CHAPTER 18

From the Ashes

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TWO MAJOR EVENTS FOLLOWED SOON AFTER THE END OF THE WAR: THE FORMATION BY 50 NATIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANISATION, WHICH PLEDGED TO ‘UNITE OUR STRENGTH TO MAINTAIN INTERNATIONAL PEACE’, AND THE WAR TRIALS OF BOTH EAST AND WEST. (LEFT) THE SURVIVING NAZI CHIEFS AWAIT THEIR FATE DURING THE NUREMBERG TRIALS, 1945–6. GÖRING HOLDS HIS FACE IN HIS HAND WHILE HESS MAKES NOTES. THE TRIBUNAL’S GUARDS KEEP WATCH IN THE BACKGROUND.

THE UNITED NATIONS

With the final battles of the Second World War fought to a successful conclusion by the Allied armies in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, the titanic task of reconstructing a world ravished by six years of war could begin. As had happened at the end of the First World War with the establishment of the League of Nations, the international community took steps that they hoped would make sure that war on this scale would never happen again. The main fruit of this idealism to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind’ was the formation of the United Nations Organisation. This post-war institution had its roots in the UN declaration issued by President Roosevelt on New Year’s Day, 1942, and was the successor and in many ways the descendant of the League of Nations.

Shortly after the Allied victory in Europe in May 1945, 50 countries, including Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union, met in San Francisco to sign the United Nations Charter. This document pledged the signatories to ‘unite our strength to maintain international peace and security’ and ‘to ensure... that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.’

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ONE WORLD. THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH MEET IN SAN FRANCISCO AFTER THE WAR TO LAUNCH THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANISATION. THE UN, IT WAS HOPED, WOULD USHER IN A NEW POST-WAR SPIRIT OF PEACE AND CO-OPERATION.

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NUCLEAR WEAPON OF THE ‘FAT MAN’ VARIETY, AS DROPPED ON NAGASAKI.

THE BOMB

Of all the technologies to emerge from the Second World War, none had such a profound effect on human civilisation as the atomic bomb. Its creation was almost as significant as the discovery of fire in prehistoric times. When the USA dropped two atom bombs on Japan in 1945, killing nearly 200,000 people at a stroke, it was evident that the world had entered a new and dangerous era. Now, no non-nuclear power could hope to stand up to an enemy prepared to use the new, devastating weapon. At the close of the war, the USA possessed a nuclear monopoly, but Stalin was determined to ensure that the Soviet Union would not find itself at the mercy of US bombers. By 1949, the Soviet Union, too, had the bomb and the nuclear arms race began. Enormous amounts of money were spent by both sides on developing bigger and more destructive bombs. Soon, the power to destroy all life on Earth was taken out of the hands of God, and now rested, for the first time ever, in the hands of humanity.

For the moment, though, the UN’s role as peacekeeper was secondary. In the months and years following the war, the organisation worked directly alongside the Allied armies of occupation in Germany and Japan, tackling the pressing tasks of feeding and clothing the often totally destitute populations of the defeated Axis powers, as well as those who had suffered under their occupation. It was an immense task. Government in Germany had completely collapsed under the weight of the Allied invasion, and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), undertook the task of caring not only for German civilians, but also for the tens of millions of refugees who had found themselves hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles from home.

These refugees were known as ‘displaced persons’, or DPs, and there may have been as many as 30 million of them across Europe at the close of the war. They had been displaced for several reasons. Some were prisoners of war, some were victims of the many mass deportations that had taken place in eastern Europe on orders from either Hitler or Stalin, and others had been forced into slave labour for the Nazi war machine. Among them were those Germans who had followed their Führer’s cries for Lebensraum and had settled in the east. They were now expelled from what was once again the sovereign territory of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary. Meanwhile, Poland’s borders were moved westwards, swallowing up much land that had once been German. Germans who now found themselves in Poland also moved westwards, back to Germany proper.

