them. Now, after four years of bloodshed, the country A hiatus followed Hirohito\u2019s military of\ufb01cers and statesmen had been forced into unconditional surrender surrender broadcast: most people for war crimes, as had been by the dropping of the two atomic bombs on shut the doors to their homes agreed between the victorious Hiroshima and Nagasaki ff\u0001320\u201321. The bombs had brought the war to a close with and sat listless. Those who had waited Allies in Europe. a jolting, disorientating abruptness. in vast crowds to hear the \u201cimperial In the meantime, MacArthur rescript\u201d went on their separate ways and his forces brought in food without even speaking to one another, supplies. Whatever crimes had either weeping to themselves or been committed, the Japanese simply stunned. Most of his subjects could not simply be allowed had never heard their emperor\u2019s to starve; with the agriculture voice before: to hear it now in such and transport infrastructures bitter circumstances heaped confusion in tatters, this was what was A BOTTLE MELTED AT HIROSHIMA upon confusion, shock upon shock. An happening. The Americans eerie calm descended on the country: MacArthur signs the surrender prioritized the organization of effective HONOR AND DEATH not only did the people have to adjust The formal surrender was not signed until September 2, distribution for supplies, although it Japan had been preparing itself for defeat, to a new mentality, but the Allies were on board the battleship the USS Missouri. Japan\u2019s was to be several years before hunger but had fully expected to go down \ufb01ghting. still far away, and in no position to take submission was unconditional, although the emperor\u2019s ceased to be a threat. The narrative its forces had been fashioning\u2014 charge. Days passed; nowhere was an status as a sovereign was to be respected. in Iwo Jima, in Okinawa, and, until now Japan occupying soldier to be seen, yet the A constitutional monarchy itself\u2014had been one of patriotic loyalty to idea of renewed resistance does not seem resistant to the idea of surrender at MacArthur was widely criticized in the the death. That narrative had found its most to have occurred. Those who had once the end. On the front line, they had West for his \u201ckid-glove\u201d treatment of powerful expression in the suicidal courage felt most strongly that they should \ufb01ght every motive to \ufb01ght on. Even if they a ruler who had by no means been an of Operation Ten-Go and the self-sacri\ufb01cing to the death were now impelled by that were ready to surrender, it was no easy innocent bystander during his country\u2019s \ufb02ights of the kamikaze pilots ff\u0001312\u201313. same patriotic spirit to accept their matter to disengage from a struggle with slide into aggressive nationalism. But emperor\u2019s decision without question. enemies who were keen to \ufb01ght on. even as he disarmed and dismantled A FUTURE FOR JAPAN The struggle continues Having invaded Manchuria as recently the military, MacArthur lent discreet The people of Japan were going to have as August 9, the Soviet Union had no support to the imperial house. He hoped to \ufb01nd a new narrative to live by. The only The war was not yet over for Japanese interest in ceasing hostilities they saw the emperor could be the \ufb01gurehead of problem was that no one knew yet how the forces \ufb01ghting overseas. Communication as bringing important territorial gains. a new, democratic, peace-loving Japan. postwar story would be written. was dif\ufb01cult at such distances, and many On August 18, with the region secured, troops were completely cut off\u2014if not along with Sakhalin and the northern AFTER by geographical barriers then by enemy part of Korea, their forces attacked the armies. Not all Japanese strategically vital Kuril Islands. of\ufb01cers were interested Surrender had come as a cataclysmic shock in heeding the order The occupation begins when it did come: the Douglas MacArthur, supreme Allied to the Japanese, and had undermined their military had been some commander for the Paci\ufb01c, arrived very sense of who they were. of the most fanatical in in Japan with his occupying army on the imperial cause from August 28, with the formal signing of the JAPAN\u2019S REBIRTH the start and the most \u201cInstrument of Surrender\u201d arranged for Paradoxically, though, this gave the Japanese September 2, aboard the battleship USS an ideal opportunity for a fresh start; a \u201cclean America\u2019s Tianjin triumph Missouri. MacArthur received Japan\u2019s slate\u201d on which they could begin again. So American troops liberate the city surrender on behalf of the Allies. It was complete was Japan\u2019s reinvention of itself of Tianjin, in China, occupied by offered by the defeated nation\u2019s foreign 342\u201343 gg,\u0001that, within decades of defeat, the Japanese since 1937. The minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu. it would become an important economic Chinese had more tumults and Japan was no longer a sovereign state: power. For the moment, however, things were travails to come. For the time its own administration was in the hands going to get worse before they got better, as being, however, they could of an occupation government. This was radiation sickness and starvation began to rejoice in their freedom from mainly to comprise American military take their toll 334\u201335 gg. the Japanese occupation. of\ufb01cers and civil servants, though there would be representatives from Britain, FAR EASTERN CONFRONTATION \u201cWe have resolved to pave the way for Australia, and New Zealand, too. The China, happily rid of its Japanese invaders, a grand peace for all the generations to overseas empire was to be broken up: was free to resume the long-standing civil war come by enduring the unendurable the US was to have authority in several in which Mao Zedong\u2019s Communists were strategic Paci\ufb01c island groups as well as ultimately to prevail 346\u201347 gg.\u0001 supervising the government of South Korea; the Soviet Union was to keep its With the new world superpowers, America conquests in Manchuria, North Korea, and the Soviet Union, already locked in hostility in Europe, a second front was now set to open and su\ufb00ering the insu\ufb00erable.\u201d and the Kuril Islands; the Republic of in the Cold War 348\u201349 gg. China was to take Taiwan. A tribunal EMPEROR HIROHITO, \u201cIMPERIAL RESCRIPT ON SURRENDER\u201d, AUGUST 15, 1945 was to be established to try leading 326","The surrender ceremony All the pomp and circumstance in the world could not hide the extent of Japan\u2019s humiliation. The country had for years been pursuing the goal of imperial power: that it should have to bow the knee was unthinkable.","","9 AFTERMATH 1946 \u20141950 In the postwar world borders were redrawn. The USSR dominated the East, taking control of Central and Eastern Europe, while Germany remained in two halves for decades. The US, now the most powerful nation in the world, and the USSR, began a new war of ideologies.","AF TER MATH 1946\u20131951 AFTERMATH In France reprisals against Berlin was divided Israel was founded in May Nazi collaborators were into American, Soviet, 1948 by the Jews of Palestine violent but short-lived. At British, and French after the UN had proposed a plan first some collaborators zones. In 1948 the for partition in 1947. This was were executed without trial, Soviets attempted to opposed by neighboring Arab while many women who blockade the Allied states, which promptly invaded. had slept with Germans part of the city, but were branded by having it was kept supplied their heads shaved. by an airlift. Y ICELAND A N W E EUROPE R D NO FINLAND WE S Faeroe Islands NORWAY FINLAND WEST EAST USSR (to Denmark) SWEDEN GERMANY GERMANY ic Sea UNITED POLAND KINGDOM North AT L A N T I C FRANCE I TA LY Sea OCEAN S PA I N Caspian SeaBlack Sea DENMARK B a l t TUNIS TURKEY IT UNITED SYRIA STANNISTAN TIBET KINGDOM MOROCCO ISRAEL IRAQ I R A N AFGHPAAKI (Communist Chinese EGYPT conquest in progress) REPUBLIC NETH. EAST P O L A N D USSR L I B YA KUWAIT OF IRELAND NEPAL LUBXE. LG. EWRMESAGTNEYRMACNZEYCHOSLOVAKIA S PA N I S H ALGERIA JORDAN BAHRAIN BHUTAN SAHARA QATAR SAUDI INDIA ARABIA OMAN CEYLON FRANCE AUSTRIA HUNGARY FRENCH WEST AFRICA CAMEROONS ANGLO - YEMEN ADEN NDIAN T SWITZ. EGYPTIAN PROTECTORATE YUGOSLAVIA ROMANIA GAMBIA (trusteeship) S PA I N BULGARIA SUDAN FRENCH PORTUGUESE GUINEA SOMALILAND Black Sea SIERRA LEONE NIGERIA FRENCH ETHIOPIA EQUATORIAL BRITISH A AFRICA SOMALILAND PORTUGAL LY LIBERIA GOLD CAMEROONS COAST (trusteeship) ALB. UGAN KENYAM O Z A M B I Q U E DASOMALIA (trusteeship) M ed iter GR EECE TURKEY BELGIAN TANGANYIKA IA CONGO GIBRALTAR ER TUNIS an (trusteeship) MOROCCO r NYASALAND a n I A e SYRIA NORTHERN Sea CYPRUS IRAQ ANGOLA RHODESIA LEBANON (to Portugal) LG LIBYA ISRAEL SOUTHERN OCEAN (temporary UK\/France RHODESIA EGYPT JORDAN BECHUANALAND MADAGASCAR administration) (protectorate) SOUTH SWAZILAND AFRICA BASUTOLAND Hermann Goering, Vienna, the capital of India and the most prominent of Austria, suffered the Pakistan gained the Nazi leaders to stand same fate as Berlin, independence trial at Nuremberg, was from Britain in sentenced to death for being divided into sectors 1947, an event war crimes in October by the victorious Allies. celebrated by vast Here, US troops march crowds in Delhi, 1946, but committed past a huge red star the Indian capital. suicide the night before bearing the images of Lenin and Stalin. he was due to hang. I n the postwar years national borders were crudely shifted Japan\u2019s imperial possessions in Asia evaporated. So, for example, and rearranged. Germany was split down the middle, the puppet state of Manchukuo, which had been the Chinese while Poland, wiped