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What Was 1945 A Turning Point

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Explain, in what says was the year 1945 a turning point of modern European history.

Immediately after the close of the WWI, Europe plunged itself into WWII, a major world conflict that ended in 1945 and brought forth significant changes that set the footnote for Europe’s future development. In many ways, the 1945 was seen as a turning point of modern European history.
First, 1945 ushered in the introduction of Cold War, whose major belligerents were the rising powers of the US and the Soviet Union. Before 1945, Europe was bathed in regional conflicts of its own. Nations of different Alliances, for example, the France and Britain of the Triple Entente rivaled Germany and Austrian Hungry of the Triple Alliance in the fields of increased militarization …show more content…

Before 1945, the Industrial Revolution, Commerce Revolution and Social Darwinist prejudice facilitate imperialist agendas that allowed European nations to immensely colonize, exploit, and inhabit parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. Take Britain as an example, it had spheres of influences over Palestine, with long colonized sub-Saharan Africa parts such as Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya and Ghana. On the other hand, whereas France had been holding on to Algeria and Indochina, the Netherlands held mighty sways in the East Indies. Notwithstanding such imperialist success, the WWII greatly shattered European nations with formidable economic exhaustion, with domestic confidence shrunken and political agendas changed to assist in faster European recovery over social and economic problems such as unemployment, reconstruction and inflation. This set off the trend of decolonization which European nations were reluctant to allow and yet futile to prevent so. In the aftermath of 1945, the British withdrew from Palestine, leaving the UN to determine its fate. It also saw colonial loss from now independent states of Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana and so forth. For nations like France and the Netherlands, both nations maintained a costly and unwinnable struggle to retain their colonial gains, reluctantly agreeing to recognize Indonesian independence, the division of …show more content…

Before 1945, Fascism and Nazism gathered opportunistic speed in replacing faltering democratic faith, since citizens of Italy and Germany spoke highly of totalitarianism. In Italy, Fascist ideas permeated. In Weimar Republic, Nazism took roots. These ideologies are fanatically trusted to be best means to rebuild citizens’ shattered lives amidst the hardest of time in economy and national glory. Another radicalism, called Anti-Semitism, also took shape to underscore arch0nationalistic identity. However, during the WWII, brutal and racist slaughters like Holocaust, which pilloried 13 million individuals that were Jews and “undesirables”. The infamous Auschwitz was amongst the concentration camps that Jew were shipped to and largely exterminated unlawfully. Anti-Semitic feelings obviously ran deep throughout European society in early twentieth century. Moreover, the staggering 50 to 60 million people whose lives were taken as victims to misguided totalitarianism outraged human conscience. In the wake of 1945, international opinions denounced extremism’s radical and dehumanizing wrongs. Total confusion and massive destruction were evidence of such totalitarian agendas. Post-war Europe reaffirmed people’s faith in democracy and freedom as the main guidelines for future development. Besides, the new legal concept of “crimes against humanity” was

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