World War II: After the War
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At the end of World War II, huge swaths of Europe and Asia had been reduced to ruins. Borders were redrawn and homecomings, expulsions, and burials were under way. But the massive efforts to rebuild had just begun. When the war began in the late 1930s, the world's population was approximately 2 billion. In less than a decade, the war between the Axis the Allied powers had resulted in 80 million deaths -- killing off about 4 percent of the whole world. Allied forces now became occupiers, taking control of Germany, Japan, and much of the territory they had formerly ruled. Efforts were made to permanently dismantle the war-making abilities of those nations, as factories were destroyed and former leadership was removed or prosecuted. War crimes trials took place in Europe and Asia, leading to many executions and prison sentences. Millions of Germans and Japanese were forcibly expelled from territories they called home. Allied occupations and United Nations decisions led to many long-lasting problems in the future, including the tensions that created East and West Germany, and divergent plans on the Korean Peninsula that led to the creation of North and South Korea and -- the Korean War in 1950. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine paved the way for Israel to declare its independence in 1948 and marked the start of the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict. The growing tensions between Western powers and the Soviet Eastern Bloc developed into the Cold War, and the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons raised the very real specter of an unimaginable World War III if common ground could not be found. World War II was the biggest story of the 20th Century, and its aftermath continues to affect the world profoundly more than 65 years later. (This entry is Part 20 of a weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II) [45 photos]
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German Wehrmacht General Anton Dostler is tied to a stake before his
execution by a firing squad in a stockade in Aversa, Italy, on December
1, 1945. The General, Commander of the 75th Army Corps, was sentenced to
death by an United States Military Commission in Rome for having
ordered the shooting of 15 unarmed American prisoners of war, in La
Spezia, Italy, on March 26, 1944. (AP Photo) 
Soviet soldiers with lowered standards of the defeated Nazi forces during the Victory Day parade in Moscow, on June 24, 1945. (Yevgeny Khaldei/Waralbum.ru) #
The return of victorious Soviet soldiers at a railway station in Moscow in 1945. (Arkady Shaikhet/Waralbum.ru) #
Red Army photographer Yevgeny Khaldei (center) in Berlin with Soviet forces, near the Brandenburg Gate in May of 1945. (Waralbum.ru) #
Hermann Goering, once the leader of the formidable Luftwaffe and second
in command of the German Reich under Hitler, appears in a mugshot on
file with the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects in
Paris, France, on November 5, 1945. Goering surrendered to U.S.
soldiers in Bavaria, on May 9, 1945, and was eventually taken to
Nuremburg to face trial for War Crimes. (AP Photo) #
The interior of the courtroom of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in
1946 during the Trial of the Major War Criminals, prosecuting 24
government and civilian leaders of Nazi Germany. Visible here is Hermann
Goering, former leader of the Luftwaffe, seated in the box at center
right, wearing a gray jacket, headphones, and dark glasses. Next to him
sits Rudolf Hess, former Deputy Fuhrer of Germany, then Joachim von
Ribbentrop, former Nazi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wilhelm Keitel,
former leader of Germany's Supreme Command (blurry face), and Ernst
Kaltenbrunner, the highest ranking surviving SS-leader. Goering, von
Ribbentrop, Keitel, and Kaltenbrunner were sentenced to death by hanging
along with 8 others -- Goering committed suicide the night before the
execution. Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he served at
Spandau Prison, Berlin, where he died in 1987. (AP Photo/STF) #
Many of Germany's captured new and experimental aircraft were displayed
in an exhibition as part of London's Thanksgiving week on September 14,
1945. Among the aircraft are a number of jet and rocket propelled
planes. Here, a side view of the Heinkel He-162 "Volksjaeger", propelled
by a turbo-jet unit mounted above the fuselage, in Hyde park, in
London. (AP Photo) #
Sudeten Germans make their way to the railway station in Liberec, in
former Czechoslovakia, to be transferred to Germany in this July, 1946
photo. After the end of the war, millions of German nationals and ethnic
Germans were forcibly expelled from both territory Germany had annexed,