from the map by the Molotov-Ribbentrop province of Manchuria, reverted to Chinese rule and became the Pact of 1939, reappeared 100 miles (160 km) to the west at the main bone of contention between Nationalists and Communists. end of the war. The other territories grabbed by Stalin before the German invasion of Russia in 1941 were absorbed into the USSR: The European victors also let go of their overseas empires. Britain, Finnish Karelia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Moldavia. France, and the Netherlands withdrew from Southeast Asia, and new independent nations came into being as they left. India won its 330","AF TER MATH 1946\u20131951 1946\u20141951 In the Korean War (1950\u20131953) Communist North Korea, backed by China, fought against South Korea, backed by UN\u2014mainly US\u2014troops. Here, refugees flee from advancing Communist forces. Alaska (to US) CANADA MONGOLIA The United Nations acquired its headquarters in New York in 1949. PACIFIC Dominated by the tall Secretariat Building, it stands on international territory outside NORTH U N ITED STATES the jurisdiction of the United States. KOREA OF AMERICA PEOPLE\u2019S OCEAN REPUBLIC SOUTH J A P A N KOREA OF CHINA The People\u2019s Republic of China was proclaimed in EAST PAKISTAN 1949 when Mao Zedong\u2019s DOMINICAN REPUBLIC REPUBLIC OF Mariana Communists defeated Hawaiian Islands MEXICO CUBA VIRGIN ISLANDS AT L A N T I C CHINA Islands Chiang Kai-shek\u2019s Nationalists. (to US) HAITI LEEWARD ISLANDS TRUST TERRITORY BRITISH HONDURAS HONDURAS WINDWARD ISLANDS GUATEMALA NICARAGUA LAND PHILIPPINES GUAM OF THE PACIFIC ISLANDS BARBADOS OCEAN EL SALVADOR TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO VIETNAM Marshall Islands BRITISH Caroline COSTA RICA VENEZUELA BRITISH GUIANA NORTH BORNEO PANAMA DUTCH GUIANA Islands BRUNEI MALAYA SARAWAK Christmas Gilbert Phoenix Island COLOMBIA FRENCH GUIANA Islands Islands DUTCH TERRITORY Nauru ECUADOR NEW GUINEA OF NEW GUINEA Ellice Cook INDONESIA Solomon Islands Islands BRAZIL (trusteeship) Islands AGUAY PAPUA PERU PORTUGUESE WESTERN AMERICAN TIMOR SAMOA SAMOA New (trusteeship) French Polynesia Hebrides Fiji Tonga BOLIVIA New Caledonia PAR AUSTRALIA CHILE NEW URUGUAY ZEALAND ARGENTINA Eniwetok in the THE WORLD 1946\u20131951 Marshall Islands was Frontiers 1951 taken from the Japanese by the Americans in 1944. After the war, the atoll was evacuated and used for nuclear testing. independence in 1947, and instantly became the largest democracy authoritarian state socialism championed by the USSR. The former on Earth. The stricken Jews of the world achieved their long-held camp included all the English-speaking nations of the world and the dream of a national home when in June 1948 the state of Israel countries of Western Europe. The latter encompassed China (for a was constituted in the Biblical land of Canaan. time), Stalin\u2019s Eastern European vassal states, and the revolutionary Yet the main shift was not cartographical, but ideological. The new regimes that emerged from the wreckage of empire. Postwar history world order was dominated by two nations and two philosophies: is the story of the long, dangerous tussle between two geopolitical liberal Western democracy under the leadership of America, and giants\u2014one in the East, the other in the West. 331","AF TER MATH 1946\u20131951 TIMELINE 1946\u20141951 The Nuremberg Trials O The Iron Curtain O The United Nations O The Berlin Airlift O Occupied Japan O The Loss of Empires O The Two Germanies O Red China O The Cold War O Nuclear Weapons O The Korean War O Remembering the War 1946 1947 1948 JANUARY I 1947 JANUARY 30 First meeting of UN In the Chinese Civil Assassination of General Assembly in War the Communists Gandhi, whose London. 51 nations are begin to gain the non-violent passive represented. upper hand against resistance to British the Nationalists. rule had done so much MARCH 5 to win independence Churchill delivers \u201cIron Nationalist troops in China for India. Curtain\u201d speech in surrender to the PLA Fulton, Missouri. FEBRUARY 25 Communist takeover Mahatma Gandhi Churchill before making in Czechoslovakia. his speech at Fulton NOVEMBER 2 MAY 14 Harry S. Truman JULY 1 Proclamation of the elected to a second US Army Constabulary, state of Israel. The term as US president. a special force for following day the policing occupied armies of the country\u2019s Germany and Austria Arab neighbors invade. becomes operational. Israel wins the ensuing war and 750,000 Palestinians flee their former homeland. Shoulder patch of the US JULY 4 MARCH 12 JULY 18 Army Constabulary in Germany US grants independence President Truman British seize the to the Philippines, but outlines the so-called \u201cExodus,\u201d a ship of retains a large number \u201cTruman Doctrine,\u201d a Jewish immigrants to of military bases in policy of providing aid Palestine. The 4,000 the country. to countries threatened would-be immigrants by communist takeover. are forced to return His immediate concern to displaced persons JUNE 23 New West German is to provide assistance camps in Germany. New currency currency introduced in 1948 to Greece and Turkey. introduced in West DECEMBER 23 AUGUST 15 Berlin. Next day Soviets Tojo Hideki, Japanese MAY 3 India gains cut off all road and rail prime minister, is Japan establishes independence. links to the western hanged for war crimes. a constitutional Partition of the former part of the city. The democracy. British dominion into Western Allies respond Berlin airlift India and Pakistan. by organizing massive airlift of fuel and food. JANUARY\u2013JUNE Small ship full of Jewish JUNE 5 NOVEMBER 29 In first half of the year refugees arriving at Haifa US aid program The UN General thousands of illegal for rebuilding Europe\u2019s Assembly passes Jewish refugees reach NOVEMBER 20 shattered economies a resolution calling Palestine. Later in the Start of war in Vietnam is announced by for the partition of year British authorities between Viet Minh and Secretary of State Palestine between expel new refugees and the French colonial George Marshall. The Arabs and Jews. intern them in Cyprus. forces. It ends in 1954 Marshall Plan becomes with the division of the an important part of 332 country into North and America\u2019s fight against South Vietnam. communism.","TIMELINE 1946\u20141951 \u201c The United States must regard the Soviet Union as a rival, not a partner. It must expect no happy coexistence of the socialist and capitalist worlds.\u201d GEORGE F. KENNAN, FORMER US DEPUTY CHIEF OF MISSION IN MOSCOW, JULY 1947 1949 1950 1951 JANUARY 25 AUGUST 1 JANUARY 13 1950 JANUARY 4 JULY 10 Foundation of Comecon The Dutch agree to Soviet representative In Korea, Chinese and Start of peace talks in (Council for Mutual a cease-fire after four at the UN protests at North Korean forces Korean War, but fighting Economic Assistance). years of fighting to continued presence of retake Seoul. goes on for two more The first members are prevent Indonesia from Nationalist China on years, when a the USSR, Bulgaria, gaining independence. the Security Council JANUARY 16 demilitarized zone is Poland, Czechoslovakia, In December they rather than the new The French, fighting established along Hungary, and Romania. formally give up all People\u2019s Republic to hold on to their original frontier their former colonies in of China. colonies in Southeast between the two News of the Soviet atomic Southeast Asia except Asia, defeat the Viet states\u2014the 38th bomb in the Western press Dutch New Guinea. Minh outside Hanoi. parallel. AUGUST 29 FEBRUARY 1950 French poster highlighting First test of an atomic The People\u2019s Republic communist threat to Indochina bomb by the USSR of China and the USSR adds a nuclear sign the Treaty of 15 SEPTEMBER dimension to the Friendship, Alliance, Successful landing of Cold War. and Mutual Assistance. UN forces, chiefly US Marines, at Inchon cuts Signatures to the North supply lines to the Atlantic Treaty North Korean forces to the south. APRIL 4 38th Parallel, the border SEPTEMBER 8 North Atlantic Treaty 22 SEPTEMBER between North and South Korea Treaty of Peace with signed in Washington UN forces enter Japan signed in San by the United States, Seoul, which they FEBRUARY 11 Francisco by 49 Britain, France, Belgium, recapture after days UN forces advance nations. USSR opposes the Netherlands, of fierce house-to- across the 38th terms of the treaty and Luxembourg, Portugal, house fighting. Parallel, taking the does not sign it. Italy, Norway, Denmark, fight into North Korea. Canada, and Iceland. President Truman at signing of the Japanese peace treaty OCTOBER 1 JUNE 25 1950 MARCH 18 Mao Zedong proclaims North Korea invades UN forces retake the People\u2019s Republic South Korea. United the city of Seoul. of China. The defeated Nations condemns this Nationalist forces as an act of aggression MAY 12 under Chiang Kai-Shek and asks member Americans test their establish small rival states to go to the first hydrogen bomb state, the Republic of aid of the south. on Eniwetok Atoll in China, on the island the Pacific. of Taiwan. US troops in Korea Mao Zedong MAY JUNE 13 Stalin lifts the Berlin OCTOBER 7 UN forces take blockade. German Democratic Pyongyang, the North Republic (East Korean capital. MAY 23 Germany) established Formation of the in the Soviet sector German Federal of Germany. Republic (West Germany). 