The Second World War was a global armed conflict that started the 1st of September of 1939 after the invasion of Poland by the German troops. Immediately, on September 2nd, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. After this declaration, two military alliances emerged. The Allied powers were formed by France, Great Britain, United states and the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the Axis powers compound by Germany, Italy and Japan. These countries are called belligerent. They receive this name because they are the ones directly involved in the conflict. But, almost all the countries in the world are involved in some way in the war. Around 100 million people from many different countries took part of the Second World War. This event, is classified as the deadliest one ever with around 70 million casualties, including the Holocaust and the civilians that died. The World War in Europe ended on May 8th of 1945, with the invasion of Germany by the allied powers and the surrender of the Nazis. But the war proceeded until September 2nd of 1945, with the bombings in Japan by the United States military. These bombings affected the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and consisted of two atomic bombs, the first atomic bombs ever used, showing the cruelty that humans are capable of, along with starting the era of nuclear weapons. After the war, a series of trials and assemblies to discuss about the future of the world and to judge the Axis power took place. The Nuremberg trials were ruled under the International law. On these trials, many people, most being Nazis or accomplices in helping get the power they achieved, were judged about their war crimes. The sentences were severe, including the death penalty for twelve of them as a punishment. These trials and assemblies tried to balance and improve the world till what we know today. Throughout decades, wars and revolutions have been globally known as conflicts fulfilled by negative consequences. However, in the Second World War, Western countries experienced a wide range of developments, especially within the social, moral and economic aspects which can be clearly seen nowadays. So, wars and revolutions of course have negative effects on everyone, however they are a big lesson for all of us.
Wars have been around since the beginning of humanity. They are unavoidable because of human’s natural desire of power and dominance. Throughout the years, wars have become more destructive because of the technological advances that are able nowadays. So, why don’t we try to understand some concepts? First, in order to get a firm position, we should know what’s something good and something bad. Society says that the difference between good and bad depend on the individual who is being asked. Every person has a different opinion or perceptive of an action as persons depending of, we like or dislike it. Secondly, it is important to know what’s a war and the leading factors that make humans start them. If we look at the dictionary for the word ¨war¨, they provide the following definition: “a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country”. These armed conflicts have some different leading factors like economics, territorial gain, religion, revolutions, and so on. As I stated before, the Second World War started because of the invasion of Poland by the German troops. But was that the only factor leading to war? Germany had for decades conflicts with Poland due to territorial and political issues. Since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was hurt with the rest of countries because they thought that the other countries were overreacting, and they found the sanctions way too harsh.
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Germany found themselves on an economic crisis after all the expenses of war and they couldn’t pay the sanctions that they were punished with. German citizens lived hard years with a huge economic crisis and being the “laughingstock” of Europe, because of their lost in the war. On 1932, Germany had elections. Adolf Hitler won these elections with more than one third of the total votes. Germany saw on him a savior of the nation. On one of his first public speeches as a chancellor, talking about the difficult times that all the German citizens were passing he mentioned the next phrase: “Obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to, but only to be broken”. With these words the new leader addressed to all the German Nation. On his speeches, Hitler exposed his ideas and started with his Nazi propaganda. With those, his popularity increased and started to gain the trust of all the Germans.
After World War I, in order to prevent the world from another disaster like this they created the “League of Nations”. These international organization was there to provide a forum for resolving international disputes and maintain the peace. But, the failure of it and the pain of the German nation become one of the reasons why Hitler was ready to start a new conflict. After World War II, many assemblies took place. They didn’t want to make the same mistakes they committed during the First World War in 1919. So, they tried to solve these problems by different meetings. The Potsdam Conference took place from July 17th of 1945 until August 2nd of the same year. It was an assembly between the “Big three”, this group was compound by Churchill, Truman and Stalin. The goals of the conference also included the establishment of postwar order, peace treaty issues, and countering the effects of the war. The 4th of February of 1945 the Yalta Conference took place, also known as the Crimea conference. It lasted a week and they discussed matters on the future of Germany and Europe and on the organization of the postwar “New Germany”.
