Introduction
World War II, usually referred to as the Second World War, continued from 1st September 1939 to 14th August 1945. It involved major nations of the world who formed two opposing military alliances. Germany, Italy and Japan formed the Axis coalition; while the Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, China and France formed the Allies coalition (Adamthwaite, 1992). The main causes of the war were the anger felt in Weimar Germany as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and the incapability of the League of Nations to deal with the most important international issues.
For Hitler, major issue misdemeanor was his defiance of the Versailles treaty with the introduction of the re-armament into Nazi-Germany, as far as the treaty had forbidden any expansion of all the three arms of the military (Adamthwaite, 1992). Therefore, our paper aims at clearing out main outcomes of the war for its counterparts.
World War II and Its Consequences
German dictator Adolf Hitler was so determined to conquer and subjugate Poland by early 1939 (Pilisuk & Rountree, 2008), that he decided to neutralize the possibility of the Soviet Union to invade its western neighbor (Adamthwaite, 1992). The Germans and the Communists agreed to apportion Poland amongst them. This sharing meant that Germany took its western third, and the Soviet took the eastern two-thirds obeying the agreement signed in Moscow, called the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (Adamthwaite, 1992).
After achieving the skeptical agreement, Hitler believed he could attack Poland without any problems with the Soviet or the British. Consequently, he gave orders for the invasion to start on the 27th August (Adamthwaite, 1992). However, Hitler faced some challenges when he received the information of the signing of a formal agreement of mutual assistance between the Great Britain and Poland. The signing made him stop the invasion and postpone for a few days. Nevertheless, Hitler ignored all diplomatic efforts of the Western powers to restrict him, and on 3rd September 1939 France and the Great Britain declared war on Germany, following Hitler’s orders for the hostilities against Poland which started on 31st August 1939 (Adamthwaite, 1992).
By the end of the war, there was an increased rate of decolonization from the great powers, whereby India received her independence from the United Kingdom, Indonesia from the Netherlands, and the Philippines from the U.S. (Aksar, 2004).
The reverberation of the war also ensured the rise of China as the Chinese community materialized to be the victors from the 1949 Chinese civil war (Adamthwaite, 1992). By this time, China was bankrupt but by 1953 it underwent economic restoration, as production had gone back normal at the pre-war level (Adamthwaite, 1992).
Germany was defeated, and it resulted in the fall of the Nazi regime. Later, the Nazi leaders were charged with crimes against humanity at Nuremberg Tribunal (Aksar, 2004). What concerns Hitler, he committed suicide in order to escape trial and execution.
In 1945, the United Nations was created, and became a new global organization for international cooperation and diplomacy designed to unite all its member countries (Adamthwaite, 1992). The European Union was also formed by the defeated great powers of Western Europe. After the WWII, there was an introduction of new technologies resulting in the development of computers and electronics (Aksar, 2004).
The prominent leaders of Japan were tried and convicted of war crimes with only letting the Emperor free to maintain his position. Subsequently, after massive bombing ruined Japan, it was placed under the U.S military rule (Aksar, 2004).
On the other hand, England was devastated by the war with the extensive bombing during the 1940 blitz by the Germans (Aksar, 2004). This led to the degradation of their economy, and they had to depend on the help from the United States for recovery. Magnificent buildings remaining in Europe were demolished (Pilisuk & Rountree, 2008).
What France experienced in the Second World War was nothing compared to the First World War (Pilisuk & Rountree, 2008). There were a vast number of human losses that came upon them as a result of the Nazi r?gime. Payback was later taken upon collaborators. Like England, France had to cut its colonial empire into pieces; it was particularly traumatic and drawn out the process for the French (Pilisuk & Rountree, 2008). England and France no longer had the authoritative status compared to the United States or the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet Union lost property that included destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 hamlets, and 31,850 industrial creations (Pilisuk & Rountree, 2008).
The European economy had shrunken with 70% of its industrial infrastructure destroyed. Nevertheless, in Europe, a remarkable recovery was seen: for instance, by the end of the 1950s, a doubled production was noted. Italy also came out of its poor economic status and later marked stability and high growth (Pilisuk & Rountree, 2008).
Conclusion
Thus, the Second World War came to an end in 1945 with the Allies coalition winning and the Axis coalition surrendering. It was evident that a lot of people had lost their lives during the war, and massive losses had been incurred when the buildings were demolished. Though the economies of different countries were destroyed, but in the long run they recovered.