333","AF TER MATH 1946\u20131951 Counting the Cost Millions died in the war, and for millions of survivors the ordeal continued after the guns stopped. A refugee crisis of unimaginable proportions developed in Europe as people carried far by the tides of conflict tried to return home, or else fell victim to waves of mass expulsion. BEFORE Leaving the broken Reich Displaced Persons (foreign forced laborers By any measure, World War II was far and of the German Reich and areas occupied by away the most costly and destructive the Germans) depart Munich in 1948 heading con\ufb02ict of all time. toward France. THE PRICE OF WAR T he toll of the war was unequally Union. More than 12 million The \ufb01nancial investment of the warring nations spread. Poland lost 16 percent of Soviet citizens were killed in the was huge. The US spent about $341 billion its population; the US less than course of the German invasion on its war effort. Russian historians have one third of one percent. Four times as and retreat\u2014in addition to the estimated that the war cost the Soviet Union many Allied citizens died as Axis ones; 10 million \ufb01ghting men and as much as 30 percent of its national wealth. and almost two thirds of those killed women who perished. Hitler poured $272 billion into his in the war were non-combatants. The second factor in the high death campaign for a Europe-wide Reich ff\u0001220. rate among civilians was Hitler\u2019s policy The 16 million non-combatant of exterminating all Jews, wherever LOST TREASURES casualties of the war in China explain they fell into Nazi hands. Almost 8 Thousands of important buildings and the huge preponderance of deaths on million Jews lived in Europe before irreplaceable works of art were obliterated the Allied side, and the odd fact that the rise of Hitler, and they represented by bombs and shells. No price can be placed more civilians died in the war than a vibrant, rich, and ancient culture. on what was lost: the baroque splendor of soldiers in battle. And these numbers Dresden, Wren\u2019s London churches, the majestic are swollen by two separate but related Returning home palaces of Leningrad, and much more. aspects of Hitler\u2019s war. The \ufb01rst is the murderous policy of the Nazis toward In the immediate aftermath of the THE HUMAN COST the civilian population of the Soviet Modern estimates of the total death toll range con\ufb02ict, no one was counting the from 55 million to more than 70 million. dead. It was as much as anyone could do just to bury them. In the spring of 1945, the living represented a far more pressing problem for the victorious Allied governments. During the last weeks of the war, the western areas of Germany were \ufb02ooded with civilian \u201cThe soldier must go home \u2026 refugees \ufb02eeing from the Red Army. the refugee return to his country.\u201d After the surrender, these displaced WINSTON CHURCHILL, FROM HIS BOOK, \u201cTRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY\u201d, 1954 people swelled the numbers of homeless Germans\u2014the many thousands whose homes had been destroyed, or who had gone on the road to look for their missing relatives. In later months many German ex-POWs and soldiers returned that were ceded to other countries at home to \ufb01nd that their families were the end of the war. The Allied policy dead, or that their wives had made a toward these people was that they new life with someone else in their should be expelled from their homes, absence. For many and resettled in years after the end of the war, an 110 MILLION The one of the zones number of occupation. army of these of people who served in the armed forces But redrawing rootless Heimkehrer of the \ufb01ghting nations during World War II. national borders (homecomers) 1.7 billion people participated in some way. was no mere continued to drift cartographic from city to stricken city. An of\ufb01cial exercise. It entailed massive, and estimate written in 1948 put their sometimes fatal, upheaval for millions number close to 2 million. of people and on some occasions, A worse fate befell those Germans forced migrations were marked by who lived outside the pre-war borders vengeance. There were three million of Germany, or in the eastern lands Germans in the Sudetenland, which reverted to Czechoslovakia at the end The defeated return home of the war. They were herded out of Many German soldiers found themselves living on their homes at gunpoint or beaten the bomb-torn streets\u2014an army of uniformed tramps. across the border. When the borders of They were among the lucky ones: they were at least free, Poland were shifted westward, many and in their homeland. Poles in the east of the country found 334","COUNTING THE COST AFTER In the decades following the war, some of the arbitrary injustices that took place were addressed by national governments. AN ISRAELI FLAG IN JERUSALEM REGRETS AND REDRESS In 1952 West Germany agreed to pay more than 3 billion marks to the state of Israel as heir to victims of the Holocaust who had no surviving family. This money helped the Israeli state 344 gg to take root in its \ufb01rst, most fragile years. In 1995 Japan set up a fund to pay compensation to surviving \u201ccomfort women,\u201d the mostly Korean and Chinese women forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army. Each victim received a letter from the Japanese prime minister: \u201c\u2026 I extend anew my most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and su\ufb00ered incurable physical and psychological wounds.\u201d VICTIMS, NOT TRAITORS During the glasnost era of the 1980s, the plight of Russians who fell into German hands was reassessed: they were now seen not as traitors, but as the victims of two terror regimes. For the majority of these unfortunate individuals, rehabilitation was long since posthumous. themselves in what was now Soviet Fractured streets Others Soviet Union Japan Others Soviet Union territory, and many Germans found Berlin in 1946 was a city of rubble. Much of the spoil 1,422,500 10,700,000 1,000,000 8,450,600 12,400,000 themselves in what was now western was dumped on the Brandenburg plain, where it formed Poland. All these people were then an 262-ft (80-m) high artificial hill. Japan \u201crepatriated,\u201d and cities changed their 2,120,000 names and their character. Polish Lwow became the Soviet-Ukrainian of the Yalta Agreement, Soviet citizens Italy Italy city of Lvov; Breslau, emptied of its were to be repatriated, regardless of 301,400 153,100 Germans, was repopulated with Poles their own wishes. All of them were and renamed Wroclaw. sent back to Russia, where they were Germany Germany uniformly treated as traitors and 5,533,000 1,760,000 Slave labor and gulags consigned to the gulag. France France Perhaps the most hapless and tragic So the end of World War II was not 217,600 350,000 group of survivors were the \ufb01ve the joyful day it should have been. It million Soviet citizens who had been heaped unhappiness upon hardship Poland Poland deported to Germany in the course and despair for many individuals, 160,000 China 5,440,000 of the war. Some had been virtually families, urban populations, and ethnic kidnapped by the advancing Germans groups. The cost of the war comprises 3,800,000 Britain and United States China Britain and and sent west as slave laborers; others not just the the untold destruction and Commonwealth 416,800 16,200,000 Commonwealth were captured Russian soldiers who the many millions of war dead, but the 575,000 had volunteered to \ufb01ght for the trauma endured by the uncountable 1,568,500 Wehrmacht rather than starve in a bereaved, the myriad individual futures prisoner of war camp. Under the terms blighted beyond repair. Even now the Military deaths during World War II Civilian deaths between 1937 and 1945 pain of it has not entirely gone away. The Red Army bore the brunt of the war against Chinese civilians suffered greatly at the hands of the Germany. As a result, the Soviet Union suffered by Japanese during the 1937\u201345 Sino-Japanese War. The far the greatest number of military casualties. figures above include victims of the Holocaust. 335","EYEWITNESS 1945 Postwar Refugees When the war ended millions of dispossessed and homeless people were on the move in Europe. Made up of many different nationalities, they included concentration camp survivors, prisoners of war, and those transported as slave labor to Nazi-occupied territories. Camps and assembly centers were set up throughout Europe where displaced persons (DPs) were housed, fed, and eventually sent onward. \u201cYou have to look through a block of ice to get the proper perspective on that first winter in Wildflecken \u2026 12,000 Poles frozen in with the eighteen UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] men and women assigned to care for them \u2026 All life reduced to the stark simplicity of the supply line. Weekly boxcars of food and coal from Army depots in W\u00fcrzburg [Germany] appeared automatically at our railroad station \u2026 Every hour not given to crisis or sudden arrival was occupied with block visiting. We had some 2800 rooms in the camp in which the Poles were settling in for their winter in Slavic style. They nailed windows to stay shut \u2026 bound babies like papooses \u2026 and swung ever-burdened clotheslines \u2026 The entire scale of the human condition could be seen in any single room \u2026 It might be a bachelor\u2019s room bleak and bare \u2026 Or \u2026 a room where two or three families from the same village \u2026 had managed to get together to create \u2026 a semblance of the home they had left behind \u2026 Most generally it would be a room into which the billeting committees had thrust heterogeneous families according to their size \u2026 There were the rooms that always caught at one\u2019s heart, \u201dfor they were partitioned off into family cubicles \u2026 KATHRYN HULME, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, WILDLECKEN UNRRA DISPLACED PERSONS CAMP \u201cFirst we had the clothes which we wore there [Bergen-Belsen], which [were] full of disease and lice. We had to go through showers, then some powder \u2026 They gave us different clothes \u2026 and we were assigned so many people to a room \u2026 People in Feldafing [camp] were from all over Europe. It wasn\u2019t only from Poland. We had Hungarian Jews, Rumanian Jews, Czech Jews, and also Greek Jews in this camp. Everyone just walking around and trying to mingle and find someone [relatives] \u2026 we never did. But what the Americans also did is organize art schools. They brought in films. They \u2026 organized our people, the survivors that were musicians and also traveling from other camps \u2026 But the problem was, there \u201dwas no future in being there. Where do we go from there? FELA WASCHAU, BERGEN-BELSEN SURVIVOR, DESCRIBING THE FELDAFING DISPLACED PERSONS CAMP, NEAR MUNICH, THE FIRST ALL-JEWISH DPS CAMP Europe\u2019s displaced peoples Between 1945 and 1947 UNRRA set up more than 700 DPs camps throughout Europe, where the homeless were given shelter, food, and medical treatment before being repatriated or sent on to make new lives elsewhere. 