New International organizations were born when the war ended. After the failure of the League of Nations, on 1945 they created the “United Nations”. These organization encourages countries to co-operate between them and it helps to prevent conflicts and make resolutions of them. Not only International Organizations were born after the war, but a lot of declarations in order to promote Human rights. After all the massacres that were done during the war, especially the Nazis, on December 10th, 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human rights was created. This declaration is one of the main documents that compounds the International Bill of Rights. Eleonor Roosevelt was one of the main activists that promoted these documents. “Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind”. That’s what she said on her speech before the Assembly of the United Nations. In Europe, a similar declaration was created, known as the European Convention of Human Rights. On March 1951 the United Kingdom was the first country to ratify these documents.
This war brought a lot destruction and hate over all Europe. Cities were devastated, countries were emerged in huge debts, millions of people died. However, there were advancements made, for example, during this hard time countries improve their technology and invested a large amount of money and resources to enhance their power. Wernher von Braun, a German engineer, created the V-1 and the V-2 missiles during war time in order to use them against the German enemies. After the war ended, he moved to the United States. There he developed these missiles and ended up creating the Saturn Rocket. This rocket was the one that they used to launch man for first time to the moon. So many actions were taken to make Europe “great again”.
During war time the unemployment of the countries decreases. This is due to the need of people in order to win the armed conflict. They needed a lot of soldiers, engineers, pilots, nurses and essential resources and tools. As I said before, war leads to the development of a lot of aspects of society, science, economy, medicine…
During the Nazis bombings of London, the campaign denominated as “Blitz”, a numerous amount of people were heavily wounded and killed. The Royal Air Force, as a goal to help, hired a New Zealander doctor called Archibald McIndoe, he certainly improved plastic surgery during those years, leading us to what we know nowadays; he also managed to give perfection to treatments on burn wounds. During World War II, the nuclear power developed a lot. The development of this science at the beginning wasn’t for helpful uses, it was to create nuclear weapons. These atomic bombs have only been used twice in history; in the bombings to Japan by the United States. This nuclear power has an important use for us to this day. It is used as heat to produce electricity, is used in the hospitals, in the agriculture, at our house, and on other numerous ways. Even though this power was created for another proposes it has helped humanity a lot.
World War II lead to a lot of humanitarian help between the population of the same country. But not only that, it showed the power of cooperation between different nations. In Locke´s theory we can see how he says that “every human is capable of being good-natured with a push in the right direction”. This theory was shown during the War. For example, even though people were going through rough times they were able to give everything they had to supply their troops. People sacrificed themselves, so the military had access to what they needed. A lot of people enrolled voluntarily to the army, in order to fight and protect their country. Wartime is a good opportunity to give back everything that other people has given for us. This is a clear example of cooperation and how people can be kind with each other if we all go in the same direction. Do to all these things, Patriotism grown in the society. The main country that suffered this phenomenon, was the United States, said to have started after to attack to Pearl Harbor. In order to promote this ideology, they created the figure of “Uncle Sam”. He was a personification of the country. His image was used to encourage men to enlist in the military and to promote unification, so people will help troops from home during war time.
Wars are costly, and a lot of countries are not able to recover their arches from all the money expended. That happened to France during the 1780s, leading to a Revolution on 1789. In order to avoid getting into this situation, countries have different methods to finance their war, the fastest and worse is printing money. It is the least effective because as an affect in a near future it will most likely experience inflation. In order for the governments of countries that are involved in war, they increase taxes to get extra money to pay their army. The most common practice during war was to act as a debtor country. In the late 1940s, European countries were emerged on a huge debt. George Marshall, President of the United States, saw this as an opportunity and took into action by lending them money to these countries in order to recover from the devastation. These aids are known as The Marshall Plan or the European Recovery Program. The main purpose of this plan was to help Europe and to reduce the communist influence. It was very beneficial to all the countries involved, including the United States. The Europeans reconstructed cities, industries, the trade barriers between them were removed… The United States improved their relationship with Europe. These relations have been improving since the start of this plan. The relationship between both parts includes cooperation in trade, military defense and shared values.
The Soviet Union developed a similar plan, The Molotov Plan. But only the Eastern Europe countries that were political and economically allied with them were able to be part of this plan. This plan wasn’t as successful as the first one. Not a single country that was part of it developed as a communist country whereas the countries helped by the Marshall Plan developed in all aspects and are important and powerful nowadays.