Amid scenes of starvation, chaos and confusion more sinister population movements were also taking place. During the bitter fighting on the eastern front in Russia, the Nazis had initially enjoyed tremendous success, and by December 1941, Hitler’s forces had reached the gates of Moscow. As a result, the Nazis held substantial numbers of Soviet citizens behind their lines and, gradually, many of them were absorbed into the Wehrmacht, first as auxiliaries and later as fighting units. Many of these men detested Stalin, either for political or ethnic reasons. They had been keen to fight for the Germans, whom they saw as the only means of bringing down Stalin’s communist dictatorship. Numbers of these Russian recruits fought for the Germans on the western front after D-Day in 1944. By the close of the war, the British and Americans had captured over four million Soviet citizens who had fought for Hitler. They were all sent back to the Soviet Union, where their officers were executed. The rest were sent to Soviet labour camps or gulags. A large number died from the harsh treatment they received on the journey to the gulags, while many survivors were later worked to death in appalling conditions. As a result, the average life expectancy in the gulags could be as little as a single winter.

The Allied Control commission set about the administration of Germany, which was now divided into four zones of occupation, governed respectively by Britain, France, the USA and the Soviet Union. One of the principal tasks of the administration was to ‘denazify’ the country and seek retribution for the terrible crimes committed in Hitler’s name. Early in the war the Allies had made public their intention to punish Nazi leaders. The increasing evidence of Nazi barbarity left them little choice but to state that: ‘Retribution for these crimes must henceforward take its place as one of the major purposes of the war.’

Over four million Soviet citizens who had fought for Hitler…were sent back to the Soviet Union, where their officers were executed. The rest were sent to Soviet labour camps or gulags

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BERLIN, 1946. AS THE FOUR FORMER ALLIES FOUND IT IMPOSSIBLE TO AGREE ON GERMANY’S FUTURE, BERLIN REMAINED A DIVIDED CITY RIGHT UP UNTIL 1989. HERE, SOVIET TANKS APPROACH THE WESTERN SECTOR BORDER AT POTZDAMER PLATZ AS WEST BERLINERS STAND WATCHING THEM.

The result of the Allied resolve that justice must be done was the creation of the most extraordinary legal trial of the 20th, or perhaps any, century. Hitler, Himmler, Göbbels and Robert Ley, head of the Nazi Labour Front, had all committed suicide. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary, was among several other leading Nazis who had disappeared. However, those Nazis who were still alive and in captivity were to stand trial for the horrors they had committed while in power. Named after the town in Bavaria in which they were held, the Nuremberg Trials opened in Germany on 20 November 1945, under the presidency of the British judge Lord Justice Lawrence.

Charges were brought against 22 Nazi chiefs, including Martin Bormann who was tried in his absence. The principal figures were Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, once Hitler’s deputy, the Wehrmacht commanders Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel, Hans Frank, the ‘butcher of Poland’, the Nazi Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and munitions minister. Artur Seyss-Inquart, Nazi governor of Austria was also among the defendants.

The International Military Tribunal that organised the trial was run jointly by the four Allies. The Tribunal drew up four charges against the Nazi leaders: conspiracy to wage a war of aggression; waging a war of aggression; violating the laws of war established under the Geneva Convention; and crimes against humanity.

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JUSTICE CHEATED. GÖRING, HITLER’S SECOND-IN-COMMAND, COMMITTED SUICIDE JUST HOURS BEFORE HE WAS DUE TO BE HANGED BY THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL.

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GERMAN SCIENTISTS WORKING FOR NEW MASTERS, ALABAMA, USA, 1956.

TECHNOLOGY

Much of the technology that has shaped the modern world, from rockets and radar to jet engines and computers, found its origins in the massive boost given to science during the Second World War. The German terror weapon, the V-2 rocket, inspired the later US space programme and, in fact, some of the former Nazi scientists were taken to the USA, where they developed their discoveries further. Jet engines were developed by the British and the Germans, who produced the jet fighters, the Gloster Meteor and the Me-262, both of which briefly saw action before the war ended. This innovation afterwards paved the way for the age of low-cost civilian jet air travel, or, in other words, the package holiday. But after atomic weapons, the most significant contribution the war made to the world in which we live today was the early development of computers. Colossus, the first digital computer, was developed under intense secrecy in England in order to break the German and Japanese secret codes. Its descendants have increasingly come to play a larger and larger part in the way we all run our lives.

