After World War I, empires collapsed and new states appeared all over Europe (see the map of World War I). World War II changed the map just as much, but differently. In Europe only a few borders moved, but whole peoples were moved along with them, and the continent was split in two by the Iron Curtain. In Asia and Africa the war started the end of the colonial empires, and over the next fifteen years dozens of new states appeared.
On the Panchronia globe you can compare the map before, during and after the war. Below are the key years; each link opens the globe in that year.
The map of Europe and the world: 1939 to 1950
| Year | What the map shows | Map |
|---|---|---|
| 1939 | Before the war: Nazi Germany has already absorbed Austria, the Czech lands and Memel; Italy has taken Albania; the Empire of Japan holds Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria | 1939 on the globe |
| 1940 | The USSR takes eastern Poland, the Baltic states, Bessarabia and part of Finland; Germany occupies France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway | 1940 on the globe |
| 1942 | Axis peak: Germany controls Europe from the Atlantic to the Volga; Japan rules from Manchuria to Burma and New Guinea | 1942 on the globe |
| 1945 | Germany and Japan surrender; the Allies occupy Germany, Austria, Japan and Korea | 1945 on the globe |
| 1947 | British India is divided into India and Pakistan | 1947 on the globe |
| 1949 | Two German states; the People's Republic of China is proclaimed; Indonesia becomes independent | 1949 on the globe |
| 1950 | The post-war map: Europe divided by the Iron Curtain, Korea divided at the 38th parallel | 1950 on the globe |
Europe before the war
By September 1939 the map of Europe had already started to change. Hitler's Germany carried out the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, took the Sudetenland after the Munich Agreement, and in March 1939 occupied the rest of the Czech lands and the Memel territory. Italy invaded Albania in April 1939.
In August 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, with a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe between them. After Germany invaded Poland on 1 September, the Red Army entered eastern Poland on 17 September. In 1940 the USSR annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, took Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania, and after the Winter War part of Karelia from Finland.
The Axis at its peak: 1942
In 1940 Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France (Fall of France), and in 1941 Yugoslavia and Greece. In June 1941 came the German invasion of the USSR. By the autumn of 1942 German troops stood on the Volga at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus, and in Egypt at El Alamein.
At the same time Japan, after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, took the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies and Burma within six months. The turning points came in the same year: the Battle of Midway in the Pacific and the Battle of Stalingrad on the Volga.
Yalta and Potsdam: the new borders of Europe
The leaders of the USSR, the USA and Britain decided the shape of post-war Europe at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 and the Potsdam Conference in July–August 1945, after the German surrender.
- Poland moved west. Its eastern lands, with Lviv and Vilnius, went to the Soviet Union, roughly along the Curzon Line. In return Poland received German territory east of the Oder–Neisse line: Silesia, most of Pomerania, Danzig (Gdańsk) and the south of East Prussia. The whole country shifted about 200 km to the west.
- Königsberg became Kaliningrad. The northern part of East Prussia went to the USSR; in 1946 the city was renamed Kaliningrad.
- Germany was divided into four occupation zones (American, British, French and Soviet), and Berlin into four sectors. In 1949 the western zones became the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet zone the German Democratic Republic.
- Austria was restored, but also divided into four zones; it regained full independence only in 1955, as a neutral state.
- The Soviet Union kept the Baltic states, Bessarabia (which became the Moldavian SSR), Northern Bukovina, Finnish Karelia and Petsamo, and took Transcarpathia from Czechoslovakia. In the Far East, after the Soviet–Japanese War, it took southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands from Japan.
- Italy lost its colonies, the Dodecanese went to Greece and Istria to Yugoslavia; Trieste remained a free territory until 1954.
People moved, not only borders
The new borders were followed by one of the largest forced migrations in history. Between 12 and 14 million Germans fled or were expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and other countries. Poles were resettled from the lands that went to the USSR into the former German territories, and Ukrainians and Belarusians moved the other way. In 1944 the Soviet government had already carried out the deportations of the peoples of the Caucasus and Crimea. As a result, Central and Eastern Europe, which had been ethnically mixed for centuries, became much more uniform.
The Iron Curtain
In March 1946 Winston Churchill said that "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent", from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic. East of that line, communist governments came to power in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and East Germany, while Yugoslavia and Albania followed their own communist paths. The West answered with the Marshall Plan and in 1949 with the founding of NATO. The Cold War fixed this division of Europe for more than forty years, until the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
Asia and the end of empires
Japan lost everything it had gained since 1895: Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria and its Pacific islands. Korea was divided at the 38th parallel into Soviet and American zones, and in 1948 two states appeared: the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People's Republic in the north. Two years later came the Korean War. China returned to civil war; in October 1949 Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China, and the government of the Republic of China retreated to Taiwan.
The war also weakened the European colonial empires beyond repair. The Philippines became independent in 1946. In 1947 came the independence and partition of India, which displaced about 15 million people. Burma and Ceylon followed in 1948. Indonesia proclaimed independence two days after Japan's surrender, and the Netherlands recognised it in 1949. In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh declared independence in September 1945, beginning a war with France. In the Middle East, the State of Israel was founded in 1948, followed by the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba. The wave of decolonisation peaked with the Year of Africa in 1960, when seventeen African countries became independent.
In 1945 the victors also created the United Nations, with 51 founding members. Today it has 193.
Questions
How did World War II change the map of Europe?
Poland moved about 200 km west, gaining German lands east of the Oder–Neisse line and losing its eastern lands to the USSR. Germany lost East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania and was divided into two states in 1949. The USSR kept the Baltic states, Bessarabia and part of Finland, and took Transcarpathia and northern East Prussia, including Königsberg.
What was the map of Europe like in 1939 compared with 1945?
In 1939 Germany had already annexed Austria and the Czech lands, Poland stretched east to Lviv and Vilnius, and the Baltic states were independent. In 1945 Germany was occupied by four powers, Poland lay between the Oder and the Bug, and the Baltic states were part of the Soviet Union.
Which countries became independent after World War II?
In the first five years: the Philippines (1946), India and Pakistan (1947), Burma, Ceylon, Israel and the two Koreas (1948), and Indonesia (1949). Most of Africa followed between 1956 and the mid-1960s.
When was Germany divided?
In 1945 into four occupation zones, and in 1949 into two states: the Federal Republic of Germany in the west and the German Democratic Republic in the east. It was reunified in 1990.