Days of War and Uneasy Peace

By Mitch Frank

The turning point of the 20th century arrived in a clear, sunny sky over Hiroshima on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, in the form of a mushroom cloud that could be seen 250 miles away. President Truman's order to drop the atom bomb brought a decisive end to the war in the Pacific, but it marked the beginning of an era of dread and controversy from which we have never escaped. The issues that preoccupy us now as much as ever are not only moral ones about when it is acceptable to use weapons of mass destruction but also existential ones about the nuclear threat to life on earth.

TIME will mark its 80th anniversary with a special issue later this month, in which we profile 80 days from the past eight decades that changed the world. In our continuing series exploring candidates for that final list, we look back at the 1940s, when every day seemed to prove that humankind was capable of incredible achievement and endless horror. There were a multitude of unforgettable dates during the six years of World War II. On May 10, 1940, the British put a controversial hawk named Winston Churchill in power. The new Prime Minister's first bold decision was to order a retreat, organizing the nine-day evacuation of 340,000 British and French troops at Dunkirk that began on May 27. He then rallied his country, vowing England would never surrender.

Many Americans admired the Brits' courage, but the U.S. stayed on the bench for another year and a half. Only after Japan surprised the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, killing 2,433 Americans, did the country put aside its isolationism. More defeats followed at first, but after an improbable victory near the Pacific island of Midway on June 4, 1942, the U.S. began to push Japan back. Two years later, on June 6, 1944, the world's largest amphibious invasion, on the shores of Normandy, did the same to the Germans. But no matter who was winning the war, humanity was losing. On Jan. 20, 1942, Nazi leaders adopted a "final-solution" policy that resulted in 6 million dead Jews.

Allied victory unleashed a surge of technological progress and prosperity at war's end. On Feb. 14, 1946, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania unveiled the first electronic, digital computer. A year later, on Oct. 14, 1947, Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. There were cultural and social developments too. An exhibit of Jackson Pollock's first drip paintings opened on Jan. 5, 1948. Early signs of a civil rights awakening came as Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier on April 15, 1947.

Change swept across the rest of the globe as well. On Aug. 15, 1947, both Gandhi's dream of freedom and his nightmare of sectarian violence were realized as India broke free of British rule and Pakistan broke free of India. The newly established U.N. voted to divide Palestine into two states: one Jewish and one Arab. That satisfied no one. When Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, five of its Arab neighbors immediately declared war. Europe was still in ruins, and Joseph Stalin, bitter over the enormous casualties Germany had inflicted on his country, decided to protect against further attack by virtually annexing Eastern Europe. On March 5, 1946, as President Truman sat listening, Churchill spoke of an Iron Curtain descending on the Continent. Truman developed a containment strategy, and the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe went into action on June 5, 1947. Then, on Sept. 3, 1949, U.S. scientists detected seismic activity from inside the Soviet Union, evidence of an atomic test. There was now a second superpower, and the stage was set for the eventful days that would make up the cold war. --By Mitch Frank