Reconstruction

Abstract

The Second World War took the lives of approximately 40 million persons, including 17 million Russians, 6 million Jews and 4 million persons uprooted and either murdered outright or worked to death. By disrupting normal delivery of food and services the war significantly increased civilian mortality rates, sometimes far from the actual battlefields; over 1 million persons died in a famine in Bengal, for instance. Across Europe the combination of aerial and ground bombardment had reduced entire cities to undifferentiated expanses of smoking rubble. Where industrial plants had escaped destruction they suffered from six years of neglected maintenance. Industrial output in Germany and the occupied territories had been declining since 1944 and now collapsed. Agricultural output had declined even more drastically due to the shortage of labour and diversion of resources into armaments. Distribution systems broke down completely and even the reduced supplies of food and industrial products were not available to those who needed them. Millions found themselves not only without food and shelter, but uprooted from their homes and forced to move.