1940s

To some degree internal and external tensions in the post-war era were managed by new institutions, including the United Nations, the welfare state, and the Bretton Woods system, facilitating the post–World War II economic expansion, which lasted well into the 1970s.

The decade also witnessed the early beginnings of new technologies (such as computers, nuclear power, and jet propulsion), often first developed in tandem with the war effort, and later adapted and improved upon in the post-war era.

European cinema survived although obviously curtailed during wartime and yet many films of high quality were made in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Europe.

[7][8][9] Memorable films from post-war England include David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949), and Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1946) and The Red Shoes (1948), Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, the first non-American film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture and Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) directed by Robert Hamer.

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945), and the post-war Drunken Angel (1948), and Stray Dog (1949), directed by Akira Kurosawa are considered important early works leading to his first masterpieces of the 1950s.

[citation needed] After the fall of France in 1940, Hollywood drove fashion in the United States almost entirely, with the exception of a few trends coming from wartorn London in 1944 and 1945, as America's own rationing hit full force.

In response to the war effort, patriotic nautical themes and dark greens and khakis dominating the color palettes, as trousers and wedges slowly replaced the dresses and more traditional heels due to shortages in stockings and gasoline.

The most common characteristics of this fashion were the straight skirt, pleats, front fullness, squared shoulders with v-necks or high necks, slim sleeves and the most favorited necklines were sailor, mandarin and scalloped.

Among the many baseball players (including well known stars) who served during World War II were Moe Berg, Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg, Stan Musial (in 1945), Warren Spahn, and Ted Williams.

He is widely regarded as the first African American to achieve the status of a nationwide hero within the United States, and was also a focal point of anti-Nazi sentiment leading up to and during World War II.

D-Day Battle of France The Holocaust Auschwitz concentration camp Pearl Harbor The Blitz Hiroshima and Nagasaki Manhattan Project Surrender of Japan World War II Israeli Declaration of Independence Nuremberg trials Marshall Plan ENIAC
Above title bar: events during World War II (1939–1945): From left to right: Troops in an LCVP landing craft approaching Omaha Beach on D-Day ; Adolf Hitler visits Paris , soon after the Battle of France ; The Holocaust occurs as Nazi Germany carries out a programme of systematic state-sponsored genocide , during which approximately six million European Jews are killed; The Japanese attack on the American naval base of Pearl Harbor launches the United States into the war; An Observer Corps spotter scans the skies of London during the Battle of Britain and The Blitz ; The creation of the Manhattan Project leads to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , the first uses of nuclear weapons , which kill over a quarter million people and lead to the Japanese surrender ; Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the Japanese Government, on board USS Missouri , effectively ending the war.
Below title bar: events after World War II: From left to right: The Declaration of the State of Israel in 1948; The Nuremberg trials are held after the war, in which the prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany are prosecuted; After the war, the United States carries out the Marshall Plan , which aims at rebuilding Western Europe; ENIAC , the world's first general-purpose electronic computer .
Flag map of the world from 1942, during World War II
In Green: German Reich at its peak (1942):
Civilian-administered occupied territories ( Reichskommissariat and General Government )
Military-administered occupied territories ( Militärverwaltung )
Warsaw Ghetto (1940–1943), photographed using Agfacolor process.
David Ben-Gurion proclaiming Israeli independence from the United Kingdom on May 14, 1948.
Perón 's supporters in the Plaza de Mayo in Loyalty Day .
Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane (1941)
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund in the trailer for Casablanca (1942)
Frank Sinatra gained massive popularity during the decade, becoming one of the first teen idols , and one of the pop artists who sold the most records in the 1940s
Aníbal Troilo , one of the most famous Bandoneon players in the Golden Age of Tango
Katharine Hepburn c. 1941 , who popularized trousers for women
Juan Perón giving a radio speech from his office.
The Ink Spots in 1944, a popular swing band of the era