336","","AF TER MATH 1946\u20131951 BEFORE The Fate of the Defeated After the war the Allies divided Germany The victors\u2019 armies occupied Germany and Japan, where they found a large proportion of the population into four zones, each under the jurisdiction homeless and hungry. Devastation was psychological as well as physical: the German and the Japanese of one of the victorious nations: USSR, the sense of nationhood lay in ruins\u2014like their shattered cities\u2014and had to be rebuilt, brick by brick. US, Britain, and France. Japan was placed wholly under American control. I n 1943 the Allies had agreed on a state. The US vision, as expressed by the such geopolitical concerns. Much of the policy of unconditional surrender, NEW REGIMES knowing that their war aim was not secretary of treasury, Henry population in both countries was The Soviet zone in eastern Germany, comprising merely to defeat the Axis militarily, the territory occupied by Russian troops but also to obliterate the political Morgenthau, called for Germany struggling merely to survive. Food as they advanced ff\u0001305, was the largest of regimes and aggressive nationalist the four. It included all of the old state of philosophies of Japan and Germany. to be stripped of all its shortages in Germany were Prussia, which was seen by the Russians as the historic seat of German militarism, and so No one was sure how to achieve this. modern industry and acute, and many people the geographical source of Nazi aggression. Stalin It was by no means clear that Germany was very glad to have this part of Germany under would even be allowed to exist as an reduced to an almost who had survived both his sway. In the West the US took control of independent country ever again. southern Germany, and Britain administered Stalin\u2019s intention seems to have been medieval state of area bombing and the the north. French forces occupied a strip of to redivide the country into dozens of territory bordering Switzerland and France itself. individually powerless statelets. France pastoralism. This plan Allied invasion Japan, meanwhile, was occupied by American had a similar scheme: the Rhineland troops under General Douglas MacArthur and Saarland would become satellites was quietly dropped nowsuccumbed to ff\u0001244\u201345, who for six years was in e\ufb00ect ruled from Paris, the industrial Ruhr the military ruler of the cowed Japanese would be an international zone, and as the Cold War malnutrition. The \ufb01rst people. Little by little, both Germany and Japan the rest of Germany a jigsaw-like were remade in the image of their occupiers. confederation rather than a sovereign gained pace and and most frequent 338 Germany\u2019s industrial victims were children base became a and babies. valuable resource. In Japan hunger was just as endemic, and the Facing starvation black market universal. Everyday reality for the US Army Constabulary badge One Tokyo judge refused German people\u2014and The force created to police occupied to buy food illegally, also for the Japanese\u2014 Germany and Austria (1946\u201352) choosing to starve to death was far removed from wore this distinctive shoulder patch. on his of\ufb01cial rations.","TH E FATE OF TH E DEF EATED people more sympathetic to the disbanded, and a disavowal of militarism Tojo Hideki in the dock values of the occupying powers was written into the constitution of Convicted of \u201ccrimes against peace,\u201d on the eve of his and weaned them away from 1947. Article Nine stated that Japan execution Tojo wrote: \u201cFrom tomorrow, without offending loyalty to the old regime. In would \u201cforever renounce war as a anyone, I shall rest in peace beside the Amida Buddha.\u201d Germany \u201cdenazi\ufb01cation\u201d was sovereign right of the nation.\u201d pursued rigorously by all four the International Military Tribunal for powers. Schools were banned In 1946 Emperor Hirohito was made the Far East\u2014at which 28 military and from using Hitler-era textbooks to concede publicly that he was not political leaders stood trial. Sixteen on any subject: under the Nazis, divine. He was fortunate not to be tried former ministers, generals, and even the teaching of math and as a war criminal; MacArthur decided ambassadors were sentenced to life chemistry was infected with that to do so would cause such anger imprisonment; seven were sentenced racial ideology. Meanwhile, and consternation among the Japanese to death. Chief among these was the former members of the Nazi wartime prime minister, Tojo Hideki. Party were removed from local In 1945 he had attempted suicide to government positions and avoid capture by the Americans, but banned from holding of\ufb01ce. had succeeded only in wounding This policy was later abandoned himself. In 1948 he was hanged because the administration could not alongside his foreign minister and war function without the professional minister. It was his dubious distinction know-how of ex-Nazi bureaucrats. to be the only head of government to be executed for war crimes. Special knowledge was the salvation of the physicists and engineers who AFTER had developed the V-2 rocket. The advancing Americans mounted a The years of Allied occupation helped special operation to net them before both Germany and Japan to rebuild their the Soviets. The biggest catch was countries, and to create new and more Wernher von Braun, whose expertise democratic social institutions. \u201c We aim to eliminate forever its LIFE RESTORED ability to function as a single In the \ufb01ve years after the war, life improved state in the center of Europe.\u201d rapidly for Germans in the western zones of occupation. West Germany (as it became) was JOSEPH STALIN\u2019S PLAN FOR POSTWAR GERMANY, NOVEMBER 1943 able to end food rationing before Britain. The wreckage of the cities was cleared, mostly by The Nuremberg trials was so valuable to the military that the that the job of governing them would female civilians who formed the majority of the Of the 24 Nazi leaders originally indicted to stand trial Americans chose to overlook the fact become impossible. But many leading manual labor force. By 1950 these \u201crubble for war crimes, 21 entered the dock on November 20, that he had employed slave workers \ufb01gures in both regimes did face trial. women\u201d (Tr\u00fcmmerfrauen) were thankfully 1945. Seated on the far left of the front row is Hermann from concentration camps at his extinct. In Japan women were the main Goering and beside him Rudolf Hess. rocket-building facility. He and many of War crime tribunals bene\ufb01ciaries of social reforms imposed by the his team went on to enjoy long careers Americans. For the \ufb01rst time, Japanese women In both countries the occupying with the US Army and NASA. In Germany the tribunals of Nazi were granted legal equality with men in forces provided emergency rations to leaders at Nuremberg were not just a matters of marriage, property, and inheritance. the civilian population. Food aid served In Japan, meanwhile, about 200,000 judicial undertaking. They were also a a political as well as a humanitarian men who were deemed responsible for theatrical way of demonstrating to the purpose: it made the mass of ordinary leading the war effort were removed German people the true nature of the by the Americans from their posts in regime they had lived under and government and business. The enthusiastically supported. For many Japanese armed forces were completely Germans, \ufb01lm evidence shown at the trials provided their \ufb01rst glimpse of KEY MOMENT 5,700 Japanese soldiers were ADOLF EICHMANN ON TRIAL IN ISRAEL, 1961 indicted for war crimes. THE PARTITION OF BERLIN 475 were sentenced to death NAZIS PURSUED and executed. The prosecution of Nazi war criminals did Berlin lay well inside the Soviet sector. But not end with Nuremberg. Well into the 1980s at Yalta Allied leaders had decided that the the horror of the concentration camps. governments, and professional Nazi-hunters German capital, like Germany as a whole, Twenty-four of Hitler\u2019s main henchmen such as Simon Wiesenthal, continued to pry should be divided into four administrative were indicted at Nuremberg, and 12 camp guards and SS killers out of their hiding zones\u2014Soviet, American, British, and were sentenced to death. Among them places. The biggest catch was Adolf Eichmann, French. This was meant to represent the were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler\u2019s who oversaw the extermination of 400,000 collaborative e\ufb00orts of the victorious powers foreign minister, and Hans Frank, Hungarian Jews in 1944 ff\u0001176\u201377. In 1960 in defeating Nazi Germany. In July 1945 the governor-general of occupied Poland, he was abducted from Argentina by Israeli agents, Russians allowed their three Western Allies who gloried in the sobriquet \u201cslayer tried in Jerusalem, and sent to the gallows. to take possession of their portions of Berlin. of Poles.