State the three consequences of the Second World War.

(1) ENORMOUS DESTRUCTION OF LIFE AND PROPERTY — about 50 million people died, cities across Europe and Asia were reduced to ruins, and the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened the age of nuclear weapons. (2) THE FORMATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS in October 1945, established to maintain international peace and security and to succeed where the League of Nations had failed; and the rapid END OF COLONIALISM, as the weakened European powers gave up their empires and countries such as India won independence. (3) THE RISE OF TWO SUPERPOWERS AND THE COLD WAR — Britain and France declined while the United States and the Soviet Union emerged dominant, and the world divided into a capitalist bloc led by America and a communist bloc led by Russia, beginning the uneasy peace of the Cold War.

One mark per consequence. Cover three different KINDS — human and material, institutional and political, and the new world order — rather than three examples of destruction. The link to the rest of the syllabus is worth stating: the Cold War division into two blocs is exactly what the Non-Aligned Movement was created to stay out of, and the end of colonialism is what produced the new nations that joined it.