Despite protests from the defendants that the Soviet Union should also be made to stand trial on the same charges, for the invasion of Finland and Poland and the Katyn Forest massacre, the trial proceeded with few hitches, even though it was extremely protracted. On 30 September 1946, after nearly a year of careful deliberation, 11 of the Nazi leaders were sentenced to death by hanging. Three were acquitted, while the rest faced long prison sentences. Rudolf Hess – believed to have a flimsy grasp of reality – had been in prison since flying to England in 1941 on a hairbrained mission of peace, was given life. Those who were to die included Göring, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Jodl and Hans Frank. But Göring, who after being cured of drug addiction had conducted his defence with surprising energy and tenacity, managed to cheat justice. The former head of the Luftwaffe somehow learned of the date set for the executions and, despite the elaborate precautions undertaken by prison warders, managed to commit suicide by swallowing potassium cyanide. How he managed to obtain the poison was, and remains, a mystery.

THE DECLINE OF EMPIRE

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On the night of 16 October 1946, the executions of the remaining 10 Nazis proceeded with calm efficiency. Ribbentrop was the first to mount the scaffold, at 1.11 a.m., and the last, Artur Seyss-Inquart, followed at 2.38 a.m. The last words of Ribbentrop, the man who had masterminded the Nazi–Soviet Pact in 1939 and so paved the way for the invasion of Poland, were strangely at odds with his past career. He said simply: ‘I wish peace to the world.’ Of all the leading Nazis on trial at Nuremberg only Albert Speer, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison, came close to admitting any guilt.

After the justice carried out in Europe, similar action was taken in Japan. The Far East trials were set up by General Douglas MacArthur and delivered their verdicts in November 1948. In all, seven Japanese military and political leaders were sentenced to death, and 19 others to life imprisonment. The most prominent was the former prime minister, Hideki Tojo, who was hanged on 22 December 1948. Controversially, the Japanese head of state, Emperor Hirohito, was not brought to trial. The Allies believed such action would provoke fierce resistance from the Japanese – who regarded Hirohito as a god – and make policing the occupation of Japan difficult, if not impossible.

On the night of 16 October 1946, the executions of the remaining 10 Nazis proceeded with calm efficiency. Ribbentrop was the first to mount the scaffold, at 1.11 a.m., and the last, Artur Seyss-Inquart, followed at 2.38 a.m.

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LEFT: INDONESIAN GUERRILLAS ROUNDED UP IN THE NETHERLAND’S LAST OUTPOST OF EMPIRE. AFTER THE WAR, DESPITE ATTEMPTS TO DO SO, THE DUTCH WERE ULTIMATELY UNABLE TO HOLD ON TO THE EAST INDIES AND THE TREMENDOUS NATURAL RESOURCES IT COMMANDED.

RIGHT: GENERAL J. LAWSON, US ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF, VISITS HANOI, 23 OCTOBER 1951. THE BANNER READS: ‘A LIVING REMEMBRANCE TO THE GLORIOUS SOLDIERS WHO MADE THE GREATEST SACRIFICES FOR THE INDEPENDENCE OF VIETNAM’
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Several Japanese generals were also executed in separate trials for atrocities committed under their command. General Yamashita, who was in charge of the conquest of Malaya, was hanged for war crimes that took place during the occupation of the Philippines. So was General Homma, for his part in the Bataan death march.

The trial and punishment of German and Japanese leaders firmly established new principles of international law. Politicians and soldiers could now expect to be prosecuted for waging aggression, and for advocating or being implicated in war crimes. It was no longer sufficient for military leaders to plead that they were simply ‘following orders’, a claim frequently made by the Nazis. In addition to the trial of the principal war criminals, hundreds of smaller trials proceeded in Germany, where those responsible for atrocities on the battlefield and in the concentration camps were brought to justice. Such trials continued into the 1990s, despite the by then advanced age of those accused.

After the war, scores were settled, too, with some notorious traitors. William Joyce, otherwise known as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, was executed in 1946 for making propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis in an attempt to undermine the British war effort. The French collaborator Pierre Laval and the Norwegian traitor Vidkun Quisling were likewise executed.

