World War II is the most important event of the 20th century. The list of ways it has shaped the future of the world is endless and impossible to quantify. The consequences of the war are so decisive for understanding the world in which we live that we are probably still living in an era that will be called the "post-war era" if we look back on it in distant posterity . The war did more than determine whether or not the German Nazis would succeed in their plans for a world-dominating “thousand-year Reich”; it provided economic growth that led to a more complete escape from the international depression than any piece of legislation. transformed culture: further opening the door to the acceptance of women in the workplace and leading to the creation of new terms, namely genocide, and this paved the way for the next half century of relative peace as well as tensions of the Cold War, it is also one of the greatest pioneers of innovation in human history, leading to new technologies such as the first computers, pesticides and agricultural fertilizers, as well as 'to a consumer-centered economy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe mobilization required for the war effort was unlike anything before or since. "Use it - wear it - do it - or do it without" became the slogan of the American home front as workers were forced to ramp up production while reorienting industry toward armaments, warplanes, boats, tanks and other vehicles. and ammunition. At the same time, workers remaining at home had to replace those outside the fighting, leading to an increase in the number of women in the workforce. During the war, more than 6.5 million women entered the workforce for the first time in the United States. alone. Some 350,000 people joined the armed forces, under the encouragement of the most active of all First Ladies, Eleanor Roosevelt. Women have also occupied important sectors that have been abandoned by men, notably the aviation industry. The industry employed less than 1% women to a majority of 65% by the end of the war. This change was not sustainable enough to lead to women immediately entering the workforce on an equal footing with men, access to well-paid management positions, as well as other positions in the top of hierarchies that encourage unpleasantness as a useful trait, was not there. But it was a turning point that made possible the acceptance of women in the workforce in the following decades. The wages saved by women during the war years were a major reason for the housing boom of the 1950s, which further gave rise to a series of infrastructure projects. towards vast new areas of habitation. Another often-forgotten side effect of the national effort was that it created a reading population. According to Yoni Appelbaum in The Atlantic, more than 122 million books have been distributed to American soldiers overseas. Prominent broadcaster HV Kaltenborn told a skeptical public in 1944: "American publishers have cooperated in an experiment which, for the first time, will make us a nation of readers." » He was right, the concept of reading had become democratized and shipments of tens of thousands of books at a time would have been outpaced by the rate of reading of men who otherwise would not have had access to books. War has repeatedly proven to be a powerful catalystinnovation and technological growth. Nowhere is this more easily observed than during World War II, in which all the best scientists from all the world's major technological powers were working against each other to develop what would give them a significant enough advantage to declare victory. One of the most important innovations in this “race” concerns pesticides and fertilizers used to promote a “green revolution” of agricultural growth and productivity. According to littlehistoryfarm.org, ten factories used to produce nitrogen for TNT during the war have been converted to produce ammonia for fertilizer. This coupled with an incredible growth in pesticide use has led to far higher agricultural yields and the ability to provide food security for much of the world's developing population. Total pesticide spending increased tenfold between 1945 and 1972. This enormous agricultural growth further fueled the shift from a largely agrarian economy to a more diversified and industrialized economy. Consumers were bombarded with advertisements across different media platforms for the first time. For the first time, the average American had the resources and access to make truly independent consumer decisions based on value and interest. Eventually, this led to a transformation of what had been an accepted identity, with all kinds of interests and activities facilitated and encouraged. Fewer workers were needed to work on farms and more to fill factory jobs and other new areas of production. This allowed economic parameters such as GDP to soar, in the United States this figure fell from $228 billion in 1945 to just under $1.7 trillion in 1975. Prabhu Pingali claims in research titled Green Revolution: Impacts, Limits and the Road Ahead that “Although the population more than doubled, grain production more than tripled during this period, with only a 30% increase in cultivated area. This growth virtually eliminated Malthusian concerns and led to a drastic increase in leisure time throughout the civilized world. World War II also sparked a whole new series of international conflicts and problems that would take the better part of a century to resolve. As part of the Manhattan Project, the United States developed and deployed nuclear weapons, a weapon of immense destruction that other world powers had to rush to catch up with. Germany itself was divided between the big three of the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, as well as a fourth, smaller area for France. This as well as the fate of surrounding states previously occupied by the Nazis, particularly those to the east within the Soviet sphere of influence. From the occupation in 1949 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, tensions oscillated between periods of dangerous stalemate and thawing of hostility. MAD or Mutual Assured Destruction, the principle that both ends of a nuclear conflict would decimate themselves in the event of a conflict due to the power of the weapons, ultimately prevented outright conflict between the United States and the Russia. This influenced domestic policy. of the two halves of the now divided German nation, creating a successful, prosperous and globally connected West Germany and a poor, oppressed and alienated German Democratic Republic under communist influence in the East. This divided millions of people and had many consequences: West Germany became.