and formerly German lands that were transferred to Poland and the
Soviet Union. The estimated numbers of Germans involved ranges from 12
to 14 million, with a further estimate of between 500,000 and 2 million
dying during the expulsion. (AP Photo/CTK) #
General Charles de Gaulle (center) shaking hands with children, two
months after the German capitulation in Lorient, France, in July of
1945. Lorient was the location of a German U-boat (submarine) base
during World War II. Between January 14 and February 17, 1943, as many
as 500 high-explosive aerial bombs and more than 60,000 incendiary bombs
were dropped on Lorient. The city was almost completely destroyed, with
nearly 90% of the city flattened. (AFP/Getty Images) #
This aerial file photo shows a portion of Levittown, New York, in 1948
shortly after the mass-produced suburb was completed on Long Island
farmland in New York. This prototypical suburban community was the first
of many mass-produced housing developments that went up for soldiers
coming home from World War II. It also became a symbol of postwar
suburbia in the U.S. (AP Photo/Levittown Public Library, File) #
This television set, retailing for $100, is reportedly the first
moderately priced receiver manufactured in quantity. Rose Clare Leonard
watches the screen, which reproduces a 5x7 image, as she tunes in at the
first public post-war showing at a New York department store, on August
24, 1945. Although television was invented prior to World War II, the
war prevented mass production. Soon after the war, sales and production
picked up, and by 1948, regular commercial network programming had
begun. (AP Photo/Ed Ford) #
A U.S. soldier examines a solid gold statue, part of Hermann Goering's
private loot, found by the 7th U.S. Army in a mountainside cave near
Schonau am Konigssee, Germany, on May 25, 1945. The secret cave, the
second found to date, also contained stolen priceless paintings from all
over Europe. (AP Photo/Jim Pringle) #
On May 21, Colonel Bird, Commandant of Belsen Camp, gave the order for
the last hut at Belsen Concentration Camp to be burned. A rifle salute
was fired in honor of the dead, the British flag was run up at the same
moment as a flame-thrower set fire to the last hut. A German flag and
portrait of Hitler went up in flames inside the hut in June of 1945. (AP Photo/British Official Photo) #
Soviet soldiers on the march in northern Korea in October of 1945.
Japan had ruled the Korean peninsula for 35 years, until the end of
World War II. At that time, Allied leaders decided to temporarily occupy
the country until elections could be held and a government established.
Soviet forces occupied the north, while U.S. forces occupied the south.
The planned elections did not take place, as the Soviet Union
established a communist state in North Korea, and the U.S. set up a
pro-western state in South Korea - each state claiming to be sovereign
over the entire peninsula. This standoff led to the Korean War in 1950,
which ended in 1953 with the signing of an armistice -- but, to this
day, the two countries are still technically at war with each other. (Waralbum.ru) #
Soldiers of the Chinese communist Eighth Route Army on the drill field
at Yanan, capital of a huge area in North China which is governed by the
Chinese Communist Party, seen on March 26, 1946. These soldiers are
members of the "Night Tiger" battalion. The Chinese Communist Party
(CPC) had waged war against the ruling Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese
Nationalist Party) since 1927, vying for control of China. Japanese
invasions during World War II forced the two sides to put most of their
struggles aside to fight a common foreign foe -- though they did still
fight each other from time to time. After World War II ended, and the
Soviet Union pulled out of Manchuria, full scale civil war erupted in
China in June of 1946. The KMT eventually was defeated, with millions
retreating to Taiwan, as CPC leader Mao Zedong established the People's
Republic of China in 1949. (AP Photo) #
This 1946 photograph shows ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And
Computer), the first general purpose electronic computer - a 30-ton
machine housed at the University of Pennsylvania. Developed in secret
starting in 1943, ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing
tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. The
completed machine was announced to the public on February 14, 1946. The
inventors of ENIAC promoted the spread of the new technologies through a
series of influential lectures on the construction of electronic
digital computers at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, known as
the Moore School Lectures. (AP Photo) #
A test nuclear explosion codenamed "Baker", part of Operation
Crossroads, at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, on July 25, 1946.
