Germany would be disarmed, its boundaries redrawn, and the country divided into four “zones of occupation.” Each zone would be governed by one of the Allied powers: the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.
The country subsequently began a slow but continuous improvement of its standard of living, with the export of local products, a reduction in unemployment, increased food production, and a reduced black market.
Almost all the ethnic Germans living in the territories acquired by Poland were expelled by the postwar communist regimes, to be replaced by Poles who had themselves been displaced from former Polish lands now annexed by the Soviet Union.
And there was 400 million cubic meters (14 billion cubic feet) of rubble to clear. The degree of destruction varied regionally. In East Germany, 9.4 percent of pre-war housing was destroyed. In West Germany, the figure was 18.5 percent.
By 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union had begun to emerge as ideologically opposed 'superpowers', each wanting to exert their influence in the post-war world. Germany became a focus of Cold War politics and as divisions between East and West became more pronounced, so too did the division of Germany.
Many German civilians were sent to internment and labour camps where they were used as forced labour as part of German reparations to countries in Eastern Europe. The major expulsions were completed in 1950.
Having experienced great losses as a result of German invasions in the First and Second World Wars, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin preferred that a defeated Germany be dismembered and divided so that it could not rise to its former strength to threaten European peace and security again.
The Soviet Union suffered the highest number of fatalities of any single nation, with estimates mostly falling between 22 and 27 million deaths. China then suffered the second greatest, at around 20 million, although these figures are less certain and often overlap with the Chinese Civil War.
After World War II both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947.
Russia lost the most men and had many major cities destroyed.
From 1944 to 1948 at least 12 million 'Germans' were expelled from Eastern Europe and resettled. This figure includes those in Western and Eastern Germany as counted in the censuses of the early 1950s. It does not include those who settled in Austria, the USA or other parts of Europe.
Poland did not regain its independence after World War Two. After the great conflict, the Soviet Union, which had first attacked Poland as Hitler's ally in 1939, seized the entire Polish territory, with the open connivance of the triumphant Allies.
The ceding of the east German lands to Poland was done in large part to compensate Poland for losing the Kresy lands east of the Curzon line to the Soviet Union; this territory had large populations of Ukrainians and Belarusians, the ethnic groups of two of the western republics of the Soviet Union.
After Germany's surrender in May 1945, millions of German soldiers remained prisoners of war. In France, their internment lasted a particularly long time. But, for some former soldiers, it was a path to rehabilitation.
Under their occupying governments, the two Germanys followed very different paths. West Germany was allied with the U.S., the U.K. and France and became a western capitalist country with a market economy. In contrast, East Germany was allied by the Soviet Union and fell under highly centralized communist rule.
Berlin has been rebuilt four times over the past hundred years: first by the Nazis, then by the Allies and Soviets. The reconstruction of the city's eastern part launched by the German authorities after the Reunification continues to this day.
West and East Germany were officially unified in 1995, and the country officially paid off its debts in October of 2010.
The case of debts arising from World War II is somewhat less complicated. At this time only four countries, discussed below, owe the U.S. government debts of any size arising from World War II programs to aid our allies. Other countries have paid their debts in full.
According to postwar German estimates, more than 35,000 soldiers were convicted by military courts of leaving their units during the course of the war. Some 23,000 were sentenced to death, and at least 15,000 of these were actually executed.
That count includes hundreds of thousands of deaths due to drowning, disease and starvation after the Chinese nationalist army breached massive holes in dikes holding back the Yellow River to stymie the Japanese advance in 1938.
Deaths during World War II
The Soviet Union suffered 8,668,400 dead and another 4,559,000 missing. Germany lost 2,049,872 dead and 1,902,704 missing. China lost 1,324,516 dead and 115,248 missing. Japan lost 1,506,000 dead and 810,000 missing.
World War II
The war pitted the Allies and the Axis power in the deadliest war in history, and was responsible for the deaths of over 70 million people.
The Yalta Conference 1945
The leaders of the USA, USSR and Britain had met at Yalta in February 1945 to discuss what action would be taken after World War Two. Stalin wanted Germany to stay weak.
While Westerners tend to see the war through the lens of events such as D-Day or the Battle of Britain, it was a conflict largely won by the Soviet Union.
The Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) were opposed by the Allied Powers (led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union). Five other nations joined the Axis during World War II: Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Croatia. The decline and fall of the Axis alliance began in 1943.