'The Locomotive of History'

Leon Trotsky, one of the men who helped set up a Communist state in Russia, once wrote that war was 'the locomotive of history'. He meant by this that war speeded up the rate at which societies and situations changed. There is little doubt that the war changed a great many attitudes in Britain. Labour would not have won an election in 1940 if there had been one, but it did win in 1945. The Labour government then went on to bring in tremendous changes.

The map of Europe was also transformed by the war. Russia (officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Soviet Union) massively expanded its territory and influence in eastern Europe, and Germany was divided into two separate states for the next 45 years. A large wedge of east European countries were forced to adopt the same Communist system as Russia and the leaders of these countries took their orders from Stalin.

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 71