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Wikipedia / 1940s

The 1940s (pronounced "nineteen-forties" and commonly abbreviated as "the '40s" or "the Forties") was a decade that began on January 1, 1940, and ended on December 31, 1949.

Most of World War II took place in the first half of the decade, which had a profound effect on most countries and people in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. The consequences of the war lingered well into the second half of the decade, with a war-weary Europe divided between the jostling spheres of influence of the Western world and the Soviet Union, leading to the beginning of the Cold War. 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 conditions of the post-war world encouraged decolonization and the emergence of new states and governments, with India, Pakistan, Israel, Vietnam, and others declaring independence, although rarely without bloodshed. 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.

The world population increased from about 2.25 to 2.5 billion over the course of the decade, with about 850 million births and 600 million deaths in total.

Politics and wars

Wars

World War II (1939–1945)

Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts

Arab–Israeli conflict (Early 20th century–present)

Major political changes

  • Establishment of the United Nations Charter (June 26, 1945) effective (October 24, 1945).

  • Establishment of the defence alliance NATO April 4, 1949.

Internal conflicts

Decolonization and independence

Prominent political events

Economics

The Bretton Woods Conference was the gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel, situated in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II. The conference was held from July 1–22, 1944. It established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and created the Bretton Woods system.

Assassinations and attempts

Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include:

Science and technology

Technology

Science

Popular culture

Film

Although the 1940s was a decade dominated by World War II, important and noteworthy films about a wide variety of subjects were made during that era. Hollywood was instrumental in producing dozens of classic films during the 1940s, several of which were about the war and some are on most lists of all-time great films. 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. The cinema of Japan also survived. Akira Kurosawa and other directors managed to produce significant films during the 1940s.

Polish filmmakers in Great Britain created anti-nazi color film Calling Mr. Smith (1943) about current Nazi crimes in occupied Europe during the war and about lies of Nazi propaganda.

Film Noir, a film style that incorporated crime dramas with dark images, became largely prevalent during the decade. Films such as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep are considered classics and helped launch the careers of legendary actors such as Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner. The genre has been widely copied since its initial inception.

In France during the war the tour de force Children of Paradise directed by Marcel Carné (1945), was shot in Nazi occupied Paris. 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. Italian neorealism of the 1940s produced poignant movies made in post-war Italy. Roma, città aperta directed by Roberto Rossellini (1945), Sciuscià directed by Vittorio De Sica (1946), Paisà directed by Roberto Rossellini (1946), La terra trema directed by Luchino Visconti (1948), Bicycle Thieves directed by Vittorio De Sica (1948), and Bitter Rice directed by Giuseppe De Santis (1949), are some well-known examples.

In Japanese cinema, The 47 Ronin is a 1941 black and white two-part Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. 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. Drunken Angel (1948), marked the beginning of the successful collaboration between Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune that lasted until 1965.

Music

  • Bing Crosby was the bestselling pop artist of the 1940s. Crosby was the leading figure of the crooner sound as well as its most iconic, defining artist. By the 1940s, he was an entertainment superstar who mastered all of the major media formats of the day, movies, radio, and recorded music.

  • The most popular music style during the 1940s was swing, which prevailed during World War II. In the later periods of the 1940s, less swing was prominent and crooners like Frank Sinatra, along with genres such as bebop and the earliest traces of rock and roll, were the prevalent genre.

  • Tango remained popular worldwide and several of the most famous tangos were composed in this decade, such as Malena, Garúa, Nada, Naranjo en flor, and many others.

Literature

Fashion

The fashion of the 1940s was defined above all by World War II, which divided the decade into two sharply distinct phases. During the wartime years, scarce resources and government rationing programs transformed clothing across the Allied nations: in Britain, the Utility Clothing Scheme and Austerity directives restricted fabrics, seams, pockets, and embellishments; in the United States, General Limitation Order L-85 capped jacket lengths and banned French cuffs and wool evening dresses; and in France, nearly 100 couture salons remained open under German occupation, evolving in isolation from global trends. The dominant womenswear silhouette of the early 1940s featured square padded shoulders, a belted or tailored waist, and hemlines grazing the knee—a structured, mannish aesthetic born of wartime necessity. With French couture cut off from the international market after the Fall of France in 1940, American ready-to-wear seized the opportunity to forge its own identity, propelled by innovators such as Claire McCardell—whose practical yet feminine sportswear aesthetic defined an emerging "American Look"—and Norman Norell, who applied couture-level standards to ready-to-wear.

The post-war years brought an abrupt reversal. On February 12, 1947, Christian Dior unveiled his debut collection in Paris, instantly dubbed the "New Look" by Harper's Bazaar editor Carmel Snow: softer shoulders, a cinched waist, emphasized hips, and dramatically longer and fuller skirts that represented the very antithesis of wartime austerity. As fashion historian James Laver observed, the New Look "was in fact not new at all, but simply an exaggeration of late 1930s and Occupation styles, yet it was the very antithesis of the clothing produced in both the UK and the United States during the war." The collection provoked widespread protest—in the United States, a "Little Below the Knee Club" spread to all 48 states in opposition—yet women gradually adopted versions of the style at all price levels, and by the decade's end the New Look silhouette had become the dominant global fashion.

People

Military leaders

Activists and religious leaders

Politics

Scientists and engineers

Actors / Entertainers

Musicians

Bands

Sports

During the 1940s, sporting events were disrupted and changed by the events that engaged and shaped the entire world. The 1940 and 1944 Olympic Games were cancelled because of World War II. During World War II in the United States Heavyweight Boxing Champion Joe Louis and numerous stars and performers from American baseball and other sports served in the armed forces until the end of the war. 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. They like many others sacrificed their personal and valuable career time for the benefit and well-being of the rest of society. The Summer Olympics were resumed in 1948 in London and the Winter games were held that year in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

In 1947, Wataru Misaka of the New York Knicks became the first person of color to play in modern professional basketball, just months after Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in Major League Baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Baseball

During the early 1940s World War II had an enormous impact on Major League Baseball as many players including many of the most successful stars joined the war effort. After the war many players returned to their teams, while the major event of the second half of the 1940s was the 1945 signing of Jackie Robinson to a players contract by Branch Rickey the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Signing Robinson opened the door to the integration of Major League Baseball finally putting an end to the professional discrimination that had characterized the sport since the 19th century.

Boxing

During the mid-1930s and throughout the years leading up to the 1940s Joe Louis was an enormously popular Heavyweight boxer. In 1936, he lost an important 12 round fight (his first loss) to the German boxer Max Schmeling and he vowed to meet Schmeling once again in the ring. Louis' comeback bout against Schmeling became an international symbol of the struggle between the US and democracy against Nazism and Fascism. When on June 22, 1938, Louis knocked Schmeling out in the first few seconds of the first round during their rematch at Yankee Stadium, his sensational comeback victory riveted the entire nation. Louis enlisted in the U.S. Army on January 10, 1942, in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Louis' cultural impact was felt well outside the ring. 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.

Track and Field

See also

Timeline

The following articles contain brief timelines listing the most prominent events of the decade.

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Buchanan, Andrew. "Globalizing the Second World War," Past and Present no. 258 (February 2023): 246–281. online; also see online review

  • Lewis, Thomas Tandy, ed. The Forties in America. 3 volumes. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2011.

  • Lingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War (New York: Nation Books, 2012. xii, 420 pp.)

  • Yust, Walter, ed., 10 Eventful Years (4 vol., Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc, 1947), encyclopedia of world events 1937–46