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The first permanent international organisation for keeping the peace was created; it settled several disputes in the 1920s but failed to stop aggression in the 1930s and was dissolved in 1946.
Share prices collapsed, wiping out tens of billions of dollars in paper wealth; the crash was followed by the Great Depression, though historians debate how far it caused it.
Britain and the United States published eight common principles for the post-war world, later endorsed by the Allies and written into the 1942 Declaration by United Nations.
The United States supplied about $50 billion of war material to Allied nations, becoming the main arsenal of the anti-Axis coalition.
The Allies fixed the invasion of France for May 1944, Stalin promised to fight Japan after Germany's defeat, and the outlines of post-war Europe were sketched.
The Allies agreed to invade Sicily, to step up the bombing of Germany and the war on U-boats, and publicly demanded the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers.
The Allies agreed on the occupation, denazification and demilitarisation of Germany, placed eastern German lands under Polish administration and issued the Potsdam Declaration to Japan, but deep disagreements remained.
Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration and signed the Instrument of Surrender on 2 September 1945, ending the Second World War and beginning the Allied occupation of Japan.
The UN General Assembly adopted the declaration with 48 votes in favour, none against and eight abstentions, creating the founding text of international human rights.
The 29 participating states adopted a final communiqué with ten principles on peace and cooperation, a landmark for decolonisation and non-alignment.
Within about six years, most earth scientists accepted that Earth's outer shell is divided into moving plates, explaining earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains and ocean basins.
The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union agreed to stop nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater; underground testing continued.
