Henry Morgenthau Jr. is commonly recognized as one of the men who were the most influential with shaping post-WW2 Europe. His idea of dividing Germany into two separate nations based on a north-south axis interested the leaders of the Western nations that fought against Hitler's horde of Nazism. After much negotiation the important players among the Western Allies, as well as the local small states, had decided the post-war borders for the country, which, in their mind, brought misery not once but twice to the European continent: North and South Germany were born, with North Germany being perpetually neutralized, while the South was integrated into the young European Community. Italy too was punished, but not as severely as the Germans, with only independence-minded Sicily gaining freedom from Rome, as well as the colonial empire being taken away from Italian control.
Thanks to a powerful Western offensive, joint British-American troops met with their Soviet counterparts at Berlin, relatively close to the modern German-Polish border at the Oder River. Another faithful meeting happened in the central plains of Bohemia, where the Western troops reached Prague just three days after the Red Army had already liberated the city. These two meetings between soldiers of different ideologies then marked the rough line around which the Iron Curtain would go, a division of east and west...
In East Asia Japan was finally defeated in late 1945, after the US dropped two atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Kokura, followed by Soviets forces landing on the northern island of Hokkaido. These two attacks broke the government in Tokyo and resulted in an unconditional surrender.
Post-war four regions experienced massive changes: British India was partitioned into three large states (Industan, Bharat and Madras), China saw a bloody civil war (resulting in a narrow Nationalist victory thanks to the Soviets dropping any support for the Chinese Communist leader Mao), the Dutch East Indies also saw a civil war between nationalist and communist forces (though there the Communism prevailed) and North Africa saw the rise of the United Arab Republic, first formed by the union between Egypt and Sudan (but later expanding into Libya and Palestine). Starting in the 1960s decolonization came into full swing, resulting in many "third world"-nations and ideological struggles. However the "dark continent" of Africa gave birth to some success stories: the Union of West African States, the Somali Republic and the United Provinces of Kenya being the most well-known examples.
Now the 1970s are coming to an end and the Soviet-American rivalry continues... Will the world survive the upcoming decade or will nuclear war annihilate it? Who can tell?