\u201d Hermann Goering, the But when relations between the USSR and most senior of those convicted at the other Allies soured, the division of Berlin Nuremberg, committed suicide on became a bone of contention\u2014and later the eve of his planned execution. the very symbol of Cold War strife. Japan also had its own Nuremberg\u2014 339","AF TER MATH 1946\u20131951 BEFORE The Iron Curtain The question of the postwar division The postwar political settlement created an ideological faultline across the center of Europe, and of Europe into spheres of in\ufb02uence was through the heart of Germany. To the east of this line, which came to be known as the \u201cIron Curtain,\u201d broached by Stalin and Churchill at a pro-Soviet Communist regimes were installed; to the west, broadly pro-American democracies prevailed. meeting between the two leaders in 1944. T he term \u201cIron Curtain\u201d was coined he had used in his memo to Truman The sealing of the border DIVIDING UP THE BALKANS by Winston Churchill in the week was still in his head when, in March In the 1950s there was one chink in the Iron Curtain At his meeting with Stalin in October 1944 the war ended. He used it in a note 1946, he delivered a speech at between the Eastern Bloc and Western Europe; people Churchill scribbled the names of the Balkan sent to US president, Harry Truman, on Westminster College in Fulton, were still allowed to pass between East and West Berlin. countries on a scrap of paper together with May 12, 1945, in which he wrote of the Missouri. In its most famous passage This ended in 1961 with the building of the Berlin Wall. some percentages: Romania should be 90 Red Army that \u201can iron curtain is drawn he said: \u201cFrom Stettin in the Baltic to percent under Russian sway; Greece, conversely, down upon their front. We do not know Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. was to be 90 percent Britain\u2019s; Bulgaria, 75 what is going on behind.\u201d Behind that line lie all the capitals of percent for Russia; Yugoslavia and Hungary the ancient states of Central and Eastern 50:50. Stalin looked over Churchill\u2019s notes and Churchill\u2019s impression may have Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, marked the paper with a big check mark. been accurate, but the joyful image of Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Churchill thought better of it: \u201cMight it not be American troops greeting their Russian So\ufb01a, all these famous cities and the thought rather cynical,\u201d he said, \u201cif it seemed we comrades-in-arms was still fresh in populations around them lie in what I had disposed of these issues, so fateful to people\u2019s minds. Moreover, Truman still must call the Soviet sphere, and all are millions of people, in such an o\ufb00hand manner? had the war with Japan to conclude: he subject in one form or another, not Let us burn the paper.\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d Stalin replied. \u201cYou was not ready to worry about Churchill\u2019s only to Soviet in\ufb02uence but to a very keep it.\u201d In the event, Churchill\u2019s scheme was not concerns over Europe. But the latter\u2019s high and, in many cases, increasing enacted. But a principle had been established: pessimistic view of Stalin\u2019s intentions measure of control from Moscow.\u201d steadily hardened. The resonant phrase 111 MILLION The total \u201c\u2026 an iron curtain has number of people in Eastern Europe descended across the Continent.\u201d who came under Communist rule by 1950 as a direct result of the war. WINSTON CHURCHILL IN A SPEECH AT FULTON, MISSOURI, MARCH 1946 that all Europe was to be apportioned between the victors after the war. Stalin, of course, ultimately gained a much larger sphere of in\ufb02uence than Churchill had been prepared to concede in his impromptu calculations in 1944. The Berlin airlift West Berliners watch a plane flying in fuel and other essential supplies to their city. At the height of the airlift a supply plane was landing in Berlin every three minutes.","TH E I RON CU RTAI N 0 400 km N KEY AFTER 0 400 miles USSR Soviet dominated communist states by 1948 Moscow-backed governments soon gained N O R WAY FINLAND Under Soviet occupation 1945\u201355 control of almost all the nations of Central SWEDEN Members of NATO in 1949 and Eastern Europe to which Churchill had Baltic Sea ESTONIA Iron Curtain in 1948 alluded in his Fulton speech. Cities divided into zones of occupation North THE EASTERN BLOC The division of postwar Europe The European battle lines of the Cold War S e a LATVIA USSR In 1949 many states to the west of the Iron Curtain 348\u201349\u0001gg\u0001were well established by 1950. joined the US to form NATO, a military alliance for their Stalinist Communist parties had seized power in DENMARK to USSR LITHUANIA collective defense. The USSR and its satellites countered Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and the NATO alliance in 1955 by forming the Warsaw Pact. Bulgaria. In 1949 the Soviet sector of Germany UNITED also became a Communist state\u2014the German KINGDOM made territorial threats against Turkey Democratic Republic. Elsewhere, Yugoslavia Berlin and sponsored communist guerrillas in remained Communist under Tito, but outside IRELAND NETH. C BYELORUSSIA Greece, Truman adopted a much Moscow\u2019s sphere of in\ufb02uence, while Austria was tougher stance. He announced that the spared the experience of Soviet socialism when WEST GERM EAST POLAND US would act to support \u201cfree peoples the occupying powers withdrew in 1955. who are resisting subjugation by armed BEL. GERMANY minorities and outside pressures.\u201d He Attempts were made to liberalize or even did not mention the Soviet Union by throw o\ufb00 the totalitarian yoke\u2014notably in LUX. ANY ZECHOSLOVAKIA UKRAINE name, but it was clear that he was Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in drawing a line in the sand, and that a Vienna M year after Fulton he had come around THE FAILED HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION, 1956 F R A N C E SWITZ. AUSTRIA HUNGARY to Churchill\u2019s view of Soviet expansion. AT L A N T I C OLDAVIA 1968\u2014but such experiments were violently OCEAN YUGO IAROMANIA suppressed by Soviet troops. All of the Iron Sea Curtain countries remained Soviet satellites until Adri atic S L AV the collapse of the USSR and the dismantling of the Iron Curtain itself at the end of the 1980s. IT A BULGARIA Black Sea LY Berlin. This was rejected in Corsica favor of a less confrontational tactic: PORTUGAL a humanitarian airlift. The British and S PA I N Balearic Is ALB. Americans began to \ufb02y coal and other essential supplies into West Berlin. Sardinia Stalin knew he could not shoot down American planes without risking e d GREECE TURKEY all-out war, but reckoned that the Crete Allies would not be able to supply M i t e r r Berlin in this way for long; sooner or later, they would have to relinquish a n e Sicily the city to him. But he miscalculated: the airlift continued for 15 months. It a nS might have gone on inde\ufb01nitely, but in May 1949 Stalin backed down and e a lifted the blockade. Once again, Churchill was correct in when Churchill spoke, later said Berlin blockade So the democratic powers had won his analysis, but wrong in his timing. their \ufb01rst serious confrontation with Most people in the United States and privately that the speech had caused The \ufb01rst major test of the new \u201cTruman the USSR, and without a shot being Europe were still hoping that the Allied \ufb01red. But in the meantime an icy chill victors could continue to cooperate in him grave political embarrassment. Doctrine\u201d came in 1948. In June the had descended on East-West relations. peace as they had done in war, and so The Iron Curtain was no longer just a build a better world order. Stalin was Accepting new realities Allies introduced a reformed currency physical frontier between states, it was fondly referred to as \u201cUncle Joe\u201d by to the American, British, and French now an ideological barrier between many people in Britain, where he was peoples, a dangerous and all but seen as an object of affection and even But Churchill was not alone in his zones of occupation\u2014and also to West insuperable obstacle to lasting peace. admiration. President Truman, who had been on the podium in Fulton gloomy prognosis. A week or two before Berlin, deep inside the Soviet sector. his speech, a document known as the The Russians were outraged by what \u201cLong Telegram\u201d had begun to circulate they saw as Western interference in in the US State Department. Written by Berlin where the Allies were, in their a high-ranking of\ufb01cial in the embassy view, \u201cmerely guests.\u201d They responded in Moscow, it was by cutting off road an analysis of the 105 The number of members of and rail access USSR\u2019s attitude Britain\u2019s parliament who from West to the West. It denounced the \u201ciron curtain\u201d speech as Germany to West described Soviet \u201cinimical to the cause of world peace\u201d. Berlin and by Communism as \u201ca shutting down the political force committed fanatically city\u2019s electricity supply. Stalin had rung to the belief that with the US there can down the Iron Curtain with an ominous be no permanent modus vivendi, that and resounding clang and West Berlin it is desirable and necessary that \u2026 the was, in effect, placed under siege. international authority of our state be It was now up to the Western broken if Soviet power is to be secure.