Was World War II able to create a world "safe for democracy" in the post-war era? Why or why not?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: World War II defeated fascism but did not create a world "safe for democracy" any more than the previous world war did. The peace was harder to win than the war. Roosevelt, like Wilson before him, had a vision of a new world order. In Roosevelt's, the United States, Britain, Russia, and China would, in effect, divide the world among them and collaborate to police peace. In a series of wartime conferences before the president's death in April 1945, the leaders of the four countries agreed, in effect, to the plan. Neither the peace nor the collaboration lasted for long. Protracted conflict threatened from three sources: civil wars in "liberated" countries, the ambitions of international communism, and Russia's desire for security or power along its borders. Stalin seized or garrisoned much of Eastern Europe, effectively creating, under Russian hegemony, the sort of empire Hitler had dreamed of across the Slav world. In March 1946, Churchill announced the descent of an "Iron Curtain" from the Baltic to the Adriatic seas, dividing Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe from the West. The United Nations, now called the United Nations Organization, survived the war, and more states gradually joined it; but the mutual hostilities of the former allies made it a forum for airing disagreements rather than for perpetuating peace. In one respect, however, the American vision for democracy worked. Democracy took root in countries American forces occupied. Japan was the most conspicuous success, thoroughly transformed into a demilitarized, democratic state, and a staunch American ally. Italy also democratized without difficulty, though it had too large a Communist Party for American taste and was prone to chronic changes of government. While the Soviet zone of Germany, in the east, became a rigid communist dictatorship, the American-, British-, and French-occupied zones, in the west, were combined to form another model democracy, the Federal Republic of Germany. There were spectacular successes for democracy. It was reborn in Europe, where all states west of the Iron Curtain recovered their broken democratic traditions. It worked surprisingly well in guiding Japan, Italy, and western Germany out of the devastation of defeat. India and, to some extent, Israel, were models—albeit rarely applied—of how decolonization and democracy could work together.