The aftermath

After the war, the Allies established occupation administrations in Austria and Germany. The former became a neutral state and the later was divided into Western and Eastern zones which were controlled by the Allies (the western side) and Soviet Union (the estern side). A de-Nazification programme in Germany led to prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg trails and the removal of ex-Nazis from power. Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war territory and German people living in these provinces were expelled.

In an effort to maintain world peace, the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24^th October 1945 and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 for all member states. The great powers that were the victors became the permanent members of the UN Security Council, though there have been a few changes over the years including China, who became the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union who became the Russian Federation following the dissolution of the union in the 1990s.

Impact on the world

Estimates for the total number of casualties vary because many deaths went unrecorded. Many believe that at least 60 million died, including 20 million military personnel and 40 milion civilians. A quarter of the population of the Soviets were wounded or killed. An estimated 11-17 million civilians died as a direct result of Hitler’s racist policies, including the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was a programme of genocide launched by Nazi Germany which saw the death of around 6 million Jews, 2.7 million Polish people and 4 million others who the Nazi government deemed ‘unworthy of life.’ This included disabled people, the mentally ill, prisoners of war, the Romanis, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Freemasons. Soviet POWs were kept in especially unbearable conditions. In addition to concentration camps, the Nazis created death camps to exterminate people on an industrial scale and it is reported that about 12 million Europeans were used as slaves.

These camps were not only used in Europe. In the Soviet Union, gulags were used during 1942-43 and these remained in place following the war. The Japanese POW camps were used as labour camps and also had a high death rate.