\u201d powers to decide how to respond. One The Long Telegram came to exert suggestion was to call Stalin\u2019s bluff by a profound in\ufb02uence on American sending an armored column down the foreign policy. In March 1947, as Stalin road from the Western sector to West KEY MOMENT CHURCHILL\u2019S \u201cIRON CURTAIN\u201d SPEECH, 1946 Many historians\u2014Russian ones, in particular\u2014see Churchill\u2019s famous \u201ciron curtain\u201d speech as the inaugural event of the Cold War. Stalin responded angrily to the speech, even comparing Churchill with the enemy they had just defeated: \u201cMr. Churchill and his friends bear a striking resemblance to Hitler and his friends. Mr. Churchill sets out to unleash war by proclaiming a race theory, that only nations speaking the English language are called upon to decide the destinies of the world.\u201d 341","AF TER MATH 1946\u201351 Rebirth of Japan and West Germany In the years after the war, a new Japan and a new Germany rose from the ashes of defeat. Japan became a constitutional monarchy; Germany\u2014the western half, at least\u2014became a model European democracy. With American help, both countries evolved into the most powerful economies in their respective regions. A ll the Allies were in agreement The Americans made the frugal The Russians were not the only power that Germany should be made to suggestion that the German economy engaged in asset-stripping. The French compensate the countries against be put on its feet \ufb01rst, so that any claimed for themselves the right to exploit the coal mines of the Saarland, which it had waged war, and also that reparations could in their zone of occupation, thereby strengthening the French economy at Germany should come out of a the expense of the German one. The British and Americans raised objections cover the costs of balanced budget. to the wholesale stripping of assets by the Russians, but they too were engaged occupation. But Stripping assets in what they called the \u201cdemontage\u201d there was little of installations classi\ufb01ed as \u201csurplus,\u201d under a plan to reduce Germany\u2019s consensus as to In the event, industrial output to a fraction of its levels before the outbreak of the war. how this should each of the Allies 20 BILLION The amount be achieved. implemented its in US dollars decided on at the Potsdam Conference for At Yalta Stalin reparations policy Germany\u2019s war reparations, to be paid in machinery and plant to the Allies. expressed his Better marks in its own way. The Breaking the war machines view that 20 billion When the Deutschmark replaced Russians were by far In Japan General MacArthur was dollars\u2019 worth of the Reichsmark, West Germany was the harshest. Millions engaged in a very different form of deconstruction. Japan\u2019s war economy reparations should be set on the path to economic recovery. of tons of material and had been driven by the giant business conglomerates known as zaibatsus. The extracted from Germany, equipment were taken American instigated a program of \u201czaibatsu-busting,\u201d which involved and that half of this sum was due to from Eastern Germany to the Soviet forcing the holding companies to sell off their stocks to the general public, the Soviet Union. Churchill was wary Union. The \ufb01rst wave of invading and breaking the zaibatsus down into their dozens or hundreds of constituent of such punitive reparations, and troops had freely looted the possessions companies. Cartels pointed out that just such a policy, of the German population: watches, and monopolies were outlawed, and trade imposed at the end of World War I, jewelry, clothing, and suchlike. unions encouraged. created the economic and political In their wake came battalions of All these measures\u2014 in both Germany and climate in which Hitler came to power. the Red Army trained to seek out Japan\u2014were carried out with the intention \u201ctrophies\u201d\u2014a term for artworks of making the defeated nations \ufb01nancially BEFORE and museum exhibits, vehicles and incapable of waging machinery of all kinds, the contents of war. But by the end of 1947 it was becoming state archives, stockpiles of arms, raw clear that the Allied policies were creating materials, and food. Entire factories a politically dangerous The occupying powers in Germany and were swiftly and expertly dismantled Honest toil The rapid resurgence of Japan Japan faced an economic conundrum, one and taken in pieces to Russia\u2014just as was due in part to the desire of people such as these silk workers that took several years of trial and error, in 1941, factories in Russia had been to help rebuild the economy. and many disagreements, to resolve. taken apart and moved east to Siberia to keep them out of German hands. PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION The Allies knew that the shattered economies of the defeated nations had to be restored, that the German and Japanese people had to be put back to work. But the occupying powers were eager to prevent their former enemies from rebuilding industries that might again serve as the engine of war. These problems were situation in both countries. In Germany the great mass of people was deeply discussed at the Yalta Conference ff\u0001295, but impoverished, and the Americans were starting to be concerned that hunger no clear or uni\ufb01ed policy was drawn up. and misery would make them receptive to Communist propaganda. The rising DIFFERENCES OF OPINION fear of Communism in the US also cast In Japan, on matters of the reconstruction, the zaibatsu-busting initiative in a there was only one opinion that mattered: different light: now it began to look America\u2019s\u2014and, more speci\ufb01cally, General like a distinctly un-American state- MacArthur\u2019s. However, in Germany each of imposed socialism. the Allied powers took possession of its zone of the country with different ideas about So there began a reversal in British the nation\u2019s reconstruction, and about and American policy toward their how to best make Germany pay for its sins. former enemies. In Japan the break-up of the zaibatsu giants was massively 342","REBIRTH OF JAPAN AND WEST GERMANY AFTER Beginning in the 1960s, both Japan and West Germany went beyond the recovery of their economies and experienced a long-lasting economic boom. JAPANESE ENTREPRENEURIALISM In Japan this economic high-point was achieved partly by the reconstitution of the zaibatsus that the US had wanted to destroy. But American e\ufb00orts at decentralization were not wasted: they created an economic space in which small entrepreneurial concerns could \ufb02ourish. Among these were future household names, such as Toyota, Honda, and Sony. GERMANY\u2019S MIRACLE The West German SONY WALKMAN Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) of the 1960s was aided by the destruction of wartime Germany\u2019s infrastructure. Planners and administrators were handed a clean slate, a chance to build for a modern world, and they made the best possible use of the opportunity. the black market, and liberating the of\ufb01cial economy. More far-reachingly, they laid the foundations for a genuine, self-sustaining economic recovery. The people\u2019s car Germany over the next few years, German authorities abolished price Japan embraces democracy The Volkswagen, originally designed as a cheap car for hoping to create a prosperous economy controls on manufactured goods and the model Nazi family, went back into production after in which the people were well fed and many foodstuffs. These measures were Japan was rapidly changing too. the war. It came to be seen as a design classic and a gainfully employed, and therefore brutally de\ufb02ationary\u2014they wiped out MacArthur had said that he wanted triumph of German automotive engineering. would be impervious to the attractions any savings that private individuals had Japan to become \u201cthe Switzerland of of Soviet socialism. managed to scrape together\u2014but they Asia,\u201d and the dreadful lessons of scaled down. In Germany, Britain had the immediate effect of killing off Hiroshima and Nagasaki perhaps and the US reduced the demontage A crucial part of this plan was the speeded the adoption of a paci\ufb01stic program, and merged their two sectors reformation of the German currency: world view. But the change in outlook into an economically uni\ufb01ed \u201cbizone.\u201d a new Deutschmark, minted in the went deeper than that\u2014it amounted More than that, in 1948 the European US, replaced the almost worthless to a transformation of the national Recovery Plan\u2014better known as the Reichsmark on June 20, 1948. On psyche. Japanese people embraced Marshall Plan\u2014was extended to the day one, everyone was allowed to \u201cdemocratization\u201d with a growing western zone of Germany. The US exchange 40 old marks for 40 new enthusiasm that sometimes astonished pumped about $3.5 billion into ones (thereafter, the exchange rate was their American overlords. There was about 15 to one). On the same day, the also a widespread frenzy of national introspection and open-hearted discussion, the like of which was not to be seen again until the glasnost years in the Soviet Union. The US had expected to remain in Japan for decades\u2014or maybe even as long as a century\u2014but in accordance with the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco, the US withdrew from the country in 1952, and Japan regained its sovereignty. \u201c The Japanese people, since the war, have undergone the greatest reformation in modern history\u201d GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR\u2019S FAREWELL ADDRESS TO CONGRESS, APRIL 19, 1951 343","AF TER MATH 1946\u201351 BEFORE The \ufb01nal demise of Europe\u2019s vast overseas empires had its beginnings in the disastrous opening years of World War II. VIETNAMESE REVOLUTIONARY HO CHI