World War II and Involvement of USSR
Under the leadership of Hitler and with this Nazi philosophy to rule the world using the gun power resulted in World War II. The war started in 1939, with the occupancy of Germany over Poland. France and Great Britain joined war over Germany within days. Further in 1921, with the invasion of Germany over USSR, the war is declared by USSR over Germany. On December 7, 1941, Japan made surprise attack over the Pearl Harbour in the pacific where the naval fleet of United States of America were resting. A large fleet of United States of America got seriously impacted by the Japanese attack. Several warships, aircrafts and the thousands of the lives of the people gone lost on the same day. This compelled United States of America to declare war on Japan, with the approval of Congress. Swiftly the nation transformed into the arsenal of Democracy. While supporting its allies in Europe like UK and France, the country needed to fight the fronts both in Europe as well as in Pacific. Once the US joined the war, the commanders of the US force were summoned to bomb Japan. As part of retaliation, US air carriers over the navy fleet, equipped with B-25s and made to drop bombs over Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohoma and Osake. During the total association of the United States with WWII, a total of about 16 million Americans served in the war and about 0.41 million got killed and about 0.67 millons got wounded. About 130K American soldiers got prisoned in the war. All major cities of Japan were bombed by US Navy during the war; finally the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made the surrender of Japan eminent (Harrison,2017).
Once United States of America got joined into the war, there is total transformation observed in the overall life of the country. There are several unprecedented protocols came in. Military recruitment started, people lost the privileges of the civilian life and started joining in the military for the sake of country, undergone rigorous and specialized training for the military needs. Factories started producing items just for the needs of the war. In any case, civilians supported the military action, munitions, money and the morale is provided to the military taking action in the fore front. The total cost is estimated at $341 billion for America.
Opinion on Atomic Bombing (Selden,2016): It is a great controversy about the ethical and moralities of the war. Atomic bombing has created never before loss on the planet and the sufferings were being transferred from generation to generation in the form of radiation defects. Personally i believe this would not happened and sympathetic towards the people who faced the wrath of atomic bomb on the Japan soil due to the mistakes of their leaders. But still i will accept the fact that it is inevitable as the war machine has grown too large and expanded across the world and it would not have stopped without curtailing the same through bombing. Atrocities, there during the war are unaccountable in number. Concentration camps of Nazis have committed most brutal and heinous crimes of all times in history. Several women and children were subjected to serious crimes against humanity. Mass murders and rapes became part of everyday life during the war. However the crimes are not just due to the Axis powers, but even allies have their record of war crimes. USSR in the form of Red army committed serious crimes over Germany citizens. USSR also killed several POWs during the war time. Allied committed several crimes and killings of the Japanese soldiers, killing the prisoners of war, killing those who are attempting to surrender is recorded in the war notes and movie clippings. IRA backed by China killed several POWs of Japan. Another horrific observation is the collection of the human parts of the Japanese soldiers and the civilians as war trophies by several American soldiers. These are vastly seen in the war press publications and the war clippings from several reliable sources. Though it is inhumane and war brings all these into reality. Rather than worrying over the occurrences, the best part of the story is to avoid war, once war started there is no scope for regretting later.
What caused the demise of the Soviet state USSR?
The end of World War II created two distinct power poles in the world, the communist and capitalistic regimes. These two powerful poles created their clouds of the nations and naturally intense tensions were created and sustained between these two ideologically different countries. These two groups of countries are led by the united states of America for capitalists and the USSR for the communist groups. As these two groups are powerful and with capacities of nuclear weapons generated a condition of indirect war-like situation, which is often termed to the cold war.
However, the demise of the USSR resulted at the end of the cold war in the world. Now it is mostly one-sided power creation in the world and so the USA leadership prevailed in the world.
Was it the arms race with the US, domestic economic failure within the USSR, desire for democracy among Russian masses, which eventually led to its end?
The collapse of the USSR is due to a number of reasons. For instance, the economic failure of the USSR is due to the fall in the oil prices, which impacted the country miserably. The global conditions evolved with the onset of the oil price decrease, created further deterioration of the economic inefficiencies in the country. USSR could not manage the actually purchase the essential items, it could not simply keep up the economic growth, the technical growth came to standstill. All these factors contributed to the fall in the economy of the USSR. Ethnic tensions in the USSR also contributed to the disintegration and instabilities in the country. By the 1990s there are several causalities due to the ethnic tensions and the nation got disintegrated with the failure of leadership to bring in coordination between different ethnicities in the country. Gorbachev's perestroika damaged the economy as these reforms proven to be a failure in accelerating the economy of the country. Finally, all these factors led to the demise of the nation.
Post World War II, there is greater optimism and confidence seen in the countries like the United States of America and they believed that they can bring in the difference and will achieve much beyond the imagination and limitations of reality. But actually, it is not the case, within a few years after the war, their beliefs shattered and they started looking at a different picture than before. Further evolution of the cold war created challenges to the foreign policies of the USA, bipartisan approach evolved during the times of the cold war. Later after the involvement of the USA in the Vietnam war, it lost support for its vision from the domestic front as well(Mauli,2018).
Three key post-war trends and how they shaped the post-Cold war world.
The key trends after the post-cold war include the movement more towards capitalism. More and more nations were moving towards the capitalistic regimes and making fortune from the same. A good example of such transformation can be seen from China, which is mainly responsible for the transformation that has happened here in terms of economic integrity and strength. International co-operations, Globalization of the trade and military, formation of the trade groups like G7 for the promotion of free trade are key trends after the post-cold war. China is emerging as the next superpower in the Asia-pacific region with a great boost of its economy.
The roots of these changes and the strengthening of capitalism can be seen from the post-war trends that shaped the world to the current condition.