Peacemaking Efforts After WWII

The guns of the Second World War fell silent in 1945, but silence was not the same as peace. Ending a war this large meant deciding the fate of entire nations, redrawing borders, punishing those responsible for atrocities, and figuring out what to do with a defeated Germany. The peacemaking process that followed was messy, drawn out, and shadowed by a new rivalry between the victorious powers. Within just a few years, the wartime alliance had cracked open, and the world slid into the Cold War. Understanding how peace was made after 1945 is essential to understanding the entire second half of the twentieth century.

Why peacemaking was so complicated 🔗

After the First World War, a single grand settlement, the Treaty of Versailles, had attempted to wrap everything up. That treaty’s harsh terms are widely seen as having helped cause the next war. After 1945, the Allies could not even agree on a comparable single conference. The biggest obstacle was that the wartime partners no longer trusted one another. The United States and Britain on one side, and the Soviet Union on the other, had fundamentally different visions for the postwar world.

This distrust meant the settlement had to be split into separate pieces. Treaties were eventually signed with the smaller defeated states. Germany, the central problem, was left without a formal peace treaty for decades. According to Britannica’s account of the postwar partition, irreconcilable differences among the Allied powers meant no peace conference for Germany was ever held, with reparations proving an especially divisive issue.

The Potsdam Conference of 1945 🔗

The framework for postwar Europe was hammered out at the Potsdam Conference, held in a suburb of Berlin from 17 July to 2 August 1945. This was the last meeting of the “Big Three” Allied leaders. The participants were Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, US President Harry Truman, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was replaced partway through by Clement Attlee after losing a general election back home.

Potsdam built on earlier agreements made at the Yalta Conference. Several major decisions emerged from it, and these decisions shaped Europe for the next forty-five years.

The fate of Germany 🔗

The leaders confirmed that Germany would be divided into four occupation zones, each controlled by one of the four powers: the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The capital, Berlin, lay deep inside the Soviet zone but was itself split into four sectors. Germany was to be completely disarmed and demilitarised. Industry capable of military use was to be dismantled, and the country was to undergo “denazification” to remove Nazi influence from its institutions.

The conference also dealt with borders. Germany’s eastern frontier was pushed westward to the Oder-Neisse line, the rivers that now form much of the border with Poland. As the Imperial War Museum explains, German society was to be rebuilt along democratic lines while the country was run jointly by an Allied Control Council of the four occupying powers. Millions of ethnic Germans living east of the new border were to be transferred back into Germany, a process the agreement insisted should be carried out in an “orderly and humane” manner, though in practice it caused enormous suffering.

Punishment of war criminals 🔗

One of the clearest agreements at Potsdam concerned justice. The three governments reaffirmed their intention to bring the major Nazi leaders to trial. This commitment led directly to the Nuremberg Trials. Held in Nuremberg, Germany, the trials saw former Nazi leaders indicted and tried as war criminals by an International Military Tribunal in 1945 and 1946.

The main trial charged twenty-four senior figures on four counts: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum notes that under the tribunal’s charter, defendants could not escape responsibility simply by claiming they had followed orders. This principle was revolutionary. It established that individuals, not just states, could be held accountable for atrocities, and it laid the foundation for modern international criminal law.

The Paris Peace Treaties of 1947 🔗

While Germany’s fate remained unresolved, the Allies were able to settle matters with the smaller countries that had fought alongside Germany. After a conference in Paris that ran from July to October 1946, five treaties were signed in the French capital on 10 February 1947 with Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland.

These treaties formally ended the war in Europe with these five states. The settlements included terms of disarmament, war reparations, commitments to human rights, and territorial adjustments. Importantly, they allowed each of these countries to resume their place as sovereign states and qualify for membership in the United Nations.

What changed for each country 🔗

Italy: Italy lost its colonial empire in Africa and ceded territory to its neighbours. The Adriatic port of Trieste was turned into a “Free Territory” with a complicated divided administration, an arrangement that was only fully resolved years later.

Romania: Romania regained Northern Transylvania from Hungary but had to confirm its loss of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union.

Hungary: Hungary was restored to its prewar borders. The First and Second Vienna Awards, which had earlier handed Hungary land from Czechoslovakia and Romania, were declared null and void.

Bulgaria: Bulgaria kept Southern Dobruja, which it had gained from Romania, but had to pay reparations to Greece and Yugoslavia for damage caused during the war.

