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, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. Libya was liberated from Axis control in North Africa by the Allied powers in early 1943, following a long, seesaw campaign in the Western Desert that began near the Egyptian border. 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 US-led Western world and the Soviet-led Eastern world, including Germany and Berlin, that led to the beginning of the Cold War (until 26 December 1991) between the two global superpowers over 46 years, following the defeat of totalitarian organizations, such as Nazi Germany which has annexed Austria into the German Reich and the Empire of Japan which formally annexed Korea and Manchuria that led to the decolonization of Africa and Asia by European colonial powers, The British control of Hong Kong was re-established after the Japanese surrendered which continued over 52 years until 1997, when it returned to Chinese rule. The Belgian Congo (now the DR Congo) remained a "model colony" during the war, the rise of a Western-educated elite and global anti-colonial pressure led to a rapid, often chaotic, independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960. The British reclaimed Singapore on 12 September 1945, but their prestige was permanently damaged by the 1942 surrender, the French colony in Southeast Asia (once became part of French Indochina) on the other hand declared independence on 2 September 1945 as Vietnam, leading to a long struggle against the French by Hồ Chí Minh and the Việt Minh (known as the Việt Cộng).

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.