ABSTRACT
The Allies had every reason to rejoice at the news of the German Supreme Command's surrender at Rheims on 7 May and the Japanese capitulation on 14 August. They had fought a successful war for a good cause. In the course of the war most British officials had come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with the Soviet Union was to reach an agreement over spheres of influence. Hitler was mainly concerned with the land war with the Soviet Union and ignored Raeder's pleas for a global concept. He regarded the Japanese as duplicitous liars and as racially inferior, in spite of their ludicrous status as 'honorary Aryans'. The growing split between the Soviet Union and the western powers did much to frustrate the hopes of many Europeans that the post-war world would be one in which old-style capitalism would be replaced by some form of social-democratic planned economy.
