End of World War II

We explain how the end of World War II was. In addition, peace treaties and their consequences.

What was World War II?

World War II It was a military conflict that faced the axis powers (Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan) With the allies (The United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, France and China), although it also involved many other countries. The war He began with the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and concluded with the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945.

The first years of the war were characterized by the conquests of the axis powers in Europe, Oriental and the Pacific, but The balance bowed in favor of the allies when, in 1941, The Soviet Union and the United States were forced to enter the conflict and joined the allied side.

In 1942, the United States won an important victory against Japan in the battle of Midway, the Soviet Union began its counteroffensive in Stalingrad and the British troops began the progressive expulsion of the Germans and Italians of North Africa. In 1943 the Mussolini government fell and the armistice with Italy was signed.

The military facts that defined the end of the war were:

• The Alia de Normandía and the Liberation of Paris (1944)
• The advance of allied troops on Germany (1945)
• Adolf Hitler’s suicide (German Nazi leader and chancellor) before the imminent fall of Berlin
• The unconditional surrender of Germany on May 7 and 8, 1945
• The launch of two atomic bombs on Japanese territory (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in August 1945, which led to the unconditional surrender of Japan (and at the end of World War II) on September 2, 1945.

Months before the war ended, the leaders of the allied powers celebrated meetings to agree on the peace conditions that would impose the defeated and to establish the political and territorial order of the postwar period.

Once the war was completed, new conferences allowed the signing of peace treaties between the victors and the defeated. Anyway, The years that followed at the end of World War II witnessed the beginning of another kind of conflict: the cold war.

See also: Chronology of World War II

The new order imposed in Europe and Asia for the axis powers

The German and Japanese victories during the first phase of World War II led to the establishment of a new order in the conquered territories.

In Europe, the third German Reich saw in the conquered areas of the East the “vital space” (Lebensraum) necessary to settle there The so -called “Aria race” (and, more specifically, the Germans)through the expulsion or elimination of the populations identified as “no Arias”.

From the conquest of Poland, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS (Parapolical Squad of the regime), He put himself in charge of the “racial cleaning” policy in Eastern Europein line with the racist budgets of Nazism.

In principle, It was about evacuating the Slavic peoples to reassure the Germanic population. However, Nazi policy in the occupied territories was especially directed against Jewish populations. From the beginning, special forces of the SS, called Einsatzgruppenthey were responsible for stopping and gossiping the Polish Jewish population in ghettos. In June 1941, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen They received orders to arrest the Jews in the Soviet villages, execute them and bury them in common graves.

The conquest of Eastern Europe had put millions of Jews under Nazi. In January 1942, a group of Nazi hierarchs met in a town on the shores of the Berlin of Wansee and decided to undertake what the called the “Final solution of the Jewish problem”, that is, the annihilation of the European Jewish population in extermination fields.

The holocaust (also known as Shoá) cost the lives of between five and six million Jews, to whom victims of other ethnic groups (such as Slavs and Gypsies), as well as various political and social identities.

In Oriental and Pacific Asia, under the slogan of “Asia for Asians”, the Empire of Japan has tried since 1940 to gain the support of the conquered populations in what it called the “great sphere of coprosperity of Eastern Asia.”

In practice, the conquered territories were subjected to systematic economic exploitation for the benefit of the Japanese war effort. For example, in Indochina it is estimated that a million people between 1944 and 1945 was starving, partly due to Japanese army rice requisitions.

See also: stages of World War II

The victory of the allies

While World War II began with the conquests of the axis powers, The balance began to bow in favor of the allies Shortly after admission to the United States War (1941) and the German Invasion of the Soviet Union (which caused a counteroffensive of the Red Army).

The Japanese defeat in the battle of Midway (1942), the progressive expulsion of the German and Italian troops in North Africa (1942-1943) and the German troops that had invaded the Soviet Union (1943-1944), and the fall of the Government of Benito Mussolini in Italy (1943) announced the imminent triumph.

In a conference held in Casablanca (Morocco) in January 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt (president of the United States) and Winston Churchill (British Prime Minister) they agreed that The “unconditional surrender” of Germany and Japan should be achieved.

In June 1944 it occurred the liberation of Rome and the landing of Normandyand on August 25, 1944, Paris was released. Meanwhile, Soviet troops advanced in the east. In February 1945 there were British and American bombings on Dresde, which were charged with the lives of thousands of civilian Germans, and on April 30, 1945, with the Red Army on the outskirts of Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker.

Two days before, Mussolini had been executed by a group of partisans in northern Italy. May 7 and 8, 1945, Germany signed the unconditional surrender and concluded the war in Europe.

