Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Syria-Lebanon, & Iraq. List the countries and empires that disappeared after WW1. Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Montenegro, & Serbia.

At the end of the war, millions of people were dead and millions more homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and much of the European industrial infrastructure had been destroyed. The Soviet Union, too, had been heavily affected.

Germany was reduced in size and forced to pay substantial reparations. The Kaiser went into exile, and Germany plunged into economic and political chaos that paved the way for the rise of Hitler. The new countries were poor and often in conflict with each other.

The First World War left a deep imprint on European society and polity. It had a devastating impact on the entire continent. (i) In society, soldiers were ranked higher than civilians. (v) Democracy as a young and fragile idea could not survive the instabilities of interwar Europe.

World War I brought about the end of the centuries-old monarchies and empires of Europe and the reorganisation of European borders and sovereignties. Post-war treaties led to the formation of an independent nation-state of Poland, the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and the formation of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

The former superpower was replaced by 15 independent countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

A Divided Germany After the Potsdam conference, Germany was divided into four occupied zones: Great Britain in the northwest, France in the southwest, the United States in the south and the Soviet Union in the east. East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic, was established in October 1949.

The countries that fought with Hitler lost territory and had to pay reparations to the Allies . Germany and its capital Berlin were divided into four parts. The zones were to be controlled by Great Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union.

“What would have happened in World War II if Hitler didn’t try to invade the Soviet Union? Germany would still have lost the war. It may have taken longer but, they would have been defeated.

As early as 1925, Adolf Hitler vaguely declared in his political manifesto and autobiography Mein Kampf that he would invade the Soviet Union, asserting that the German people needed to secure Lebensraum (“living space”) to ensure the survival of Germany for generations to come.