There is a lot of bad consequences on armed conflicts. These consequences include from human lives losses to destruction of cities going through the spread of diseases. All these consequences being both short and long term. World War II effects are still present nowadays. For example, the way economy works presently. Many innocent people over Europe and around the globe suffered for the six years the war lasted. War survivors are left with physical and psychological damages that they will carry with them the rest of their lives; due to the bad conditions, soldiers and civilians were exposed to a lot of diseases and unhuman environments. Tuberculosis spread all over Europe, causing an epidemic affecting 11 million people and 70 million died, being the deadliest war ever. Society is affected in many ways during wartime. During World War II, the Jews, Romanians, Homosexuals, communists, and any person considered to be a threat were persecuted and killed. Social services were collapsed, schools closed, hospitals were packed with people injured from the war and families were separated. The leaders of the nation during those time, made a lot of consequential decisions causing more people to die and exposed their nation to danger. “War leads to war”, that’s a fact that has been demonstrated on many occasions in history. World War I lead to World War II. After 1945, foreign policies of the countries changed due to the postwar changed. In the United States, that policy changed a lot due to the fear of Communism, eventually causing the Cold war, that took place between 1947 to 1991, and in the Korean war in order to stop the Communism. War leads to a constant state of fear and paranoia to all the people, not just to the ones involved, but for everyone else.
Even though some countries take benefits of wars to develop their economy, like the United States, the prejudicial economic effects have more value on the scale. Countries involved on the war lost their GDP, meaning that all the good and services produced on a year by a country lose their value. There is an exception, the United states, that instead of losing the value of their GDP they increased it by almost the double. The national debts of the countries increase. Germany made his last payment that had from World War I on October of 2010. On the other hand, Great Britain made his las payment on December 2006. Germany was forced to pay for all the reparations of the war to Great Britain and the rest of the countries of the Allied powers, how the Potsdam Conference sentenced. In order to face these payments, all this governments must raise their taxes. On 1940 and 1942, there was two revenue acts in the United States. On these, they accord to raise the taxes to the citizens by almost 20% of how they were before the war started. Countries also suffered from inflation, making them to create plans against it.
Human rights were completely violated. Not only on this war, but on every revolution and war since the beginning of history. These human rights that weren’t respected included the most essential one “No one can take away your human rights”. This was seen by the Nazis on their concentration camps. Other rights that weren’t respected were: “A fair and free world” or “The right of public assembly”. This last one, was affected mostly on clandestine associations of groups that were against the ideology of the Nazi regimen. There were three main acts during World War II that shocked the world, because of the cruelty shown in them and how the human rights weren’t followed. These events are the Holocaust, the Japanese interment and the Bataan death march. As it´s said before, the Holocaust caused 6 million deaths and it ended with the 62% loss of Jewish population in Europe.
Another atrocity made during that time, was the Japanese Internment on the United States. The government took this decision after the Pearl Harbor attack. All the people with Japanese ancestry was forced to sell their houses and their business and got sent to internment camps located in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Arkansas. Around 120,000 people was sent to these camps. Japanese’s were persecuted, forced to leave their life behind and caged. After all these crimes, the camps were closed in 1947. Years later, the government recompensed them with 20,000 dollars to each intern. On April 9, 1942, the Japanese troops transferred around 80,000 soldiers, from Filipinas and the United states, from Bataan to camp O’Donnell. Around 18,000 of them died due to the harsh situations they were exposed and how they were forced to walk almost 120 km in clandestine conditions. They also suffered physical abuse including getting beat up and left without water and food. So, after World War II ended, the Allied powers judged the Japanese´s for crime wars. To sum up, we can see how in these wars and revolutions, throughout history, lead to the violation of our human rights.
In conclusion, World War II brought a lot of hate, destruction and crisis. Regardless, it also pushed in a moral, social and economic development to those countries involved. Human rights were not followed during the war, but after it ended the participating countries made the “International Bill of Human Rights” and they created organizations such as the United Nations to protect them and hold those who don't follow them accountable. Even though, during the war countries were devastated and full of hate and anger. Countries have learned from those scenarios. Many of the advancements that were made during that time that still affects us nowadays. Such as healthcare, education, and science. Economically, we have learned to cooperate between nations in order to prevent crisis. Such as the creation of close trade relations between States which during the war were at odds, such as the United States and Japan. We created many methods to restructure our economic systems. Therefore, Throughout the decade’s wars have been only known to be conflicts full of negative consequences, however no one ever highlights the progress we take out of them. The Second World War was a turning point for the world such as we know it today. We have experienced a wide range of developments, especially within the social, moral and economic aspects. War is the ultimate lesson in morality, it not only hurts us, though allows us to grow stronger out of the hurt.
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