A History of the World From the 20th to the 21st Century

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In May 1945 a world seemed to have come to an end in Germany. So cataclysmic was the change that the Germans coined the phrase ‘ ...

years. More than half a million civilians killed were victims of the Allied bombing offensive. Allied soldiers commandeered the ...

newly occupied German territories east of the Oder–Neisse, which to all intents and purposes became part of the Polish state. Fr ...

Hamburg, Munich and other cities, where makeshift shelters had to serve as homes. Germany was completely defeated and at the mer ...

annually were needed to pay for food imports to keep the Germans in the British and American zones alive. For Britain especially ...

war were released after a short time. Hundreds of thousands never returned from Soviet captivity. German women had to undertake ...

Nevertheless, the great majority of Germans did change after the war. Allied re-education con- tributed to this but it was not t ...

Others were simply set to work, like the scientists and rocket specialists. The Western Allies in this respect acted no differen ...

in a concentration camp, an experience that had inspired him with a hatred of all forms of totalitar- ianism. He now looked to t ...

them with humanity and consideration. The majority of Germans were saddled with the guilt of not having cared sufficiently for f ...

Victory over Nazi Germany and its allies came as an immense relief to the Soviet Union. No vic- torious power had suffered more. ...

the Baltic states, which had been annexed in 1940; many more from all over the Russian empire were also deported to virtual slav ...

for one reason or another and incarcerated in Gulag camps, provided forced labour intended to help Soviet recovery; but it was a ...

integrated into the Soviet system. One-party communist states tied to the Soviet party remained the goal. To reach it, Stalin ha ...

administrative officials of the Communist Workers’ Party. In parts of the countryside, fighting escalated into civil war. Civili ...

Although Bulgaria was not at war with the Soviet Union, Churchill had made it clear to Stalin in 1944 that it would be allowed t ...

were allowed to organise and participate in national politics. The Catholic Church too played an important role, acting as a bul ...

control. The monolithic Soviet empire cracked for all the world to see. The road to total communist power was different again in ...

confusing or contradictory. Gottwald, a loyal communist, believed in 1947, for example, that Stalin would not object if Czechosl ...