Chapter 1: The World After WWII: Everyone’s Tired and a Little Messy

Let’s zoom in on August 1945, right after the last bombs stopped falling. In London, 9-year-old Molly was finally allowed to leave the underground subway tunnel where she’d spent most of the war sleeping on a thin, scratchy blanket. She stepped outside and saw her favorite sweet shop was just a pile of broken bricks — but right next to it, a bright yellow dandelion was growing through a crack in the pavement. She picked it, even though her hands were shaking, because it was the first pretty thing she’d seen in months. In Shanghai, 12-year-old Jian was walking through the rubble of his neighborhood with his little sister. Their house was gone, but the old banyan tree in the courtyard was still standing, so they spread a tattered blanket under it and shared the last half of a steamed bun they’d saved for three days. They didn’t talk about the war. They just wanted to know if their mom was coming home soon. In Berlin, 10-year-old Lotte was helping her dad carry buckets of water from the river, because the city’s water pipes had all been bombed. A Soviet soldier saw her struggling, gave her a piece of chocolate he’d saved in his uniform pocket, and patted her on the head. She didn’t know what “communism” or “capitalism” meant. She just knew the chocolate was sweet, and the soldier didn’t look mean. These three kids lived thousands of miles apart, but they all had the same thought: *I just want things to go back to normal.* If you added up every city, town, and village that was damaged or destroyed in WWII, you’d have enough rubble to build a mountain as tall as 10 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. More than 60 million people died — that’s more than the entire population of California. Millions of families had no home, no food, and no idea where their missing loved ones were. All anyone wanted to do was go home, eat a snack they didn’t have to trade for, and never think about war again. But two countries came out of the war way stronger and richer than everyone else. Remember our pizza analogy? Think of the whole world as a giant pizza that everyone fought over for 6 years. When the fighting stopped, almost everyone’s slice was gone or squished — except for two people: the United States (our Team Pepperoni, who wanted pepperoni on every slice) and the Soviet Union (our Team Pineapple, who swore pineapple was the only correct topping). You might be wondering: why just those two? Why not Britain, or France, or China? Great question! Let’s look at the scoreboard, kid-style:

• **Team Pepperoni (US):** Almost no fighting happened on US soil during the whole war. Its factories ran 24/7 making planes, tanks, and canned beans for the whole Allied team. By 1945, the US had built 300,000 airplanes — that’s enough to give every kid in a school of 1,000 students 300 toy planes each. It also had 70% of all the gold in the world locked up in its vaults, and 12 million well-fed, well-trained soldiers with brand new guns. It was basically the kid who brought all the best snacks to the group project and did half the work, but didn’t get hurt once.
• **Team Pineapple (USSR):** The Soviet Union had lost 27 million people in the war — that’s more than the entire population of New York City plus Los Angeles combined. Every single family in the country had lost at least one cousin, uncle, or parent. 1,700 of its cities were reduced to rubble, and 30,000 of its factories were destroyed. But even with all that, its army was still the biggest in the world, with 10 million soldiers and more tanks than all the other countries in Europe put together. It was the kid who got beat up really bad in the fight, but still managed to knock out the biggest bully in the end.
• **Everyone else:** Britain had been bombed for 5 years straight, its cities were full of craters, and it was so broke it had to borrow money from the US just to buy bread for its people. France had been occupied by Nazi Germany for 4 years, its army was defeated, and half its buildings were destroyed. China was still fighting a civil war between the Nationalists and Communists, plus it had lost 15 million people to the Japanese invasion. Germany and Japan were the losers of the war, their armies were disbanded, and they were being occupied by Allied soldiers. Most of Africa, Asia, and South America were still colonies of European countries, and their people had no say in what happened to their own homes.

So when the war ended, there were only two kids on the playground big enough to boss everyone else around: Team Pepperoni and Team Pineapple. At first, they acted like best

friends who’d just won the biggest group project in the history of the entire school. For six whole years, they’d been on the same team, fighting the same bullies: Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and all the other countries that thought it was okay to go around punching people for no reason. Before this project started, they barely even talked to each other — Team Red thought Team Blue’s way of running their club was weird and mean, and Team Blue thought Team Red’s way of running their club was greedy and unfair. But when the bullies showed up, they put all their differences aside, shared their snacks, and fought side by side. You can even find cute old photos from 1945 of Team Red and Team Blue soldiers dancing together in the streets of Berlin, sharing chocolate and cigarettes, laughing like they were best friends. The 10-year-old Lotte we met earlier? That Soviet soldier who gave her chocolate was part of Team Blue, and the next day an American soldier from Team Red gave her a stick of striped bubble gum she’d never tasted before. She didn’t know what “ally” or “enemy” meant back then. She just knew both soldiers had pockets full of snacks, and neither of them looked like they wanted to hit her. For a few short months after the war ended, almost everyone thought the fighting was really, truly over. The United Nations — a brand-new club built by all the big countries, designed to make sure no one ever started a huge fight again — opened its doors in New York in October 1945, and everyone clapped. The streets of London, Paris, Shanghai, and Moscow were full of people dancing and waving flags, so happy the bombs had finally stopped falling. But under the surface, the two team captains were already starting to side-eye each other. Let’s rewind a little to February 1945, before the war even ended. The three biggest team captains — Team Red’s boss Franklin Roosevelt, Team Blue’s boss Joseph Stalin, and Britain’s boss Winston Churchill — got together at a fancy resort in a place called Yalta, on the edge of the Black Sea. It was like the three captains of the biggest soccer teams in the world getting together at a pizza restaurant the week before the championship game, to decide how to split the leftover pizza if they won. They made three big promises to each other: 1. After the war, they would split Germany into four pieces, like a giant cookie cut into four quarters, to make sure Germany could never be a bully again. The four quarters would be run by Team Red, Team Blue, Britain, and France, all together. 2. They would let every country in Europe pick its own boss, no matter who won the war. If Poland wanted to be friends with Team Red, fine. If it wanted to be friends with Team Blue, also fine. No one would force it. 3. They would build the United Nations together, so if any country had a problem with another country, they could sit down and talk it out instead of starting a fight. Everyone went home happy. But as soon as the war ended, the captains started breaking their promises, one by one. The first broken promise was about Poland. Remember, Poland was the first country Germany invaded, and it had been beaten up worse than almost any other country in the war. Team Blue’s army had pushed the Germans all the way out of Poland, and now Team Blue’s soldiers were still stationed all over the country. Stalin told Roosevelt and