Many other countries have struggled to reconcile their differences after lesser conflicts, so what events and policies made peace among us something we most take for granted?
In: 25
Lots of good answers here, but the big thing I see everyone failing to mention is stopping Soviet influences as well as past alliances.
In the first World War, Japan and Italy were allied nations, and the United States was neutral to Germany (especially since the US had loads of people of German heritage) up until the US formally joined the war. Russia had itself a communist revolution, and that freaked out basically all the other powers. Their form of government made them a bit of a pariah in the inter-war years until Nazi Germany attacked them and the Soviets threw in their lot with the allies.
The only reason the Soviets were part of the allies was due to the common German enemy. They did not trust one another. And towards the wars end, the Japanese and several Germans had to make a calculus: do we surrender and allow the western powers or the Soviets occupy us? Loads of Germans defected to the US/British/French sides for fear of Soviet oppression (the land the Red Army crosses to get to Berlin remained Soviet possessions after all) and the Japanese surrendered to the US. It was crucial to western powers that the Soviet titan, which at the time bordered Japan and actively occupied half of Germany, did not expand and increase its influence. Hence aiding in reconstruction and establishing alliances with these powers was essential to maintain Soviet spread.
An important footnote: the government of the Soviet Union doesn’t matter too much. The same issues and subsequent Cold War would still occur regardless if the Soviets were capitalist, democratic, fascist, monarchists, etc. It was all about spheres of influence and power. After WWII, the largest powers in the world were the USA and USSR. And the only threats to their power was each other. It’s an international dynamic that has existed for as long as there have been nations and applies just the same to Macedonia and Persia, Rome and Carthage, Europe and the Arabic world during the Crusades, Mongols and China, France and England during the age of exploration, etc. In fact, General Patton was an advocate of continuing the war and fighting the Soviets for this very reason (“hey, we’re already mobilized. Our other enemies have surrendered or are close to surrender. All of our troops and equipment are already over here. We have superior air and naval strength. We have a monopoly on nukes: lets go get em!”)
The short answer is because Western Europe united against a new enemy, the Soviet Union.
After WW2 the allies learned the lessons of WW1 and decided against forcing the Axis powers to pay harsh reparations (despite Stalin’s protests) because that was a big part of what led to WW2. The hyper-inflation and economic damage resulted in a political climate that lead to the rise of the Nazi party.
There was also another big consideration. With the Soviet union having essentially all but annexed the Eastern countries like Poland and Hungary, the UK, US, and France needed strong allies in the West. So they cancelled a bunch of debt and helped rebuild West Germany into an economic powerhouse. This strengthened the relationship between those nations as they were now cooperating rather than treating Germany as a purely defeated and conquered nation.
Japan similarly was under US occupation after the War and it’s political system, Constitution, and economics were re-tooled. Japan was a defeated nation and the rampant Nationalism in Japan had cooled significantly after their defeat. The Americans eventually left rather than rule over Japan like a conquered people which helped a lot. The Japanese were willing to become close allies after that.
Different people, different governments and policies. Germany has done what they can to make amends for WW1 and WW2 and show remorse for letting those things happen. Japan was adequately punished for their involvement. It’s better to have them as allies than to hold a grudge against them for something that happened before most of use were born and the people at fault are long dead
All of these countries were united by a mutual dislike/fear of Russia. During WW-2, Russia did more than any country to defeat Hitler, and it was obvious to everybody that Russia would be one of the new superpowers in the aftermath of the war. However it was also a totalitarian dictatorship that posed a threat of expanding its territory and control into Europe and Asia, which it did, so Western European Countries and Japan felt they would be better off allying with the more distant US which they saw as less likely to invade and more similar in governance to them. The US in turn actively courted these countries including massive infusions of capital to help with rebuilding.
Containment. See, at the end of WW2, America was already gearing up for its next rivalry/war, against the Soviet Union. As the war ended, they knew that they’d have to make sure that the USSR couldn’t overrun Europe, and they sure as shit didn’t want them to take Japan, so they spent a lot of money rebuilding those countries and stabilizing them.
This started paying off, as West Germany became filthy rich off of industrialization, as did Japan. Modernization and widespread rebuilding made Europe a powerhouse on its own, which was needed to keep communism at bay. European nations saw the strength in this, as the Benelux had its own trade union. (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg), which was a good idea: Collective bargaining with a larger economy meant that countries couldn’t economically bully you.
Then came the European Economic commonwealth, which would slowly become the EU we have today, created to ensure that both the old Soviet block and the new Russian Federation don’t barge their way into other countries.
In the meantime, the USSR saw its policies fail courtesy of rampant corruption and failure to modernize. Were it not for the British giving them the technology, they wouldn’t have had easy access to jet engines! Eastern Germany became a posterboy of what life under Soviet Russia was: Bleak, dull, fear-filled.
I remember learning that the Soviet government had to pull a movie showing the American poor, because rather than paint America in a bad light, it made the Russian poor ask “why do their poor own cars?”
Bonus point: This is why British rail is considered to be garbage: They’ve not modernized since they were constructed over a hundred years ago, whereas european rail was thoroughly destroyed during WW2.
After WW2 the world quickly realigned to face new enemies. The Marshall plan helped to rebuild Europe, but the stakes were pretty high for anyone near soviet occupied territory, eg, Italy, Germany, and Japan. The USA and USSR were the only nuclear powers at first, so everyone had to pick a nuclear umbrella (a protector with nukes) early on and things progressed from there. Anyone that sided with the USSR was going to have a proletarian uprising, so countries that were not in the USSR’s grasp and had an established ruling elite tended to side with the USA. Over time those connections were formalized into NATO.
Something that I find interesting is that two countries (the only two?) that have directly attacked America have since become two of our closest allies. Japa (Pearl Harbor, yes I am aware HI was not a full state for another 18 years), and Great Britain (war of 1812).
I’m sure there were other minor things, and certainly attacks on Americans overseas, early turf wars while trying to finalize borders with Mexico, etc… And technically speaking, an embassy is American soil so some will claim Lebanon counts as well. Well certainly egregious, these were fairly small incursions, while the Brits burned down the White House, and we all know what happened in Pearl Harbor.
They’re basically occupied countries. Part of US alliance systems. The USA has military bases everywhere in their countries. Germany and Italy are a part of nato with the USA as a supreme commander of their armed forces. I think Japan aren’t even allowed to have an army or if they are the US controls their forces too. They’re essentially American vassal states
Cooperative necessity. It is not just the US, after the war many nations in Europe had to live together even if there was bad blood between them.
Often it was an uneasy peace, but after the destructions of the war many economies needed to rebuild. And so they needed each other. This mutual need is a good basis for better relationships.
Also only fools hold on to a grudge against relatives of enemies of their (grand)parents. If our hose before us had not learned to outgrow their history none of us would be alive today.
Similar values. Once the Allies were clearly out of the picture what was most obviously left was commonality. This bred trust
Latest Answers