The Devastation of World War II
Geoffrey Barndt
COM/172
May 12, 2014
Dr. Brent Muirhead
The Devastation of World War II World War II was one of the deadest war in history. Millions died and millions more suffer. The landscape of Europe was change. People lost homes and everything they ever work for, families are destroyed and children were left without parents to take care of them. Food shortages and housing would be a problem for years to come. Mentally and physically people would be affected for years after the war would end. The war did not affect just one country it had its effects on most of the world. Cites, ports, and railways all had to be rebuilt. The devastation and consequences of World War II will be felt for decades after the war ended.
In 1939, World War II started as a conflict between Great Britain, France, and Germany. At the same time, Japan was at war with China, by 1941 almost of the world's nations were involved in the war. World War II would end up being the deadest war in history killing nearly 55 million people, which there were more civilians killed than military personnel. “It caused the greatest loss of life and material destruction of any war in history” (Phelps & Lehman, 2005). One of the worst things that the Germans ever did was the systematic elimination of Jews throughout Europe, also known as the Holocaust. In their writing Juergensmeyer & Roof say that it started as segregation, forces them into a labor camp. As time went on Jews from all over Europe were taken to camps such as Auschwitz, and killed in gas chambers. Not only were they killed, but their religious intuitions were attacked and destroyed. By the end of the war, more than 5 million Jews were killed (2007). Germans moved from country to country bombing cities and destroying everything in their path, on their way to taking over cities and countries. In 1941, Japan bombed the U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The U.S. would declare war on Japan and would end up dropping the deadest bomb ever, the Atomic Bomb. In 1945, the U.S. dropped the almost 9,000 pound bomb on Hiroshima, Japan killing hundreds of thousands of people over the next year. The initial effects of the bomb were not the only thing that kill, it was the lingering radiation that cause the death toll to rise so much. It is estimated that almost 200,000 people died by the end of 1945. By the end of the war, the devastation and destruction were apparent, but that was only the beginning of the problems.
In 1945 when World War II came to an end, new problems began, once allies United States and the Soviet Union relationship started to fall apart. The political tension grew between the two countries. The difference in beliefs was one of the biggest problems. “The global confrontation between the West and communism was popularly termed The Cold War because direct hostilities never occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead, the "war" took the form of an arms race involving nuclear and conventional weapons, military alliances, economic warfare and targeted trade embargos” (New world encyclopedia, 2013). The Cold War would last for more than 40 years. Even though the two countries never fault. Another one of the world’s problems was that there were millions of people that fled their homes because of the war. MacMillan wrote that there were millions of refugees heading west other were deported from countries. There were children all over Europe that no longer had families. The major shipping ports in Europe and Asia are gone. "Great cities such as Warsaw, Kiev, Tokyo and Berlin were piles of rubble and ash” (2009). It would take years, but with the financial support of the United States were able to rebuild. Muntone (2012) wrote that the food shortages lasted for some time in Europe. In the Soviet Union conditions were bad besides food shortages, there were few jobs and wages were very low. Housing was bad, whole families were