World War II is the most significant 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 war are so crucial to understanding the world we live in that we are probably still living in an era that, when looked back by distant posterity, will be called “the post-World War II era”. The war not only determined whether or not the German Nazis would succeed in their plans for a “thousand-year Reich” that would dominate the world, but it provided economic growth that enabled a more complete recovery from the international depression than any single piece of legislation. transformed the culture: further opening the door to the acceptance of women in the workplace and leading to the creation of new terms, namely genocide, and set the stage for the next half century of relative peace and Cold War tensions, it is also one of the greatest harbingers of innovation in human history, leading to new technologies such as the first computers, agricultural pesticides and fertilizers, and a consumer-centric economy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The mobilization required for the war effort was unlike anything before or since. “Use it – wear it – make due – or do without” became the slogan of the American home front as workers were forced to increase production while at the same time shifting industry to armaments, warplanes, boats, tanks and others vehicles, and ammunition. At the same time, workers remaining at home had to replace those out fighting, resulting in an increase in the amount of women in the workforce. During the war, more than 6.5 million women entered the workforce in the United States for the first time. Alone. Some 350,000 joined the armed forces, under the encouragement of the most active of all First Ladies, Eleanor Roosevelt. Women have also occupied important sectors that were vacated by men, particularly the aviation industry. By the end of the war, the industry went from employing fewer than 1 percent women to a majority of 65 percent. This change has not been sustainable enough to result in women immediately entering the workforce on equal footing with men, access to well-paid management jobs, as well as others at the top of hierarchies that encourage dislike as a trait useful, it wasn't there. But it was a turning point and made possible the acceptance of women in the world of work in the following decades; Wages saved by women during the war years were a major reason for the real estate boom of the 1950s, which ushered in a series of infrastructure projects as well as vast new residential areas. Another often forgotten side effect of the domestic effort was that it created a population of readers. According to Yoni Appelbaum in The Atlantic, over 122 million books were given to American soldiers overseas. In 1944, prominent broadcaster H. V. Kaltenborn told a skeptical audience, "American publishers have collaborated in an experiment which, for the first time, will make us a nation of readers." He was right, the concept of reading was democratized, and shipments of tens of thousands at a time were reportedly surpassed by the reading pace of men who otherwise would not have had access to books. War has proven countless times to be a powerful catalyst for innovation and technological growth. Nowhere is this more easily observable than in World War II, where all the best scientists from all the major powersThe world's leading technologies were working against each other to develop what would give them an advantage large enough to declare victory. One of the most important innovations of this “breed” are the pesticides and fertilizers used to promote a “green revolution” of agricultural growth and productivity. According to littlehistoryfarm.org, ten plants used to produce nitrogen for TNT during the war were converted to produce ammonia for fertilizer. This coupled with an incredible growth in the use of pesticides has led to much larger crop yields and the ability to secure food for much of the world's developing population. Total spending on pesticides increased tenfold from 1945 to 1972. This enormous agricultural growth further fueled the shift from a predominantly agricultural economy to a more diversified and industrialized one. Consumers were bombarded with advertisements on various media platforms for the first time. For the first time, the average American had the resources and access to make truly independent consumption decisions based on value and interest. Ultimately this led to a transformation of what was the accepted identity, with all kinds of interests and activities facilitated and encouraged. Fewer workers were needed to work on farms, and more were needed to fill factory jobs and other new areas of production. This allowed economic metrics such as GDP to skyrocket, in the United States the number rose from $228 billion in 1945 to just under $1.7 trillion in 1975. Prabhu Pingali argues in the research titled Green Revolution: Impacts, Limitations and the Path Ahead that “Although the population had more than doubled, the production of cereal crops during this period more than tripled, with only a 30% increase in cultivated area.” This growth virtually eliminated Malthusian concerns and led to a dramatic increase in leisure in the civilized world. World War II also gave rise to a whole new set of international controversies 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 the world's other powers were forced to recover. Germany itself was divided between the Big 3 USA, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, as well as a smaller fourth zone for France. This as well as the fate of the surrounding states previously occupied by the Nazis, especially those to the east in the Soviet sphere of influence. From the time of the occupation in 1949 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, tensions fluctuated between periods of dangerous stalemate and thawing hostilities. MAD or mutually assured destruction, the principle that both sides of a nuclear conflict would decimate each other in the event of a conflict due to the power of the weapons, ultimately prevented an actual conflict between the United States and Russia. It influenced the domestic politics of both halves of the now divided German nation, creating a successful, prosperous, and globally connected West Germany and the poverty-stricken, oppressed, and alienated German Democratic Republic under communist influence in the east. This divided millions of people and had so many consequences, West Germany became a haven for migrants of Turkish origin, East Germans were homogeneous in comparison and the wall was built to curb potential emigration. Professor and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson considers the Nuremberg trials the most significant event of the 20th century. The logic is that the trials were a first for us as a species.