Yet, even as the crimes of one war were being punished, the seeds of fresh conflict were being sown in Europe and Asia. Winston Churchill’s reputation as a statesman had been made between 1940 and 1945 and his lustre remained even though he lost the general election of 1945 to his wartime deputy, Labour leader Clement Attlee. So, when in 1946, Churchill gave a speech at Fulton, Missouri, the world took notice. Churchill told his audience, which included US President Harry S. Truman, that since the joint victory in May 1945, relations had dramatically cooled between the Soviets and their former British, French and US allies. The sticking point was the political future of Europe in general, and of Germany and Poland in particular. Churchill, the prophet of approaching war during the 1930s, once more warned of coming aggression, saying: ‘From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.’

The dangerous situation the former prime minister was describing was Stalin’s steadily increasing hold over eastern Europe. In the final years of the war, the Red Army had liberated Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and the eastern part of Germany. With the Red Army stationed right across eastern Europe, Stalin had little trouble placing communists in positions of power at the expense of democratic politicians. During the war, the former Allies had agreed that free and fair elections should be held in Poland once it was liberated. As time passed, though, it became clear that Stalin had no intention of allowing this to happen. Together with the inability of the Allies to agree on the direction of Germany’s future, this would eventually split them apart. Britain, France and the USA wanted a strong, independent and democratic Germany, while Stalin believed Germany must remain weak to protect the Soviet Union and guarantee its future.

This fundamental disagreement soon became a problem to which no common solution could be found. In 1949, the Soviets set up a communist state in their, eastern, zone of Germany while their former allies did the same in the west in 1952. Like the rest of Europe, Germany was now divided between East and West. This situation was to last for over 40 years. The division of Europe was crystallised by the erection of two armed camps facing each other, and armed with an ever-growing arsenal of nuclear weapons. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), headed by the USA and the western powers on the one side, confronted the Warsaw Pact, made up of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in eastern Europe, on the other. For much of the post-war era until the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in August 1991, the people of the world lived in the terrifying knowledge that the ‘Third World War’, almost certain to be a nuclear confrontation, was always a maximum of four minutes away, four minutes being the longest period of warning that radar technology could provide.

While, in Europe, the armed peace of the Cold War held sway, a very different process was under way in Asia. The dazzling string of Japanese victories in 1941 and early 1942 had signalled an end to the Asian empires of Britain, France and the Netherlands. Despite the fact that the Allies were to reconquer all the ground lost to the Japanese by the close of the war, their authority and prestige had been dealt mortal blows, inspiring nationalist movements across Asia to end European colonialism for ever.

The British were the first to acknowledge that the end of empire was at hand. India was given independence in 1947, as was the new Muslim state of Pakistan. Burma followed in 1948 and Malaysia, the former colony of Malaya, in 1957. The Dutch were more stubborn, and attempted to hold on to the Dutch East Indies by force of arms. But on 27 December 1949, the formal transference of all the Dutch East Indies (except western New Guinea) took place. The French, too, were reluctant when it came to letting go of Indo-China. Soon after the war, a guerrilla conflict broke out between France and the communists under Ho Chi Minh and resulted in the enforced French departure in 1954. A communist state was established in north Vietnam and a western puppet government in the south. It was in order to defend this client state that the USA intervened in Vietnam between 1961 and 1973, with disastrous and humiliating results.

In China, civil war broke out after the fragile wartime truce between the nationalist government headed by Chiang Kai Shek and the communists led by Mao Zedong collapsed in mutual distrust. Despite considerable US aid to the nationalists, the communists were victorious in 1949, making the spread of communism in Europe and Asia and the birth of the Cold War the chief legacies of Hitler’s attempts to build a ‘thousand-year Reich’.

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MAO’S LITTLE RED BOOK. THE COMMUNIST VICTORY IN THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR INSPIRED WARS OF ‘NATIONAL LIBERATION’ THROUGHOUT ASIA. IN CONTRAST TO THE STABILITY OF THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE, ASIA SAW MASSIVE CONFLICTS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST IN VIETNAM, MALAYSIA AND THROUGHOUT INDO-CHINA. THESE CONFLICTS COST MILLIONS THEIR LIVES.

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