However, the war with Japan had not concluded. The United States launched an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshimaand on August 9 he launched a second atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki. Only two bombs caused more than two hundred thousand dead and showed that an era was entered in which the capacity for destruction reached previously unimaginable levels. Japan signed unconditional surrender On September 2, 1945 and, with this fact, World War II ended.

The conferences of the “Three Great”

In the final months of the war, allied leaders celebrated meetings to agree on the peace conditions that would impose the defeated and to define the characteristics of the postwar world.

At the Yalta Conference (from February 4 to 11, 1945), Franklin D. Roosevelt (president of the United States), Winston Churchill (British Prime Minister) and Stalin (leader of the Soviet Union), known as The “Grandes”, agreed for the end of the war:

• The Germany partition in allied occupation areas.
• The definition of the new borders of Poland.
• The formation of a provisional government of National Unity in Poland, which should convene free elections.
• The creation of the United Nations Organization (UN) to guarantee international peace and security.

In June 1945, the United Nations Charter that created the UN was signed (in force since October 24, 1945), and Between July 17 and August 2, the Potsdam Conference was held between Stalin, Churchill (then replaced by Clement Attlee) and Harry S. Truman (president of the United States after Roosevelt’s death).

Germany had signed the unconditional surrender in May and at the conference it was agreed:

• Divide Germany and its capital (Berlin) in four occupancy zones by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union.
• Divide Austria and its capital (Vienna) in four occupancy zones by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union.
• Demilitarize and desnazify Germany.
• Judicially process Nazis war criminals (Which led to the trials of Nuremberg, between November 1945 and October 1946)
• Restore Europe’s borders prior to German expansion.
• Temporarily move the Eastern border of Germany to the weston the ODER-Neisse line (the territory that Poland gained in the west compensated for the loss of the eastern territory that, from the Curzon line, had been under the control of the Soviet Union)
• Expel to Germany to the German populations living in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
• Gather a Council of Foreign Ministers Of the allied powers (United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China) to prepare peace treaties with the defeated countries.

See also: World War II Peace Treaties

Peace treaties and territorial changes

Between July and October 1946 a peace conference was held in Parisheaded by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and France, in which other UN Member States also participated that had taken an active part in World War II.

The result was the signing of the Treaties of Paris (February 10, 1947) between the allies and the countries that had allied or had been satellite states of Nazi Germany (Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Finland).

These treaties They established war repairs, committed to the defeated countries to respect the rights of minorities and certain political freedoms in their territories, and promoted some territorial changes:

• The Soviet Union He incorporated regions of Finland, Romania and Czechoslovakia, as well as the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), the northern East Prussia and the regions of Poland east of the Curzon line. In addition, it established an area of ​​influence on most central and eastern Europe.
• Germany, which was initially divided into four areas of occupation, lost the territories of Alsace and Lorena in favor of France and areas of the East German (from the ODER-Neisse line) in favor of Poland. Anyway, with Germany a peace treaty was not signed due to the partition that led to the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany (in the west) and the German Democratic Republic (in the east) in 1949. Only in 1990, when the reunification was imminent and the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union was finishing, the so -called Treaty 2+4 was signed between the two. four allied powers.
• Italy He had to yield the Trieste Peninsula to Yugoslavia, and the island of Rodas and the Dodecanese archipelago to Greece. In addition, he lost his African colonies (Ethiopia, Libya, Eritrea and Somalia).

With Japan the Treaty of San Francisco was signed in 1951. In addition to the United States and Japan, another 47 countries signed it, but the Soviet Union and China were not among them. This treaty removed the territories conquered during the war and reduced its borders he had in 1854, so he lost Korea, the island of Formosa (Taiwan) and his conquests in China, among other regions.

With the Soviet Union, which was annexed by the Kuriles and the island of Sajalín, Japan signed a joint statement in 1956, known as the “Moscow Declaration”, by which diplomatic relations between both states were restored.

Finally, in 1955 the Austrian State Treaty was signed that ended Austria’s allied occupation.

At the end of World War II, the Division of Europe In a western area under the influence of the United States (which, as of 1948, implemented the help of the Marshall Plan for European economic reconstruction) and an oriental area under the control of the Soviet Union (which promoted the creation of “popular democracies” governed by local communist parties) marked the beginning of the Cold War.

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References

• Beevor, A. (2012). World War II. Past and present.
• Britannica, Encyclopaedia (2022). How Did World War II end? . Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
• Hughes, Ta & Royde-Smith, JG (2022). World War II. Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
• Stone, N. (2013). Brief history of World War II. Ariel.