MINH LOST PRESTIGE In 1940 the colonial peoples of the world were astonished by the rapid capitulation of France ff\u000182\u201383, and the undigni\ufb01ed retreat of Britain ff\u000178\u201379. Two years later the people of Malaya, Indochina, and Indonesia found that their European overlords were powerless to halt the Japanese invasion ff\u0001158\u201359. FREEDOM FIGHTERS It fell to local guerrilla groups\u2014usually headed by Nationalists or Communists\u2014to resist the Japanese invasion forces in Southeast Asia. Having fought to free their own countries, they were not about to hand the land or the power back to their former colonial masters. I N D IAN LEAD E R (1869\u20131948) The End of Empires MAHATMA GANDHI One effect of the war was to weaken the hold of European nations on their colonies. In Asia and Africa liberation movements began to demand statehood and independence. Once the war was over, these Gandhi earned the veneration of his demands became impossible to ignore and, surprisingly swiftly, the old imperial order crumbled away. people through his struggle for Indian independence and his commitment to T he slow dismantling of the to choose the form of government Yet by the end of the war it was clear non-violence. At the outbreak of World European empires began long under which they will live,\u201d and it had that Britain was too exhausted, and War II, Gandhi insisted that only a free before World War II. Ever since demanded that \u201csovereign rights be its armed forces too thinly spread, to India could support Britain e\ufb00ectively. the loss of its American colonies, restored to those who have been forcibly control or suppress national movements Since no concession was immediately British governments had inclined to deprived of them.\u201d That statement gave in its colonies. Moreover, the US\u2014 forthcoming, he led campaigns to the view that overseas possessions tend hope to Nationalists throughout the indisputably the most powerful nation obstruct the British war e\ufb00ort and was to go their own way once they reach world, and Churchill quickly moved in the world\u2014was deeply attached to imprisoned for it. After the war, he hailed political maturity. For the \u201cwhite\u201d to quash those aspirations. \u201cWhat we the idea that people had the right to the decision to grant independence as dominions\u2014Canada, Australia, New have, we keep,\u201d he said. choose their own government. \u201cthe noblest act of the British nation.\u201d Zealand, and South Africa\u2014that time He was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic had come after World War I. By 1939 \u201cI did not become His Majesty\u2019s a few months after his nation\u2019s liberation. they were to all intents and purposes prime minister in order to entirely independent nations. preside over the liquidation 344 of the British Empire\u201d The British Empire struggles SPEECH BY WINSTON CHURCHILL, NOVEMBER 1942 But the volatile and destructive situation brought about by the war made global geopolitical change more likely and more rapid. In 1941 Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter, which af\ufb01rmed \u201cthe right of all peoples","THE END OF EMPIRES Imperial France Border crossing AFTER \u201cThe Empire needs Indochina,\u201d proclaimed this French Millions of desperate refugees crossed from Pakistan poster; but Indochina did not feel a need for France, to Hindu India, and from India to Muslim Pakistan, after In the 1960s the main center of European and independence movements flourished after the war. partition of the subcontinent in 1947. This mass two-way decolonization moved from Asia to Africa. migration was the largest population transfer in history. Roosevelt and, later, WINDS OF CHANGE Truman were not agree that the subcontinent would Algeria, France\u2019s main possession in North willing to deny to attain its freedom as two states: Muslim Africa, underwent a period of violent turmoil on smaller countries Pakistan and Hindu India. The hurriedly its path to independence. But Britain\u2019s African the prize that their drawn borders meant that many found empire was dismantled remarkably quickly own nation had themselves in the wrong country. and peaceably. The process began with the won in 1776. Millions \ufb02ed across the new frontiers, independence of Ghana (formerly the Gold harried along by people who had only Coast) in 1957, and can be said to have ended recently been peaceable neighbors. with Swaziland in 1968 (Rhodesia, a special case, took a little longer to achieve home rule). In In 1945 the British Commonwealth and Africa and elsewhere, most of the nations that Empire covered about 20 percent of the had once been ruled from London now land surface of the globe, and embraced joined the loose-knit Commonwealth; the about a quarter of the world\u2019s population. quali\ufb01ed term \u201cBritish Commonwealth\u201d was quietly dropped in the late 1940s. The creation of Israel FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL, NOVEMBER 1989 Violence attended the birth of another new nation the following year. The DISMANTLING THE USSR enormity of the Holocaust convinced The collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s the United Nations to grant a national can be seen as the \ufb01nal episode in the trend home to the Jewish people within for decolonization. All the nations of Eastern the British-administered \u201cPalestinian Europe perceived the end of Russian in\ufb02uence as Mandate.\u201d Jews had been emigrating a liberation. So did the \u201cSoviet Socialist Republics\u201d there for decades\u2014and more than that became sovereign and independent states. 100,000 were smuggled in illegally At the end of the 20th century the very idea during the war. Israel came into being of empire seemed to be dead and buried. in May 1948, but the Arab peoples of the region would not countenance a Communism takes its place,\u201d Jewish state in their midst. A coalition complained one US senator. Many of of Arab states attacked Israel as soon the nations that emerged from the as its independence was declared. rubble of the European empires looked The war lasted into 1949, and ended to the Soviet Union for material help in total victory for Israel. Bitterness did not end with the cease\ufb01re: wars and constant strife between Jews and Arabs became the norm in the Middle East. From colonialism to Communism In other parts of the world, the struggle for self-determination turned into open war. Indonesia declared independence as soon as the war ended, but became engaged in a sporadic four-year con\ufb02ict with Dutch forces. A similar scenario came to pass in Indochina, where Partition of India \u201c Our victory must bring with it the liberation of all peoples\u201d Political leaders in India had been SUMNER WELLES, US UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, MAY 30, 1942 outraged when the Rearguard action British viceroy France became embroiled in a war and political guidance. For their part, In 1954 French paratroopers were besieged by the declared war on against the Viet Minh, a coalition of the US and the Soviet Union sought revolutionary Communist and Nationalist forces of the Germany without Communist and Nationalist forces in\ufb02uence wherever they could, and in Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu. The Vietnamese defeated consulting them. under Ho Chi Minh. The war ended in this way the process of decolonization the colonial army, leading France to withdraw from the While the war was 1954 with a French withdrawal from became part of the Cold War. Some region altogether, and Vietnam gained its independence. raging in Europe, they the region, and with the division of post-colonial nations managed to made a bargain with the desperate Vietnam into two states: Communist remain \u201cnon-aligned,\u201d but most British government: Britain could North Vietnam, and an anti-Communist gravitated toward one camp or the freely make use of India\u2019s raw materials Republic of South Vietnam. other. To some it looked like the old and \ufb01ghting men, so long as self-rule imperial powers had been replaced by was conceded after the war. Situations like the one that developed two new ones\u2014the American Empire Independence was duly granted in in Vietnam presented a problem for the and the Soviet Empire. 1947, but it came at a terrible price. US. \u201cWhen colonialism is ousted, Violence between the Muslim and Hindu communities led all sides to 345","AF TER MATH 1946\u201351 Red triumph Communist fighters take Nationalist soldiers prisoner BEFORE in July 1947. Many captured Nationalists joined the ranks of the People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA), which The Nationalist government of China, under helped Mao to victory in 1949. the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, was at war with Mao\u2019s Communists for 10 years before war broke out with Japan in 1937. A DISUNITED FRONT When Japan attacked, Chiang Kai-shek was persuaded to join forces with Mao so that China would be in a stronger position to resist the invasion. But the truce between Nationalists and Communists was fragile, and often degenerated into armed con\ufb02ict. Throughout the war years, both sides expended almost as much e\ufb00ort on trying to outmaneuver each other as they did on \ufb01ghting against the Japanese. THE COMMON ENEMY DEFEATED The surrender of Japanese troops in China came abruptly, thanks to the US A-bomb strikes against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ff\u0001320, and it took the two competing factions in China by surprise. Almost at once, the old quarrels between Nationalists and Communists, never wholly laid aside in the \ufb01ght against a common enemy, were rekindled. China had no time to celebrate its part in the general victory; the country was already spiraling into a new war\u2014this time with itself. COMMUNIST LEADER (1893\u20131976) MAO ZEDONG Mao joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, the year it was founded. He was at \ufb01rst an orthodox Marxist- Leninist, but in the mid-1920s he began to formulate the un-Marxist idea that the peasant masses\u2014rather than the urban proletariat\u2014might form the vanguard of a socialist revolution. This adaptation of Marxist thinking to Chinese conditions was the core idea of Maoism. But it was no mere theory: through the years of struggle against the Nationalists and the Japanese, the rural population of China provided shelter and manpower to the Communist armies. It was the peasants who bore the brunt of China\u2019s wars, and they who carried Mao to power. 