Finland: Finland confirmed the territorial losses it had suffered to the Soviet Union, including the ceding of the Petsamo province. The Oxford reference on these treaties notes that all five treaties came into force on 15 September 1947.

These territorial changes were not painless. Britannica points out that the adjustments were controversial because they led to the forced migration of millions of people and the displacement of ethnic minorities, often with little support, causing widespread hardship.

A nation divided: Germany from 1949 to 1990 🔗

The four-zone occupation of Germany was always meant to be temporary. But as relations between the Soviet Union and the Western powers collapsed, the division hardened into something permanent. The three western zones merged, and in 1949 two separate German states came into being. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was formed from the American, British, and French zones, while the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was established in the Soviet zone.

The two Germanys developed in opposite directions. West Germany became a capitalist democracy integrated into the Western economy, while East Germany became a socialist state under Soviet influence. The division reached its most visible form in 1961 with the construction of the Berlin Wall, which physically separated East and West Berlin.

Reunification in 1990 🔗

The division lasted for over four decades. The turning point came in 1989, when mass protests swept East Germany and the Berlin Wall fell in November of that year. East Germany’s communist government soon collapsed, free elections were held, and the path to unity opened quickly. According to Britannica, the fall of the wall in 1989 paved the way for Germany’s reunification in 1990.

Germany was officially reunified on 3 October 1990, a date now celebrated as German Unity Day. Reunification was joyously welcomed, but it was not without challenges. The two halves had been economically separate for nearly fifty years, and integrating the less developed eastern economy into the prosperous west proved costly and difficult for years afterward.

The atomic bomb and the seeds of the Cold War 🔗

One of the most significant moments of 1945 happened almost in the shadows at Potsdam. While the conference was underway, the United States successfully tested the world’s first atomic bomb. Truman mentioned the new weapon to Stalin in vague terms. According to History.com, Truman only “casually mentioned” to Stalin that the US had a new weapon of unusual destructive force, without explaining its atomic nature.

Within days of the conference ending, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. Tens of thousands died in the initial blasts, with many more dying later from injuries and radiation. The bombings forced Japan’s surrender and brought the war to an end.

Why the bomb mattered for the postwar world 🔗

The decision to use atomic weapons was about more than just defeating Japan. Many historians argue it was also a message to the Soviet Union. The US State Department’s account of “atomic diplomacy” describes how, after the successful test, American officials immediately considered the non-military benefits of holding a nuclear monopoly. Britannica adds that Truman may have ordered the Nagasaki bombing partly to keep the Soviets out of Japan by displaying American military power, deepening the distrust and rivalry that culminated in the Cold War.

Stalin understood this signal clearly. Rather than feeling intimidated, he responded by ordering Soviet scientists to accelerate their own atomic programme. The wartime allies were now rivals, each racing to secure advantage. The atomic bomb, in this sense, was both the final act of the Second World War and one of the opening moves of the Cold War.

The lasting legacy of postwar peacemaking 🔗

The peacemaking process after 1945 produced mixed results. The Paris Peace Treaties did successfully end the war with five nations and brought them back into the international community. The Nuremberg Trials established lasting principles of accountability. The United Nations was created to prevent future conflicts.

Yet the central problem, Germany, remained unresolved for forty-five years, and the failure of the great powers to cooperate gave rise to a divided Europe and a decades-long superpower standoff. The peace that followed the Second World War was not a clean ending but a tense, unfinished arrangement. The seeds of the Cold War were sown in the very conferences and decisions that were meant to bring lasting peace.

What do you think? If the wartime allies had managed to maintain their trust after 1945, could a single comprehensive peace treaty have prevented the division of Germany and the Cold War? And do you think the use of atomic weapons was driven mainly by the goal of defeating Japan, or by the desire to gain leverage over the Soviet Union?

References

1. https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/The-era-of-partition
2. https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/lesson-plans/potsdam-conference-1945
3. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-the-potsdam-conference-shaped-the-future-of-post-war-europe
4. https://www.britannica.com/event/Nurnberg-trials
5. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/international-military-tribunal-at-nuremberg
6. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Paris-Peace-Treaties-1947
7. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Paris_Peace_Treaties,_1947
8. https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e1979
9. https://www.britannica.com/topic/How-Was-Germany-Divided-After-World-War-II
10. https://www.history.com/articles/hiroshima-nagasaki-bombing-wwii-cold-war
11. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/atomic
12. https://www.britannica.com/event/atomic-bombings-of-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki