Summary of the economic and social consequences of the Second World War. All about the post-war period and the Cold War period.
SECOND WORLD WAR :
THE CONSEQUENCES. Learning history is essential for you guys, it is a way to know the adventures and misadventures of our ancestors, grandparents and great-grandparents. Understanding the past is a way to improve the present! In this regard, do you know what the economic and social consequences of the Second World War were? Find out by reading our summary, it will help you not only to enrich your cultural background but to get a good grade in history, which never hurts!
SECOND WORLD WAR: SUMMARY OF THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES.
The Second World War was a total conflict, fought with the most modern weapons available to the world powers. Fought on land, in the air and at sea, this war, for the first time, also involved the civilian population.The consequences of the conflict were serious: it caused deaths and devastation, it changed forever the fate of entire populations, some countries still pay the consequences of the bloody war.Begun in 1939, it ended in 1945, thanks to the intervention of the American allies, who on the one hand put an end to the war with strategic military interventions, such as the Normandy landing, and on the other caused a massacre, with the use of the atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- The war caused heavy losses in terms of human lives, approximately 50 million people, including soldiers and civilians.
- The economies of the countries that participated in the conflict came to a halt, falling into a deep crisis.
- The conflicts between the victorious powers over the division of the “spoils of war” became more acute.
- There was a need to establish new international organizations responsible for safeguarding peace, such as the UN.
- Faced with a devastated Europe, the United States, for the second time, remained the only world power untouched by the crisis. Washington planned a direct aid plan for the European countries, culminating in the famous Marshall Plan (June 1947), capital, raw materials and food were sent.
- The Americans had interests in expanding their influence and creating new markets but Soviet hostility hindered their expansion project also in the Eastern countries.
- The Soviet Union, exhausted by the war, managed to recover thanks to Stalin’s iron policy, refusing American aid and boycotting the Marshal Plan. Relations between America and the Soviet Union became increasingly difficult, the clash between Western capitalism and the socialist world, between the two blocs fell “an iron curtain” and a real “Cold War” arose.
- The Western powers (Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) signed mutual assistance agreements in 1948 out of fear of the Soviets and to oppose a possible German rebirth, giving birth to the WEU (Western European Union); and in 1949 they instead began negotiations with the USA with an anti-Soviet function: the result was the Atlantic Pact (NATO) which included, in addition to the WEU countries, also the United States, Denmark, Canada, Norway, Iceland, Portugal and Italy.
- The USSR and the Eastern countries organized themselves into counter-alliances, signing economic and defense agreements, COMECOM in 1949, and cooperation and mutual assistance agreements in 1955 with the Warsaw Pact. The Cold War reached its peak in 1950 with the Korean War. The risk of a new world conflict was fortunately avoided.
