Buy this book on Amazon: A Short History of the World
Some 60 million people died as a result of the Second World War. For the first time in history, civilian losses outnumbered military losses. The Soviet Union suffered more than any other nation with some 20 million dead109 and Poland suffered the highest losses per capita (approximately 16 percent), including three million of its Jews – of the estimated six million Jewish dead from the war.
While it took a long time for the horrors of the Stalinist regime to come to light and to be accepted, and while the atrocities of the Japanese had already been well-publicised, the horrors of the Nazi concentration and death camps shocked the world. Slavs, gypsies, socialists, the mentally ill and gay men and women had been added to the predominantly Jewish camp populations and murdered on an industrial scale, both through gas chambers and through exhaustion, starvation and exposure - an abominable act by an abominable regime. It was these horrors that played a major role in the establishment by the United Nations (UN)110 of the Jewish State of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948.
Japan was occupied by Allied forces; the first time it had ever been occupied by a foreign power; and forbidden to ever again possess an army. Its munitions were destroyed and its war industries were converted to civilian uses. Japan also lost all its overseas possessions, including Manchuria, which was returned to China, and Korea, which was divided into American and Soviet zones of occupation. The emperor of Japan only narrowly managed to avoid execution because the Americans believed that the administration of the country would be facilitated if he appeared to be cooperating with the occupying Allied powers. He was, however, deprived of his political power. Other leading military men were not so lucky, and were executed following quick war-crime trials. Japan remained occupied, predominantly by the Americans, until 1952 when the country became a parliamentary democracy.