Learn about the immense challenges that countries and Europeans faced after the end of World War II. Show Last Updated: March 4, 2021
Romana Farrington, whose Jewish parents arranged for her to be raised by a Polish Catholic family during the Holocaust, describes how her wartime experience impacts her identity. Romana Farrington, whose Jewish parents arranged for her to be raised by a Polish Catholic family during the Holocaust, describes how her wartime experience impacts her identity. After the German surrender in May 1945, World War II ended in Europe. Its most immediate legacies were death, devastation, and misery. The scale and speed of the conflict had been unprecedented: the war ended up killing at least 19 million non-combatant civilians in Europe. 1 Of those, 6 million were Jews, a full two-thirds of the pre-war Jewish population of Europe. For all those who remained, Jews and non-Jews, the end of the war did not bring an end to their problems. Historian Doris Bergen explains: Vera Gissing, who survived the Holocaust as part of the Kindertransport, describes the importance of her non-Jewish friends to her and her parents throughout World War II. Vera Gissing, who survived the Holocaust as part of the Kindertransport, describes the importance of her non-Jewish friends to her and her parents throughout World War II.
The victorious Allies were faced with difficult decisions. How would they treat Germany and other defeated Axis powers? What would they do about the millions of people displaced by the war who were now homeless and often starving? Would it be possible to rebuild peace and stability in Europe? In August 1945, the Allies issued a communiqué that said:
The Allies were determined to destroy what remained of the Nazi Party and to hold its leaders accountable for their crimes (see Chapter 10, Judgment and Justice). Germany would be disarmed, its boundaries redrawn, and the country divided into four “zones of occupation.” Each zone would be governed by one of the Allied powers: the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. At meetings between Allied leaders in 1945, they expressed a desire to restore democracy in Germany. 3 But the work of reconstruction in Europe would only become more complicated as the democratic western Allies and the communist Soviet Union competed for influence on the continent and their rivalries later hardened into what became known as the Cold War. As the Allies made their plans, more than 10 million Europeans were on the move. Doris Bergen writes, “World War II sparked the movement of the largest number of people in the shortest period of time that the world had ever known. Refugees, fugitives, displaced persons, deportees, and expellees jammed the roadways and waterways of Europe and spilled over into Central Asia and the Americas.” 4 As soon as the war ended, the Allies tried to send all of those displaced persons (DPs) home as quickly as possible. Each of the Allied nations took responsibility for displaced persons in their own sector of Germany. Until transportation became available, they set up emergency centers to provide food, shelter, and medical care for the refugees. The project was extraordinarily successful: millions of people were home within weeks of the war’s end. Yet despite the Allies’ efforts, about 1.5 million DPs were still in emergency centers six months after the war. How the Allies treated DPs depended on the DPs’ nationalities. Displaced persons from Allied nations received better treatment than those from Germany, Hungary, and other Axis nations. To many officials at the time, that policy seemed fair. To many Jews and other victims of the Nazis, it did not. It meant, for example, that German Jews recently liberated from concentration camps were treated as enemy aliens, not as survivors of an atrocity. In February 1946, former American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited displaced-persons camps in Germany. In her weekly newspaper column, she described some of what she saw:
dThese survivors often had already lost during the war years not only their homes and belongings but also much of what gave them their identity—their families, their physical appearance, their liberties, and their hopes. Displaced-persons camps were overcrowded and heavily guarded. Some were located in what had been Nazi concentration camps. Allied soldiers who managed DP camps were often bewildered or angered by the way Jewish survivors acted. Why did they sometimes fight for a loaf of bread or hoard food even when plenty was available? Why did some refuse to take showers or undergo de-lousing when other DPs did so without a fuss? The soldiers did not understand what was different about the Jewish DPs and how these survivors had been shaped by their experiences in Nazi camps. After hearing reports of poor camp conditions, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied military commander in Germany, agreed to create separate camps for Jewish DPs and to let Jewish relief agencies enter the camps so that they could work directly with survivors. Many Jewish survivors tried to return to their pre-war homes and found that they were not welcome. Historian Tony Judt writes,
