CH 32 Sec 5 - Europe and Japan in Ruins
CH 32 Sec 5 - Europe and Japan in Ruins
CH 32 Sec 5 - Europe and Japan in Ruins
demilitarization
democratization
SETTING THE STAGE After six long years of war, the Allies finally were vic-
torious. However, their victory had been achieved at a very high price. World War
II had caused more death and destruction than any other conflict in history. It left
60 million dead. About one-third of these deaths occurred in one country, the
Soviet Union. Another 50 million people had been uprooted from their homes
and wandered the countryside in search of somewhere to live. Property damage
ran into billions of U.S. dollars.
TAKING NOTES
Comparing and
Contrasting Use a Venn
diagram to compare and
contrast the aftermath of
World War II in Europe
and Japan.
Europe only
both
Japan only
948 Chapter 32
Devastation in Europe
By the end of World War II, Europe lay in ruins. Close to 40 million Europeans
had died, two-thirds of them civilians. Constant bombing and shelling had
reduced hundreds of cities to rubble. The ground war had destroyed much of the
countryside. Displaced persons from many nations were left homeless.
A Harvest of Destruction A few of the great cities of EuropeParis, Rome,
and Brusselsremained largely undamaged by war. Many, however, had suffered terrible destruction. The Battle of Britain left huge areas of London little
more than blackened ruins. Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was almost completely
destroyed. In 1939, Warsaw had a population of nearly 1.3 million. When Soviet
soldiers entered the city in January 1945, only 153,000 people remained.
Thousands of tons of Allied bombs had demolished 95 percent of the central area
of Berlin. One U.S. officer stationed in the German capital reported, Wherever
we looked we saw desolation. It was like a city of the dead.
After the bombings, many civilians stayed where they were and tried to get on
with their lives. Some lived in partially destroyed homes or apartments. Others
huddled in cellars or caves made from rubble. They had no water, no electricity,
and very little food.
A large number of people did not stay where they were. Rather, they took to
the roads. These displaced persons included the survivors of concentration
camps, prisoners of war, and refugees who found themselves in the wrong country when postwar treaties changed national borders. They wandered across
Europe, hoping to find their families or to find a safe place to live.
Simon Weisenthal, a prisoner at Auschwitz, described the search made by
Holocaust survivors:
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Military Killed/Missing
United States
$288.0 billion*
292,131**
Great Britain
$117.0 billion
272,311
France
$111.3 billion
205,707***
USSR
Germany
Japan
Civilians Killed
60,595
173,260
$93.0 billion
13,600,000
$212.3 billion
3,300,000
2,893,000
$41.3 billion
1,140,429
953,000
* In 1994 dollars.
** An additional 115,187 servicemen died
from non-battle causes.
*** Before surrender to Nazis.
Includes 65,000 murdered Jews.
Includes about 170,000 murdered Jews and
56,000 foreign civilians in Germany.
7, 720,000
PRIMARY SOURCE
Across Europe a wild tide of frantic survivors was flowing. . . . Many of them didnt really
know where to go. . . . And yet the survivors continued their pilgrimage of despair. . . .
Perhaps someone is still alive. . . . Someone might tell where to find a wife, a mother,
children, a brotheror whether they were dead. . . . The desire to find ones people was
stronger than hunger, thirst, fatigue.
SIMON WEISENTHAL, quoted in Never to Forget: The Jews of the Holocaust
Misery Continues After the War The misery in Europe continued for years after
the war. The fighting had ravaged Europes countryside, and agriculture had been
completely disrupted. Most able-bodied men had served in the military, and the
women had worked in war production. Few remained to plant the fields. With the
transportation system destroyed, the meager harvests often did not reach the cities.
Thousands died as famine and disease spread through the bombed-out cities. The
first postwar winter brought more suffering as people went without shoes and coats.
Identifying
Problems
Why might it
have been difficult
to find democratic
government leaders
in post-Nazi
Germany?
Despairing Europeans often blamed their leaders for the war and its aftermath.
Once the Germans had lost, some prewar governmentslike those in Belgium,
Holland, Denmark, and Norwayreturned quickly. In countries like Germany,
Italy, and France, however, a return to the old leadership was not desirable. Hitlers
Nazi government had brought Germany to ruins. Mussolini had led Italy to
defeat. The Vichy government had collaborated with the Nazis. Much of the old
leadership was in disgrace. Also, in Italy and France, many resistance fighters
were communists.
After the war, the Communist Party promised change, and millions were ready
to listen. In both France and Italy, Communist Party membership skyrocketed. The
communists made huge gains in the first postwar elections. Anxious to speed up a
political takeover, the communists staged a series of violent strikes. Alarmed
French and Italians reacted by voting for anticommunist parties. Communist Party
membership and influence began to decline. And they declined even more as the
economies of France and Italy began to recover.
World War II 949
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Postwar Japan
The defeat suffered by Japan in World War II left the country in ruins. Two million lives had been lost. The countrys
major cities, including the capital, Tokyo, had been largely
destroyed by bombing raids. The atomic bomb had turned
Hiroshima and Nagasaki into blackened wastelands. The
Allies had stripped Japan of its colonial empire.
Occupied Japan General Douglas MacArthur, who had accepted the Japanese sur-
render, took charge of the U.S. occupation of Japan. MacArthur was determined to
be fair and not to plant the seeds of a future war. Nevertheless, to ensure that peace
would prevail, he began a process of demilitarization, or disbanding the Japanese
armed forces. He achieved this quickly, leaving the Japanese with only a small police
force. MacArthur also began bringing war criminals to trial. Out of 25 surviving
defendants, former Premier Hideki Tojo and six others were condemned to hang.
MacArthur then turned his attention to democratization, the process of creating a government elected by the people. In February 1946, he and his American
political advisers drew up a new constitution. It changed the empire into a constitutional monarchy like that of Great Britain. The Japanese accepted the constitution. It went into effect on May 3, 1947.
MacArthur was not told to revive the Japanese economy. However, he was
instructed to broaden land ownership and increase the participation of workers and
farmers in the new democracy. To this end, MacArthur put forward a plan that required
absentee landlords with huge estates to sell land to the government. The government
then sold the land to tenant farmers at reasonable prices. Other reforms pushed by
MacArthur gave workers the right to create independent labor unions.
950 Chapter 32
Making
Inferences
How would
demilitarization and
a revived economy
help Japan achieve
democracy?
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Analyzing Causes
Why did the
Americans choose
the British system
of government for
the Japanese,
instead of the
American system?
SECTION
Emperor Hirohito
and U.S. General
Douglas MacArthur
look distant and
uncomfortable as
they pose here.
ASSESSMENT
TERMS & NAMES 1. For each term or name, write a sentence explaining its significance.
Nuremberg Trials
demilitarization
democratization
MAIN IDEAS
Europe only
both
Japan only
was right for the Allies to try only Nazi and Japanese
leaders for war crimes? Why or why not?
8. MAKING INFERENCES Why was demilitarization such an