The Position of the Allies at Wars' End
World War II was economically costly for every nation involved in the war. The countries that were world powers before World War II were no longer the great powers that they once were. As the losers of the war, the countries of Germany, Italy and Japan lost their status as being the great powers of the world. Even though France and Great Britain were on the victorious side of the war, they both lost their status as being two of the world’s great powers as well. Even though Britain was one of the three major Allied powers, it’s small land mass, population and assets hurt the country economically. It suffered less destruction than the Soviet Union, Germany and France, but they came out of the war deeply in debt, it’s assets depleted. The two remaining great powers, the Soviet Union and the United States became superpowers that stood above all other nations. These two superpowers were allies during the war but now they were rivals with differing ideologies. The United States was the capitalist and liberal democratic nation while the Soviet Union was the champion of communism and totalitarianism. In early 1947, President Truman created the Truman Doctrine, which represented the beginning of the United States attempt at containing Soviet expansion and the spread of communism. This brought in the era of confrontation and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union called the Cold War. (Lyons, 2010).
The United States also prevented the communist movement from increasing in countries like France and Italy by proposing a program of economic rehabilitation of Europe. The policy was named the Marshall Plan after the person who proposed it, Secretary of State George Marshall. The Marshall plan helped stimulate Europe’s economic recovery and also laid the foundation for Western European economic integration. This would create the European Economic Community (EEC) or Common Market in 1957. In 1992, the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union and also the birth of a common European currency called the Euro. (Lyons, 2010)
References
- Lyons, M. J. (2010). World War II: A Short History (5th ed.). Retrieved from https://phoenix.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781323281376/cfi/8/4!/4/2/6/14/2@0:100.
- United To End Genocide. (2016). Retrieved from http://endgenocide.org/learn/preventing-future-genocides/
- Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/dgwessler/the-cold-war-begins-41176866
- “Europe After World War II”, Retrieved from: http://slideplayer.com/slide/10451182/
Credit: Harold