The Second World War
Senior 3 · History and Citizenship
The Second World War
Lesson 5 of 5
25 min
On 5 June 1947, two years after the war in Europe ended, the American Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, a general during the war, spoke at Harvard University about the state of Europe. Factories, railways and bridges were destroyed, food was rationed, and millions of people were still homeless. He told his audience:
Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
Source A. George C. Marshall, speech at Harvard University, 5 June 1947. Text: George C. Marshall Foundation.
Analysing the sources. Source B shows the physical destruction that Source A describes. But Marshall was also thinking ahead: he feared that poor and desperate people would turn to extremist parties, as Germans had done in the Depression (Unit 4), and Americans feared that they might turn to communism. His speech led to the Marshall Plan. Even in a source about rebuilding, the outline of the coming Cold War can be seen.
Definition
Superpower: a state with so much military, economic and political power that it can act all over the world. After 1945 there were two: the United States and the Soviet Union.
Cold War: the rivalry between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies, from about 1947 to 1991, fought through an arms race, propaganda and wars in other countries, but never by direct war between the two.
Displaced person: someone forced to leave their home or country by war, who cannot yet return.
Trust territory: a territory placed by the United Nations under the administration of a member state, which had to prepare it for self-government or independence.
Decolonisation: the process by which colonies became independent states.
Figure 1. Who paid the price? The Soviet Union and China lost tens of millions of people; Britain and the United States lost fewer than half a million each.
The Second World War was the deadliest war in history. The historian Antony Beevor estimates that 60 to 75 million people died, including those killed by hunger and disease: about 3% of the world's population in 1940. Unlike in the First World War, most of the dead were civilians. They included the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, the victims of bombing in cities from Warsaw to Tokyo, and the people who starved in famines made worse by the war, in Ruanda-Urundi (Lesson 3), in Bengal in India and in China.
Look at Figure 1 again. The Soviet Union's estimate comes from Russian government figures, and China's is a range because records were lost. Figures like these are always estimates: historians argue about them, and it is honest to say so.
Sort the effects of the war into five areas:
Sources: the Wikipedia articles listed in the credits.
The war changed the legal status of Rwanda. The League of Nations, which had given Belgium its mandate over Ruanda-Urundi in 1922, was dissolved, and its mandates passed to the new United Nations. On 13 December 1946 the UN approved a trusteeship agreement that left Belgium in charge of Ruanda-Urundi, but under new rules. The UN Charter set out the purpose of trusteeship:
to promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned ...
Source C. Charter of the United Nations (1945), Article 76.
For the first time, the goal of colonial rule in Rwanda was officially "self-government or independence". Belgium had to send yearly reports to the UN Trusteeship Council, which also sent visiting missions to see conditions for themselves. This international pressure is one reason for the Belgian reforms of the 1950s that you will study in Unit 6.
Worked example: comparing effects
Question: Compare the effects of the Second World War on the United States and on the countries of Europe. (6 marks)
Similarity. Both lost soldiers and took part in the founding of the United Nations; both were drawn into the Cold War.
Difference 1: destruction. Europe's cities, factories and transport were wrecked by bombing and fighting (Source B), while no battle was fought on the American mainland.
Difference 2: economy. The war ended the Depression in the United States and left it the richest country in the world; Europe was so poor that it needed American aid through the Marshall Plan from 1948.
Difference 3: power. The United States became a superpower; Britain and France lost power and, soon, their empires.
Use comparison words such as "whereas" and "while", and give a fact for each side.
Tip
Sort every effect into PEST-C: Political (UN, divided Germany), Economic (ruin, Bretton Woods, Marshall Plan), Social (refugees, women, welfare), Technological (nuclear age, jets, computers) and Colonial (decolonisation). An answer that covers three or four areas, with an example in each, scores well.
Warning
Don't mix up the Marshall Plan and NATO. The Marshall Plan (from 1948) was economic aid to rebuild Europe; NATO (1949) was a military alliance. And remember that the United Nations was founded in October 1945, after the war in Europe had ended, not during the war.
Source C promised "progressive development towards self-government or independence". Belgium kept control of Ruanda-Urundi for another sixteen years, and independence came only in 1962. Why do you think promises made in international documents are not always kept quickly? What can citizens and international organisations do about it?
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
