The invasion began as ordered. The United Nations grew from 51 nations in 1945 to 189 by the end of the century. That the cold war did not in the end turn into a hot one was thanks to that fact. It had already become clear at the top-level conferences of Teheran (1943), Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July-August 1945) that there was a gulf in what constituted universal values and goals between the United States and its fellow democracies and the Soviet Union. How the Powerful and Elite Navy Seals Were Forged Out of World War II by Warfare History Network April 22, 2021 Aces High: How the 56th Fighter Group Smashed Hitler’s Air Force Her books include Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001) and Seize the Hour: When Nixon Met Mao (2006). How should the past be remembered? Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images. It shattered millions of lives and shaped the world for decades to come. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Red Army advanced from the east and effectively claimed all the territory under its control for the Soviet sphere. The idea that there were universal standards to be upheld was present, no matter how imperfectly, in the war crimes trials, and was later reinforced by the establishment of the United Nations itself in 1945, the International Court of Justice in 1946 and Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Britain and Canada played a major role in the mass bombing campaign of German cities and towns; suggestions that the destruction of Dresden or other targets that may have had little military significance might be war crimes causes impassioned debate in both countries. Today, particularly in the countries that were on the winning side, there is a reluctance to disturb our generally positive memories of the war by facing such issues. The Allied landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944, opened a second front in Europe, and Germany’s abortive offensive at the Ardennes in the winter of 1944–45 marked the Third Reich’s final push in the west. West Germany was not able to escape its past so easily; under pressure from the allies and from within, it dealt much more thoroughly with its Nazi past. In China, people turned increasingly from the corrupt and incompetent nationalists to the communists. The Pacific Theatre of Operations, 1941–45. It has not necessarily been easier among the nations on the winning side. While many Europeans, wearied by years of war and privation, gave up on politics altogether and faced the future with glum pessimism, others hoped that, at last, the time had come to build a new and better society. We should not view the war as being responsible for all of this, however; the rise of the US and the Soviet Union and the weakening of the European empires had been happening long before 1939. In retrospect, of course, it is easy to see that their peoples, highly educated and skilled, possessed the capacity to rebuild their shattered societies. That is true, but the picture is not quite as black and white as we might like to think. Its effects are felt still. Within two years of second world war's end, the cold war was an established fact. Great cities such as Warsaw, Kiev, Tokyo and Berlin were piles of rubble and ash. It is impossible to know how many women in Europe were raped by the Red Army soldiers, who saw them as part of the spoils of war, but in Germany alone some 2 million women had abortions every year between 1945 and 1948.