Essay On The Negative Effects Of World War 1

The World War I had many negative effects on the world including the World War II, the birth of atomic bombs, and the Cold War. World War I, the first man-made catastrophe of the twentieth century, lasted from July 28, 1914, to November 11, 1918. The war had two sides; one consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire (Central Powers), against Serbia, France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States (Allied Powers). During these four years, more than nine million soldiers died and 21 thousand more were wounded. When the Allied Powers defeated the Central Powers in World War I, they made the Treaty of Versailles to keep peace between the Central Powers and themselves.
The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty made by the Allied Powers to make peace between the Central Powers and themselves and also to prevent another war in the future. This treaty stated that Germany had to claim full responsibility for the war, pay money for the war damages, limit the size of their military,

and give away parts of their land. The German delegates had no say in the Treaty of Versailles and were forced to sign it. However, Germans were mad and felt betrayed by their delegates for signing the treaty. The Germans felt resentment against the Allies; when Hitler claimed he would make Germany a better place and defeat the Allies, all the Germans supported him because they saw him as a ray of hope. When Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany, he began to rebuild Germany's army defying the Treaty of Versailles. He also sent armies to occupy Austria, and as he predicted, the European democracies did not respond. Since Germany gained all their lost power, Hitler started invading countries in Europe taking revenge on the allies. This lead to World War II the deadliest war in human history.
Just two decades after World War I, World War II ,the deadliest global war, had begun. The war had two sides; one consisted of Germany, Italy, Japan (Axis Power) against France, Great Britain, Russia, China, and later, the United States. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded West Poland; two days later Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Shortly after the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway, they attacked Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. All of these nations were conquered easily by the Germans. In the Battle of Britain, Germany launched an attack on Great Britain exclusively from the air. The Luftwaffe (German air force) was beaten by the British Royal Air Force marking the first military loss for Germany.
Germany invaded the Soviet Union, made good progress and went deep into Russia.

The Germans were forced out of the Soviet Union because they became weak by the freezing winters and the vast land. Japan, another country on the Axis Power, attacked the United States of America on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor, a major U.S naval base, taking the Americans completely by surprise. The attack on Pearl Harbor strengthened the cause for America to join the war. On December 8 America declared war on Japan; in response the Germany, Italy, and Japan (Axis Power) declared war on America. In June 6, 1944, celebrated as D-Day, British and American soldiers launched an attack on German-occupied France on the coast of Normandy. Allies forced the German soldiers to retreat from France and surrounded them on the East and West. The Russian soldiers were first to reach Berlin the capital of Germany, forcing the Germans to surrender shortly after the suicide of Adolf

Hitler.
Even after Germany surrendered, Japan still held strong in the war even though knowing they had little chance to win. The Potsdam Declaration demanded the Japanese militarist government to surrender and threatened them saying “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused. The Japanese soldiers were willing to die rather than surrender. Just a few days before the war came to an end, Japanese tried a new deadly way of combat, the kamikaze, in which suicide pilots crashed their planes into American ships. This convinced the American army that only a massive invasion would force Japan to surrender.
President Harry S. Truman made plans to attack Japan in the autumn. His military advisers warned him that the invasion would cause half a million soldiers to die. Later in July Truman learned about a secret weapon made in Manhattan, the atomic bomb, had been tested in a dessert in New Mexico. This atomic bomb was a weapon so powerful that it could destroy an entire city in a few minutes. On August 6, 1945, Colonel Paul Tibbets flew a plane loaded with the atomic bomb and dropped it on Hiroshima, a city in Japan. The Destruction was like nothing anybody had ever seen. Within minutes, the whole city was destroyed and more than 130,000 people were killed. Even after the horrific bombing, Japan still refused to surrender. On August 9, 1945, Major Charles Sweeney flew an atomic bomb, more powerful from the last, and dropped in on Nagasaki, another city in Japan. About 35,000 thousand people were immediately killed, and many more people in both cities would die slow deaths due to radiation poisoning.On September 2, 1945, Japan’s surrender was formally accepted by General MacArthur, officially ending World War II. All civilians who survived World War II would be living in fear thinking about how atomic bombs would be used in the future.
In the last few months of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met at Yalta, a resort in the Soviet Union. There, Stalin promised to hold free elections in the countries of Eastern Europe he occupied. Later, Stalin realized holding free elections would make the government non-communists, so he started rebuilding communist governments in these countries. Stalin wanted to construct a group of countries, that would support him, to make a border on the west of the Soviet Union. After the ring of communist countries were built, Stalin wanted to make the Soviet Union the most powerful country in the world. The Americans feared that the Soviet Union planned to rule the world, so the American officials encouraged building more atomic bombs like the ones that ended World War II. Hence, the Cold War had begun, a competition between America and the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union built their first atomic bomb and tested it in 1949. In response, President Truman announced that the Americans would build a deadlier atomic weapon, the hydrogen bomb. The first Hydrogen bomb was tested on Marshall Islands showing horrific results. The bomb vaporized the whole island and made a hole in the ocean floor. America and the Soviet Union also competed in the area of space exploration. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite and the first man-made object that would orbit in space. In response, the United States sent their first satellite in space in 1958. President Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) dedicated to space exploration. Russians were ahead and sent the first man in space in April 1961. Later in May 1961, after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, President Kennedy made a claim that U.S would be the first country to send a man on the moon. His claim became true on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, an astronaut on NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, became the first man to land on the moon, winning the space race for the Americans.
The first military action in the Cold War took place, in June 1950, when communist North Korea attacked its democratic neighbor South Korea. The American officials saw this as the first step for communism to take over the world, and that ignoring South Korea could not be an option. President Truman sent troops to South Korea and the war ended in 1953. In 1962 the Soviet Union secretly installed missiles in Cuba to launch attacks on U.S cities. This started the Cuban missile crisis, a conflict that almost started a war between America and the Soviet Union. To avoid war, the U.S and Soviet Union reached an agreement to withdraw the missiles from Cuba. As President Reagan fought communism in Central America, the Soviet Union was falling apart. The Soviet Union was having serious economic and and political problems. In 1989, every other communist country in Eastern Europe was becoming a non-communist country. In November 1989, the last living symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, was torn down and the Soviet Union also fell apart. The Cold War, a conflict that lasted for more than four decades, was finally over.