The 40 kiloton atomic bomb was detonated by the U.S. at a depth of 27
meters below the ocean surface, 3.5 miles from the atoll. The purpose of
the tests was to study the effects of nuclear explosions on ships. 73
ships were gathered to the spot -- both obsolete American and captured
ships, including the Japanese battleship "Nagato". (NARA) #
These unidentified German workers in Decontamination clothing destroy
toxic bombs on June 28, 1946, at the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service
Depot, at St. Georgen, Germany. The destruction and disposal of 65,000
dead weight tons of German toxics, including mustard gas, was
accomplished in one of two ways: Burning or dumping the empty shells and
bombs into the North Sea. (AP Photo) #
U.S. military authorities prepare to hang Dr. Klaus Karl Schilling, 74,
at Landsberg, Germany, on May 28, 1946. In a Dachau war crimes trial he
was convicted of using 1,200 concentration camp prisoners for malaria
experimentation. Thirty died directly from the inoculations and 300 to
400 died later from complications of the disease. His experiments, all
with unwilling subjects, began in 1942. (AP Photo/Robert Clover) #
Jewish survivors of the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp, some still
in their camp clothing, stand on the deck of the refugee immigration
ship Mataroa, on July 15, 1945 at Haifa port, during the British Mandate
of Palestine, in what would later become the State of Israel. During
World War II, millions of Jews were fleeing Germany and its occupied
territories, many attempting to enter the British Mandate of Palestine,
despite tight restrictions on Jewish immigration established by the
British in 1939. Many of these would-be immigrants were caught and
rounded up into detention camps. In 1947, Britain announced plans to
withdraw from the territory, and the United Nations approved the
Partition Plan for Palestine, establishing a Jewish and a Palestinian
state in the country. On May 14, 1948, Israel declared independence and
was immediately attacked by neighboring Arab states, beginning the
Arab-Israeli conflict which continues to this day. (Zoltan Kluger/GPO via Getty Images) #
The Empress of Japan visits a Catholic Orphanage staffed by Japanese
Nuns for children who have lost their parents in the war and air raids
over Tokyo. The Empress inspected the grounds and paid a visit to the
chapel. Children wave Japanese flags to greet the Empress during her
visit in Fujisawa in Tokyo, on April 13, 1946. (AP Photo) #
New buildings (right) rise out of the ruins of Hiroshima, Japan, on
March 11, 1946. These single story homes built along a hard-surfaced
highway are part of the program by the Japanese government to rebuild
devastated sections of the country. At left background are damaged
buildings whose masonry withstood the effects of the first atomic bomb
ever detonated as a weapon. (AP Photo/Charles P. Gorry) #
U.S. General George S. Patton acknowledges the cheers of thousands
during a parade through downtown Los Angeles, California, on June 9,
1945. Shortly thereafter, Patton returned to Germany and controversy, as
he advocated the employment of ex-Nazis in administrative positions in
Bavaria; he was relieved of command of the 3rd Army and died of injuries
from a traffic accident in December, after his return home. Joe
Rosenthal's famous Iwo Jima flag-raising photograph is visible on the
war bonds billboard. (AP Photo) #
This 1945 photo shows German women clearing up the debris on Berlin's
Tauentzienstrasse, with the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church in the
background. The absence of able bodied men meant that the responsibility
for clearing the wreckage fell mainly to civilian women, which were
called "Truemmerfrauen," or rubble ladies. The signs on the left mark
the border between the British-occupied sector and the U.S. sector of
the city. (AP Photo) #
The scene in Berlin's Republic Square, before the ruined Reichstag
Building, on September 9, 1948, as Anti-Communists, estimated at a
quarter of a million, scream their opposition to Communism. At the time,
the Soviet Union was enforcing the Berlin Blockade, blocking Allied
access to the parts of Berlin under Allied control. In response, Allies
began the Berlin Airlift until the Soviets lifted the blockade in 1949,
and East Germany and West Germany were established. When the meeting
pictured here broke up, a series of incidents between Anti-Red Germans
and Soviet troops brought tension to a fever pitch as shootings took
place, resulting in the deaths of two Germans. (AP-Photo) #
In March of 1974, some 29 years after the official end of World War II,
Hiroo Onoda, a former Japanese Army intelligence officer, walks out of
the jungle of Lubang Island in the Philippines, where he was finally
relieved of duty. He handed over his sword (hanging from his hip in
photo), his rifle, ammunition and several hand grenades. Onoda had been
sent to Lubang Island in December of 1944 to join an existing group of
soldiers and hamper any enemy attacks. Allied forces overtook the island
just a few months later, capturing or killing all but Onoda and three
other Japanese soldiers. The four ran into the hills and began a
decades-long insurgency extending well past the end of the war. Several
times they found or were handed leaflets notifying them that the war had
ended, but they refused to believe it. In 1950, one of the soldiers
turned himself in to Philippine authorities. By 1972, Onoda's two other
compatriots were dead, killed during guerrilla activities, leaving Onoda
alone. In 1974, Onoda met a Japanese college dropout, Norio Suzuki, who
was traveling the world, and through their friendship, Onoda's former
commanding officer was located and flew to Lubang Island to formally
relieve Onoda of duty, and bring him home to Japan. Over the years, the
small group had killed some 30 Filipinos in various attacks, but Onoda
ended up going free, after he received a pardon from President Ferdinand
Marcos. (AP Photo) #
Related links and information
World War II in Photos - A 20-part series from In Focus
Nuremberg Trials - Wikipedia entry
Japanese holdouts - Wikipedia entry
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