World War II brought to the whole world great destruction (cities such as Warsaw was completely destroyed), huge human losses (it is estimated that the death toll has reached fifty million between military and civilian, not forgetting the victims of the Holocaust) and left a heavy political legacy for the following decades (division of Germany into two states with opposing regimes, division of the world in two political-military blocks), with a world terrified by the prospect of a nuclear war that was able to eliminate all forms of life on Earth.
In the years immediately after the war, an International Court was established in Nuremberg, judging and condemning those responsible for triggering the Germans and the course of the conflict. It was terrible the balance of trial on the responsible Germans: through evidence and testimony, crimes against peace (conscious and deliberate preparation for war of conquest), war crimes (murder of prisoners of war, use prisoners as slave laborers, execution of hostages) and crimes against humanity (genocide of various minority) were considered proven. Similar trials were carried out in Japan and other countries, invariably ending with the conviction and execution of senior officials. The horror raised by crimes perpetrated led to laws passed to believe that war crimes can not prescribe and that the international community, gathered at the United Nations, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to prevent the repetition of acts perpetrators of the recent past.