346","RED CHINA Red China The end of World War II did not spell peace for the Chinese people. Civil strife between Nationalist and Communist armies followed on seamlessly from the surrender of Japan. This internal conflict lasted five years, and led to the establishment of a new Communist state: the People\u2019s Republic of China. C hina in August 1945 was a in the north, and the Nationalists, in the The Nationalists had every reason to Springtime for Mao strangely divided country. The south, were armed and poised for war. expect a swift victory. They enjoyed After years of war, the People\u2019s Republic looked Kuomintang\u2014the Nationalist But a war in China was against the the recognition of all the major powers, like a fresh beginning. \u201cThe flowers are opening and government of Chiang Kai-shek\u2014 interests of the US president, Truman, including the Soviet Union, and they blooming at the new China,\u201d declared this 1949 poster. controlled all the southern parts of who wanted a strong, united China that were still receiving aid from the US. China, and most of the cities in the would act as a kind of policeman in the They had the larger army, and a AFTER country. Communist guerrillas under east Asian region. It was also important monopoly on air power and heavy Mao\u2019s leadership held large areas of for the president that China should be The triumph of China\u2019s Communists over the countryside in the northern pro-American, so the US government 5 BILLION The number the Chiang Kai-shek\u2019s Nationalists came provinces of Shanxi and Shandong. was supportive of Chiang Kai-shek. of copies as a shock to the rest of the world. In garrisons throughout the country, Truman tried to mediate between the of Mao\u2019s Red Book, containing 427 of Japanese troops waited for someone two sides\u2014while the US was supplying his quotations, which were published THE ROAD TO KOREA in China between 1964 and 1976. The US had grown used to having a pro- \u201cAn army that is cherished \u2026 American government in the heart of Asia, so artillery. However, the Communists the \u201closs of China\u201d was a bitter blow. Marxist by the people, and vice versa, were better organized and more committed to their cause. They soon is a nearly invincible force.\u201d reversed the early gains that had been made by the Nationalist forces and in A QUOTE FROM MAO\u2019S \u201cRED BOOK\u201d, FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1964 doing so, the momentum of Mao\u2019s People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA) to come and take their surrender. At Chiang with money and arms\u2014by became unstoppable: Beijing was won the beginning of August the Soviet sending General George Marshall to in January 1949, Nanking in April, Union had declared war against Japan, China to try to convince the two sides to and Shanghai the following May. and Russian troops advanced across the form a coalition government. The Nationalist armies were now in border into the key industrial region full retreat, and in the autumn they of Manchuria, which had been under The people\u2019s war abandoned the mainland, retreating to Japanese occupation since 1931. Here, Formosa (present-day Taiwan), taking under the disinterested gaze of the Marshall spent over a year in China, but the country\u2019s gold reserves with them. Japanese garrison, the Russians began as no agreement could be reached the to dismantle the modern factories and envoy eventually lost patience with the In Beijing, on October 1, 1949, Mao ship them back home. situation and left in January proclaimed the establishment 1947. Civil war ensued. of the People\u2019s Republic of China, with him at its head. No compromise US TROOPS DISEMBARK IN KOREA It was the Manchurian question regimes were now in control of most of that ignited the Chinese civil war. the Eurasian continent. The US government The region\u2019s industrial resources and refused to recognize the People\u2019s Republic. reserves of raw materials were vital The dubious Nationalist regime in Taiwan was assets: no postwar reconstruction or treated as the legitimate government of China, modernization of China was possible and Chiang Kai-shek as its leader in exile. This without them. Communist forces stance was deeply o\ufb00ensive to Mao, and it moved quickly into Manchuria from shaped China\u2019s foreign policy for years to come. their rural strongholds and then barred The new Chinese regime lived in constant the routes into the region by destroying expectation of a US-backed re-invasion of the railroads and blockading the ports. the mainland. In 1950, as the Korean war got While the Nationalists were kept out, under way, American generals \ufb02ew to Taiwan the Russians, who were already there, to discuss just this possibility. Mao responded allowed vast stockpiles of Japanese by sending the PLA into North Korea. weapons and material to fall into the hands of their fellow Communists. So in 1945 the political situation throughout China was changing rapidly. By the end of the year the Communists, who were entrenched Fast-track socialism The Communists routinely sabotaged railroad lines during the Chinese civil war. Afterward, the same armies worked hard to repair the tracks, and so bind the country together. 347","AF TER MATH 1946\u201351 BEFORE The Cold War The outcome of the war profoundly altered Relations between the US and the Soviet Union deteriorated rapidly after the war, and there were the geopolitical shape of the world, with times when open conflict loomed. But instead the war turned \u201ccold\u201d\u2014that is, it was waged by the the fall of established empires and the rise bloodless means of subversion, diplomatic wrangling, arms stockpiling, propaganda, and espionage. of two new global superpowers. BEGINNING THE NUCLEAR AGE I n the hopeful spring of 1945, many security, to take effective collective the huge numbers of Russian troops The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki war-weary people around the world measures for the prevention and in the Soviet sector that in the \ufb01rst ff\u0001320\u201321 heralded the arrival of a weapon with expected the collaboration between removal of threats to the peace, and for days of peace he even considered a unsurpassed destructive capabilities. Proliferation the victorious powers to be carried the suppression of acts of aggression \u2026\u201d plan\u2014codenamed \u201cUnthinkable\u201d\u2014 of such weapons created the terrifying possibilty forward into an era of peace. A new to launch a preemptive strike against that the next world war could destroy all humanity. worldwide organization\u2014the United But the new and peaceful dawn did Russian forces in Europe. The chiefs- Nations\u2014was inaugurated for that very not materialize in the way that had of-staff dismissed the idea as absurd. THE BOMBING OF NAGASAKI purpose almost before the echoes of the been hoped. The old enmity between guns had died away. The charter that the Western powers and the Bolshevik Russian protectionism TWO-POWER POLITICS the Soviet Union, the US, and other state, which had been a feature of The US emerged from the war economically nations signed in June 1945 stated in international politics since the Russian The Russians, for their part, held the vibrant and full of con\ufb01dence. The Soviet its very \ufb01rst line that its purpose was Revolution of 1917, swiftly reasserted view that they had a perfect moral and Union, for all its losses, had made massive \u201cto maintain international peace and itself once the common enemy had been political right to be in Eastern Europe, territorial gains that extended its in\ufb02uence crushed. Churchill was so alarmed by and that they had earned that right to the very heart of Europe ff\u0001320\u201321. Both KEY with the blood of millions of their own countries had gained huge prestige around the 40 United StatesNumber of warheads in thousands citizens. Twice in a generation, German world, and both wanted to use their eminence 35 USSR invaders had come from the west. to propagate their national world views. Russia wanted to have control of that 30 dangerous corridor, to create a buffer zone between its own borders and any 25 threat\u2014German, or indeed American\u2014 that came from that direction. The 20 Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe was not so much to do with spreading 15 10 Russian and US nuclear weapons 5 Nuclear weapons are now tens of times more powerful than those dropped on Japan. Although the US and Russia 0 signed a non-proliferation pact in 1968, it has taken some 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 time for the number of nuclear warheads to decrease. Weapons on show During the Cold War, each anniversary of the October Revolution was marked by a military parade on Moscow\u2019s Red Square, displaying Soviet might to the world."]
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