Cultural Transformations
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document in english
history 1789 to present
term papers
date published 03/05/2007
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level : General public
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SummaryWorld War Two left Europe war torn and destitute. Over 30 million people had been “uprooted, transplanted, expelled, deported and dispersed…in the years 1939-43” (Judt, Postwar, p. 23). Many cities were completely destroyed including Minsk, Royan, Le Havre, Hamburg, Cologne, Warsaw, and thousands of others (p. 16-17). Industry and agriculture were hard hit, which contributed to the need for food rationing because there was not enough food to feed Europe. This war was without a doubt a total war, in the sense that nothing was sacred or safe from the war machine. An example of the effects of this total war can be seen in the number of civilian casualties: “The numbers of civilian dead exceeded military losses in the USSR, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway” (p. 18). Thus, this war wreaked havoc not only on the physical landscape of Europe, but also on the psyche of Europeans: Europe would never be the same. In order to deal with this intense trauma and its ensuing consequences, Europe repatriated millions of refugees and displaced persons, many Western European countries instituted social welfare programs, and some countries created myths about the war in order to help their countries heal.
Table of Contents- During WWII, Hitler fought a racial war in order to 'protect' Germany's racial purity
- Because of the Holocaust, there were few Jews left in Europe
- Another by-product of the war was the creation of welfare states
- World War Two represented a key turning point for France
- The Soviet Union suffered the worst casualties of the war, losing over 30 million people
- After the war ended, Stalin claimed all of the territory that the Red Army had liberated as part of the Soviet sphere of influence
- Germany's postwar experience was different than the Allied nations' experiences
- World War Two left a deep wound in Europe both metaphorically and physically
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