The Devastation of Europe & Japan

Erica Takahashi

Background

Devastating results in Europe and Japan

60 million was dead 50 million lost

home, property, and family

US was undamaged.

Europe in Ruins

40 millions of Europeans died.

Cities were destroyed.

Bombing Shelling

Countryside was destroyed.

Many people were displaced

Harvest of Destruction

Undamaged countries: Paris, Rome, Brussels.

Damaged countries: The Blitz destroyed

London. Soviet Union

attacked Warsaw, the capital of Poland.

Bombs destroyed 95% of the central city in Berlin.

0

200000

400000

600000

800000

1E+06

1E+06

1E+06

Population inWarsaw,Poland

19391945

A Harvest of Destruction

People lived in destroyed homes and caves.

No water, No electricity.

Starvation and disease was the major problem.

Factories were destroyed.

A Harvest of Destruction

Many people joined army Survivors of the Concentration Camp Prisoners

Many people were not in their countries.

They wanted to get home, hoping to find their families or to find a safe place at least.

Simon Weisenthal

He was a Holocaust survivor.

He wrote about the survivors of the Holocaust.

Misery Continues After the War

Misery in Europe continued. Agriculture was disrupted

Transportations were destroyed. Therefore there were no food delivered to cities.

Thousands of people died of famine and disease.

They bartered expensive things to get a few potatoes

During winter, they had no shoes and coats.

Postwar Governments & Politics

Europeans blamed their leaders for the war and it’s consequences.

Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Norway changed their government system.

Germany, Italy and France’s Leaders couldn’t return to the old leadership.

Germany: Hitler’s Nazi government had brought Germany to ruins.

Italy: Mussolini had led Italy to defeat. The Vichy government collaborated with the Nazis. Many resistance fighters were Communists.

Postwar Governments & Politics

Communists waned to take over the politics faster so they made some strikes.

French and Italians reacted by voting for Anti-Communist parties.

Therefore, Communist started to decline.

Which led the economies of France and Italy began to recover.

An Attempt at Justice: The Nuremberg Trials

While nations were recovering, they wanted to punish Germany for the Holocaust.

They started a trial called Nuremberg Trials.

They wanted to make sure that such crimes would never happen again.

Nazis were on trial. Violating the laws of war

AND committing “Crimes against humanity”

Videos

Nuremberg Trials

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcudlm6tPa0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v

=TxB-8gS1C9k How Nazis were hung

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-mAMeH0Rx8&mode=related&search=

An Attempt at Justice: The Nuremberg Trials

Adolf Hitler, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels committed suicide to avoid the trial.

The rest of the Nazi and leaders were hung.

“A thousand years will pass and still this quilt of Germany will not have been erased”