Author: micjohns
WWII and Decolonization
During WWII, soldiers from European colonies, from the Dutch East indies to French West Africa, fought for their “mother countries” with the hope of gaining independence after conclusion of the war. However, upon returning home soldiers from colonies almost universally had their hopes dashed. Many of these veterans became politically active and pushed the European …
Postcolonial Displacements and The Arab-Israeli War
In 1948, Israel declared itself a free and independent nation following the conclusion of the British Mandate for Palestine. This immediately led to a bloody war between Israel, Palestinians within the former mandate, and the surrounding Arab countries. The British made no effort to maintain peace and hastily withdrew the small amount of British forces …
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Refugees And the Labor Pool
One of the greatest population transfers in the history of Europe occurred in the aftermath of the second World War. Millions of Displaced Persons were repatriated to their homelands or moved to new homes after the war. The governments of Western Europe after the war looked at their own ravaged economies and then saw an …
Postwar Rehabilitation
In his chapter “Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens” from his book Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America, David Serlin argues that the 1950s event that brought Japanese women to the United States for reconstructive plastic surgery should be seen as a product of the influence of the Western powers on how the Japanese people reconstructed their …
Veterans and the Welfare State
As the most destructive war in human history came to a close, those most intimately involved in the death and destruction, the soldiers, were able to begin to return to “normal” life again. Both veterans of WWII and civilians of the countries who fought in the war had varying expectations of how the veterans would …
Citizens as State Property: Displaced Persons Following WWII
Following the Second World War, nations across Europe sought to recover what property Nazi Germany had stolen from them: machines, gold, paintings, and even humans. While many Europeans displaced by WWII eagerly sought to return home, some citizens no longer wished to return to their home countries form before the war. However, following the war, …
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Michael Johnson Postwar Blog 2017-09-07 09:40:05
Hi, I’m Michael Johnson. I’m from Chesapeake, Virginia and I’m a History and Political Science major. I enjoy playing board games, running, and soccer. Fun happy fact: I lived in Sicily when I was younger. Fun sad fact: I have never been to a Virginia Tech basketball game, but I hope to fix that this …
