Introduction

Abstract

When the Second World War ended in Europe on 8 May 1945, there was inevitably a profound sense of an ending and of a new beginning. The sheer scale of the physical devastation of the continent was such that a return to the past seemed impossible. As Derek Urwin writes:

In 1918 when the First World War ended, only the battlefields of Belgium and Northern France lay in ruins: elsewhere war damage was comparatively negligible. In 1945 the situation was entirely different. Military and technological development had made war seem universal. Very few areas in Europe had remained immune from the conflict and its consequences. The outlook everywhere was bleak. The development of air warfare had laid even the British Isles open to destruction. The devastation of northern France between 1914 and 1918 may have been more intense, but what the Second World War lacked in quality it made up for in quantity. In every direction whole regions had been virtually defoliated. Industrial production of the continent had slumped; in 1945 and 1946 it stood at only one-third of the 1938 figure.