World War Two destroyed Europe. The Nazis destroyed 1,700 cities and towns, demolished more than 6 million buildings, dismantled 40,000 miles of railroad track and blew up 56,000 miles of road. The Germans dropped over 50,000 bombs on London, damaging 4.5 million buildings. One city in Austria only had 18 buildings left out of an original 4,000, 1,700 towns in the Soviet Union destroyed an an estimated 4.6 million apartments in Germany (including half of all the apartments in Berlin) were uninhabitable-causing 18 million people in Germany and 10 million Ukrainians among tens of millions of others to be homeless. Overall, countless cities throughout the continent were in ruins and the trend of the last century of urbanization and the development of cities reversed. Rural communities also suffered as many farmers were plundered, destroyed and neglected. Many in Eastern Europe fled from the advancing Soviet army and those, such as farmers, then struggled upon their return. Rural life simply could not return to normal. Overall, the European infrastructure was in shambles and faith in humanity lost. Simply, Europe needed to be rebuilt with money from their empires and America.
In China the Soviet army did much the same thing-they dismantled the factories, sending everything-the machines, material, even the buildings, back to the Soviet Union. The Soviets stayed in places such as Manchuria until April 1946 and two months a civil war broke out between communist and nationalist armies. The war continued in a different form.
Further compounding the problem, corruption is the untold story of Stalin’s postwar terror and the end of the war. Soviet soldiers, from privates to marshals, plundered Eastern and Central Europe with a sense of entitlement that exceeded even the Nazis. They quickly forgot their communist ideology and Bolshevik modesty. For example, Alexander Golovanov, in charge of the Soviet air force, dismantled Goebbels’ country house and flew it back to Moscow and General Georgy Zhukov filled his house with 323 furs, 400 meters of silk and velvet and hundreds of paintings.
The experiences of women were awful as well as Soviet anger, increased by years of anti-Nazi propaganda, often manifested itself onto local women. Women whose countries fought with the Nazis fared the worst in terms of rape and violence. Many women were raped so violently that their back broke under the force of the men’s attacks.
Figure 2: Destroyed Warsaw, January 1945
Of the 3 million prisoners of war taken by the Soviets, more than one-third died in captivity. The Soviet mindset was to use scare food supplies to feed their own people and not prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of captured soldiers were forced to walk across Eastern Europe and through the Soviet Union until they reached Siberia. Tens of thousands simply died en route, the others were largely forgotten about– no one cared whether they lived or died.
The revenge against Nazis and their “collaborators” was brutal and feelings revenge for the war set it. For women who slept with German soldiers or officials (often only to ensure their survival) were attacked throughout the continent and branded as collaborators. Many in France watched as women were shaved by local men who then hung signs around their necks and were forced to carry about buckets of horse excrement. In Denmark, women were likewise stripped, shaved and paraded around with Nazi symbols pained on their breasts and bottoms. The women were punished and their bodies were reclaimed for their respective nations. Government officials were hung and their bodies left to rot for all to see. Still, many wartime bureaucrats continued in their positions of power and others escaped any punishment.
In some parts of Europe, where the people had lost all faith in their institutions of law and order, the recourse to vengeance at least gave them a sense that some kind of justice was possible.In Italy, Italian partisans faced a complicated story, there were at least three simultaneous reasons for fighting; first to drive the Germans out, second to defeat the fascists and third to bring about a social revolution.
In a largely forgotten manner, children continued to suffer in the chaos after the war. Many children were alone–either as orphans or separated from their families–living in gangs of fellow children and struggling to survive. 180,000 children fought for survival in the Italian cities, stealing, begging and engaging in prostitution for their daily food. Throughout Eastern Europe, children slept in caves and in the woods. In Berlin, there were 53,000 orphan children struggled to survive.
The children of born of Nazis were also a source of embarrassment and national betrayal. Between 100,000 and almost one million of these children were born in each of the occupied countries during the war (although the number was often under-reported and in Poland the official number is zero). Many were simply killed, mostly by their own grandparents, while others were forced into orphanages where they were ignored. The lives of these children was also miserable-they were bullied by their peers, neighbors and teachers. They were physically and emotionally abused. They were discouraged from learning about their past and parents, while their mothers were equally shunned by local societies.
In places like Czechoslovakia and Poland, any Germans or those with German last names were forced to flee, targeted with violence and were often killed or had their property taken. In 1945, there were an estimated 4.8 million internal refugees mostly in the South and East, which had been evacuation from bombed cities and a further 4 million displaced Germans who had fled the eastern reaches of Reich in fear of the Red Army. Many Poles or Czechs viewed the opportunity to get revenge on the Germans who happened to be in their immediate vicinity. Between 12 and 16 million Germans were removed from their homes and shunted into Germany just after the war, despite not having any connections to Germany whatsoever. Furthermore, different nationalities who were blamed for aiding or collaborating with Germans were also targeted.
Figure 3: Map of Germany-1946
Figure 4: Expulsion of Germans from the Sudetenland
Jewish survivors of the war also returned home to be met with dismay. People struggling for their own survival. For example, with regard to Holland, many Jewish Holocaust survivors failed to have any of their property returned to them as neighbors refused to return valuable items, apartments claims were disregarded, farm claims ignored. Romanian peasants owned land and furniture and possessed decent housing for the first time in recent history and refused to return it to returning Jews. Many viewed the survivors with disdain, were angry that their Jewish neighbors were the only ones returning and thought that the intervening years made the possessions or land their own. With the infrastructure destroyed and economies in chaos, people struggled for their own survival and fought to obtain enough food and fuel to survive. Massive inflation in Western Europe compounded the problem–for example, in the new cigarette based economy lacking any stable currency, 24 cartons of cigarettes was enough to purchase a 1939 Mercedes Benz. The harsh winter in 1947 only make life more difficult for people and the struggle for daily survive continuing. Across Europe millions of starving people were willing to sacrifice anything for their next meal. All over Europe people were suffering. Between 18 and 20 million German people were rendered homeless by the destruction of their cities, another 10 million in Ukraine were also homeless. Fewer in France and the United Kingdom. These people lived in cellars, ruins, holes in the ground, anywhere they could find a any kind of shelter. Entire European cities needed to be rebuilt. “What we were witnessing in fact was the moral collapse of people. They had no pride any more or any dignity. The animal struggle for existence governed everything. Food. That was the only thing that mattered. Food for children. Food for yourself.”
One letter from a German mother to distance relatives abroad stated: DEAR LITKE FAMILY: We have been living in Westfalen since 1945 because we had to allow our homeland to be taken over by the Russians. My husband fought in the war for six years and was badly wounded… Now I have a request of you. If it is possible for you to please send us some clothing. It does not have to be new, it can be used clothing since the children grow out of things so fast. I also do not have much from which I can make something. It is terrible that I must beg, but I hope that through this you will understand how it is when you have children and no clothes for them.
WWII trials
At Nuremberg, Germany, the Allied forces brought the 24 leading Nazi military commanders, political officials and other top-ranking officials to trial for crimes committed during the war. Lasting from 1945 to 1949, the leaders were accused of indicted crimes against peace (including waging a war of aggression) and crimes against humanity. 21 of the 24 defendants were found guilty and 12 sentenced to death. An additional attack was that most ordinary Nazis were not brought to justice and escaped any form of punishment. Most of those controversies associated with the trial and defense arguments centered around ideas that the notions that the crimes committed were crimes when they were committing them (there were indeed no precedents for this action), the defendants possessed limited access to documents and Allied countries committed the same crimes (a sense of victor’s justice). Still, this action worked to create a permanent international court that would hold leaders accountable for their crimes.
