The Second World War (1939-1945)
Senior 6 · History
The Second World War (1939-1945)
Lesson 5 of 5
25 min
The Second World War was the deadliest conflict in history. Estimates of the total number of people killed range from about 60 million to more than 80 million, most of them civilians; the Soviet Union alone lost an estimated 24 to 27 million people and China an estimated 15 to 20 million. Tens of millions more were uprooted as refugees. Before the fighting ended, the Allies had begun a second attempt to build an organisation that would keep the peace. Compare two articles of its Charter with the League Covenant and the mandate you studied in Unit 5.
Important
Source: the Charter of the United Nations, signed at San Francisco, 26 June 1945
Article 2 (4). "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
Article 76 (b) (on the trusteeship system). "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 […]"
Charter of the United Nations (1945), via Wikisource.
Article 2(4) goes further than the Covenant: it forbids not only war but any threat or use of force. Article 76(b) adds what the mandates of 1922 had never said: that trust territories should develop towards "self-government or independence". Ruanda-Urundi became a UN Trust Territory under Belgium in December 1946, and UN visiting missions came to see it. Rwanda became independent on 1 July 1962.
Definition
Security Council: the UN body responsible for peace and security, with five permanent members (the USA, the USSR (now Russia), Britain, France and China), each with a veto, and elected members.
Trusteeship: the UN system that replaced the League mandates, supervising territories on the way to self-government or independence.
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 alliances, arms races, propaganda and wars in other countries, but never as a direct war between the two superpowers.
Containment: the American policy of stopping the spread of communism beyond the areas it already controlled.
Superpower: a state with military, economic and political power reaching across the whole world.
| Area | Effects |
|---|---|
| Human | Tens of millions dead (estimates range from about 60 to over 80 million); the Holocaust; millions of refugees and displaced people |
| Political | Europe divided between the Western and Soviet spheres; Germany occupied and later divided (1949); the USA and the USSR became superpowers; Britain and France declined |
| Justice and law | Nuremberg and Tokyo trials; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention (December 1948) |
| Colonial | Weakened empires; independence for India and Pakistan (1947) and Indonesia (1949); the start of African decolonisation (Lesson 4) |
| Technology | Nuclear weapons, jet aircraft, rockets, radar, computers and antibiotics such as penicillin used on a large scale |
Fifty states signed the Charter at San Francisco on 26 June 1945, and it came into force on 24 October 1945. Its main organs are the General Assembly (all members, one vote each), the Security Council, the Secretariat led by the Secretary-General, the International Court of Justice, the Economic and Social Council, and the Trusteeship Council. Learning from the League, the founders included the great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union among them, and gave the Security Council power to take decisions binding on all members, including the use of force. The price was the veto: the UN cannot act against any of the five permanent members, or against states they protect.
Origins. The wartime alliance broke apart over the future of Europe, especially Poland and Germany. Soviet-backed communist governments took power in eastern Europe; the United States feared communist expansion. On 12 March 1947 President Truman asked Congress for aid to Greece and Turkey.
Important
Source: the Truman Doctrine, 12 March 1947
"I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes."
President Harry S. Truman, address to a joint session of Congress, 12 March 1947.
Truman divided the world into two "ways of life" and promised American support to any "free people" resisting communism. The Soviet Union saw this as American expansion. The speech became the basis of containment, and it explains why the superpowers later competed for influence in newly independent Africa: in the Congo in 1960–61, in Angola after 1975, and in the Horn of Africa.
Course and end. The Cold War was waged through alliances (NATO, 1949; the Warsaw Pact, 1955), an arms race in nuclear weapons, crises (Berlin 1948–49 and 1961, Cuba 1962) and "proxy wars" in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Africa. Periods of tension alternated with détente (relaxation) in the 1970s. In the 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the USSR, economic weakness and popular movements in eastern Europe ended communist rule there: the Berlin Wall was opened on 9 November 1989, Germany reunited in 1990, and the Soviet Union dissolved on 26 December 1991.
Africa in the Cold War. In the Congo, the elected prime minister Patrice Lumumba, who had asked the Soviet Union for help, was overthrown and murdered in January 1961, with Belgian involvement and American support for his opponents; Mobutu Sese Seko ruled with Western backing for over thirty years. In Angola, Cuba and the USSR supported one movement and the USA and South Africa others. Superpower rivalry often prolonged African conflicts and propped up dictators.
Warning
Keep the dates and the definitions straight. The UN was founded in 1945, during the last months of the war, not after the Cold War began. The Cold War was "cold" between the superpowers only: in Korea, Vietnam, Angola and elsewhere it was very hot, and millions died.
Tip
Compare the League and the UN. A strong answer sets them side by side: membership (no USA in the League; all great powers in the UN), decisions (unanimity versus the Security Council and veto), enforcement (recommendations versus binding decisions and forces) and colonies (mandates versus trusteeship aimed at independence). Then judge whether the changes worked, with examples.
Important
Discuss. The UN Charter forbids the use of force against any state, and the Genocide Convention obliges states to prevent genocide. Yet in 1994 the Security Council reduced its peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the Genocide against the Tutsi. What does this tell you about the strengths and limits of the system created in 1945? Unit 11 returns to this question.
"USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War: Crash Course World History #39" (CrashCourse). John Green explains the origins and course of the Cold War, including its effects outside Europe. Watch for the idea of proxy wars and compare it with the African examples in this lesson.
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the timeline, the tables, the definitions and the exercises.
