In particular, millions of Germans were expelled from East Prussia and other German territory ceded to Poland, and from the Sudetenland, while there were parallel movements of Poles from the territories ceded to the Soviet Union into that gained from Germany. Whereas the Versailles Settlement had attempted to make frontiers coincide with national or ethnic divisions, the aftermath of the Second World War saw peoples made to fit frontiers.
There was also a movement in the opposite direction as Latvians and other Baltic people and numerous other ethnic groups, such as Crimean Tartars, were forcibly moved eastwards by the Soviet authorities.Ī feature of the post-1945 settlement was thus, if settlement is not an inappropriate term, the brutal displacement of populations. In general, East Central Europe moved west, in terms of frontier changes, seen most evidently in those of Poland, which lost territory to the Soviet Union and gained it at the expense of what had been Germany, and because of the movement of millions of people, expelled from their homes and moving west in search of security. Nevertheless, states ( Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) disappeared, frontiers were changed, and, most importantly, the division of Germany into occupied zones provided the blueprint for the emergence of two German states.
The war ended with what in historical terms was an odd peace, for there was no peace treaty with Germany, 1 in part because the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers had left no authority to conclude peace with, and also because of the disintegration of the alliance of the victorious powers shortly after the moment of victory. This is most obviously the case when we consider the redrawing of the map of Europe in the immediate post war period. Post-war Germany and Poland looked very different in, say, 1950 to what they had been in 1939, but can the same be said for Sweden or, for that matter, Spain?Īn essay on this subject written in, shall we say, 1950, 1970 or 1992, would have a very different perspective, for many of changes made by the war were far from permanent and, arguably, post-war developments had a greater effect. Then, of course, the impact of the war varied considerably as between the defeated and the victorious states, and indeed between combatants and neutrals, the latter providing a "control" for any assessment of the war's effects. Many of the changes that seem at first sight to have been due to the conflict and its aftermath may well have been simply the further effects of salient developments evident before the war.
Few would deny that the great context for the development of Europe, politically, socially and economically, in the immediate post-war years was the war, but did it really transform Europe and, if so, for how long?Īmong the problems in assessing the changes to Europe, its nations, societies, economies and cultures, that may or may not be seen as consequent upon the war is the perennial historian's dilemma in distinguishing between short and long term developments. That great events have great effects seems a truism and it would follow that the Second World War, a conflict which caused a colossal loss of life, saw a continent divided as mighty armies strove for supremacy, and ended with much of Europe in ruins and the rest impoverished, must have had a transforming effect. See also the article "Judging, Atoning, Reconciling" in the EHNE.
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