1. Post World War 2

2. The “Big Three” at Yalta
The Yalta Conference
In February 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met at the Black Sea resort town of Yalta to make decisions about the postwar status of Germany and Poland. The “Big Three” agreed to divide Germany into four zones of occupation, each of which would be occupied and administered by one of four Allied nations: Great Britain, the USSR, the U.S., and France. Coming to a consensus on Poland proved more difficult because Stalin wanted to keep Russia’s border with the country safe by installing a communist-led government, thus keeping Poland firmly under Soviet control. Stalin eventually relented and agreed in principle to let the Poles elect their own government, but the issue of Polish sovereignty was far from settled.
The Big Three also agreed to hold war crimes trials and to create a new international peacekeeping organization to be known as the United Nations.
The “Big Three” at Yalta

3. The Potsdam Conference
Another meeting of Allied leaders took place in July 1945 in Potsdam, Germany, a suburb of Berlin. President Roosevelt had died in April, so the U.S. was represented at the conference by his successor, Harry Truman. In addition, Britain was represented by new Prime Minister Clement Attlee, whose Labour Party had defeated Churchill’s Conservative Party in recent elections. Churchill still attended the conference as well.
The leaders set more terms governing Germany’s future, including provisions for outlawing Nazism and the National Socialist Party, dismantling the German military, reorganizing the German economy, and instituting representative government. They also further discussed the shape of postwar Europe and issued a declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan.
Attlee, Truman, and Stalin at Potsdam

4. Divisions within postwar Germany
Problems would emerge in the future as a divided Germany would become one of the first ideological battlegrounds in the Cold War struggle between American capitalism and Soviet communism. Ultimately, the American, French, and British zones united and formed the democratically governed nation of West Germany; the Soviet zone became East Germany, a communist nation under the control of the USSR.
Divisions within postwar Germany

5. U.S. Occupation of Japan MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito
In September 1945, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur, moved into the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and remained there for the next five years to oversee the American occupation of Japan. Japan had been devastated by the war, and MacArthur supervised the reconstruction of the country’s infrastructure as well as the creation of a new government based on democratic principles.
MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito

6. The Marshall Plan Europe’s economy was in shambles after World War II
After World War II, many once-thriving nations in western Europe lay in ruins. The war had not only damaged nations’ physical infrastructures but had destroyed their economies as well. A large segment of the European population remained homeless, and food shortages were common. In 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed a comprehensive plan to save western Europe from starvation and reconstruct their economies. The “European Recovery Program” (later simply called the “Marshall Plan”) was designed to help nations rebuild and also provided for former enemy nations (such as West Germany) to receive aid from the United States. Even the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc nations were initially invited to share in the financial aid from the plan.
Requirements for use of the money were simple. Basically, European countries had to use the money to purchase American-made goods which would be shipped in American vessels. In addition, any material purchased had to be used only for rebuilding and not for military purposes. The Marshall Plan became an international success. Sixteen nations used the aid to rebuild, receiving a total of some $13 billion dollars. The plan also ended up providing a political benefit: after its implementation, no European nation fell to the communists.
Europe’s economy was in shambles after World War II
Marshall proposed aid to “all European countries who needed it”
Plan also worked to keep communism from spreading to western Europe

7. The United Nations International peacekeeping organization
FDR was the “principal architect” of the UN
Goals
Successes and failures
Although the League of Nations had failed to prevent armed conflict in the years leading to World War II, world leaders after the war still recognized the need for an international organization dedicated to maintaining peace. To achieve that goal, the United Nations was created. Franklin Roosevelt was the “principal architect” of the United Nations and had even coined the phrase “united nations” to describe the 26 nations that allied together to fight the Axis Powers during World War II. Roosevelt died prior to the first meeting of the UN. His wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, became a member of the first UN delegation, which met in the summer and fall of 1945 in San Francisco.
The purposes of the United Nations included keeping the peace, encouraging respect for human rights, creating conditions under which justice and respect for international laws and treaties could be achieved, and promoting social progress and better standards of living throughout the world.
Though the UN has proved much more successful than the League of Nations, it has not always been able to act with the authority it would like. The organization has accomplished much with its humanitarian efforts and has enjoyed some peacekeeping successes; however, it has not been able to prevent large-scale armed conflicts (such as the Vietnam War), nor has it always been able to keep “superpower” nations (such as the United States, Russia, and China) from taking unilateral action when they disagree with UN positions on an issue.

8. The Postwar World Order
Of all the Allied nations, the United States emerged strongest from World War II. Other than Pearl Harbor, no fighting had taken place on American soil; this meant that, unlike its European allies, the U.S. would not have to rebuild its infrastructure. The war not only pulled the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression, but made the U.S. the preeminent economic power in the world. Britain and France were not so fortunate. The war had not only wreaked physical and economic devastation on them, but ended up costing them their overseas colonies. Neither would be a dominant world power after 1945.
Although the Soviet Union had suffered greatly during the war, it emerged in a much stronger position than Britain and France. The Soviets used the threat of their military might to install communist-led government in the eastern European countries along Russia’s western border, turning them into “satellite” nations. Also, despite U.S. efforts to keep the technology behind the atomic bomb a secret, Soviet scientists—aided by information gained from espionage—developed a nuclear bomb by As the world’s only two nuclear-armed nations, the U.S. and Russia emerged as “superpowers” by the start of the 1950s.
The United States and the Soviet Union had fought together as Allies during the war, but ideological differences became a major point of contention after. The struggle between communism and capitalism would dominate international politics for the next 40 years as America and the USSR engaged in a “Cold War.” Though the countries never engaged in armed combat—primarily because of the devastating consequences of starting a nuclear war—they battled each other indirectly, trying to extend their own global influence while counteracting that of the other.