The difficulty, even danger, of staying in Europe convinced many Jewish survivors to emigrate abroad. When they were able to obtain visas, they went to the United States, Latin America, South Africa, and to Jewish communities in Palestine. (The state of Israel was not established until 1948.) The millions of displaced people within Europe also included Germans who had been settlers in lands conquered by the Third Reich during the war. As Nazi Germany claimed “Lebensraum,” these settlers had taken over homes, land, and possessions from local people (see reading, Colonizing Poland in Chapter 8). After the war, millions of German settlers were forcibly, even violently, expelled and sent back to Germany. Other ethnic Germans, whose families had lived in border regions like the Sudetenland for generations, also fled or were expelled. Allied opinion was divided about these expulsions. Joseph Stalin of the USSR saw them as a form of justice for Germany’s crimes. Some British and American leaders were worried by the violence and the hardship caused by the expulsions, but they also feared that pent-up anger would lead to even greater violence against the settlers if they were not sent back to Germany. Leaders like Winston Churchill believed that the “mixture of populations” could cause “endless trouble.” 8 Eventually, the German populations in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia had been expelled and returned to occupied Germany. Isaac Levy, a Rabbi who served as a chaplain in the British army during World War II, recalls the challenges he faced trying to assist survivors after the Holocaust. Isaac Levy, a Rabbi who served as a chaplain in the British army during World War II, recalls the challenges he faced trying to assist survivors after the Holocaust. Connection Questions
paperclip Students are introduced to the enormity of the crimes committed during the Holocaust and look closely at stories of a few individuals who were targeted by Nazi brutality.
 paperclip Students deepen their examination of human behaviour during the Holocaust by analysing and discussing the range of choices available to individuals, groups, and nations.
paperclip Students both respond to and design Holocaust memorials as they consider the impact that memorials and monuments have on the way we think about history.
paperclip Students grapple with the meaning of justice and the purpose of trials as they learn how the Allies responded to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.
paperclip Students explore the long history of discrimination against Jews and come to understand how anti-Judaism was transformed into antisemitism in the nineteenth century.
paperclip Lead your students through a detailed and challenging study of the Holocaust that asks what this history can teach us about the power and impact of choices.
paperclip Students will explore some of the causes and consequences of denying the Armenian Genocide and reflect on the role of public art to commemorate difficult histories.
paperclip Students analyze images and film that convey the richness of Jewish life across Europe at the time of the Nazis’ ascension to power.
paperclip Students learn about the events and choices of the Armenian Genocide and explore the consequences of the genocide from the perspective of survivors.
paperclip Students develop a contract establishing a reflective classroom community as they prepare to explore the historical case study of this unit.
paperclip Students consider the ways in which World War I intensified people’s loyalty to their country and resentment toward others perceived as a threat.
paperclip Students turn their attention to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of a strong current of ethno-nationalism rooted in Turkish identity.
Most teachers are willing to tackle the difficult topics, but we need the tools. — Gabriela Calderon-Espinal, Bay Shore, NY How did Europe recover from the devastation of war?The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent.
What were 3 effects of WWII in Europe?At the end of the war, millions of people were dead and millions more homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and much of the European industrial infrastructure had been destroyed.
How did Europe recover from ww1?The reconstruction began with the transportation system, roads, canals and railways. The locals struggled to re-establish the industrial base that had been methodically dismantled and shipped off to Germany. It took until the late 1930s to get things back to pre-war conditions.
What are the three main changes in the international system in the aftermath of World War 2?This rise of two super powers, transformation of war into a total war, the emergence of nuclear weapons, the establishment of the United Nations, the emergence of the process of decline of imperialism- colonialism and several other such factors made Balance of Power system almost obsolete.
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