Describe the aftermath of WWII.

This is a huge question with many different aspects and
many different answers for different countries.

Perhaps the
main fact about the aftermath of WWII was that the US and the Soviet Union became the
two superpowers that dominated the world.  Just as importantly, the two became bitter
rivals in the Cold War that was to last for more than 40 years after the end of
WWII.

After the war, only the US and, to a lesser extent,
the USSR were in any shape to dominate the world.  Since the countries of Europe (as
well as Japan) were devastated by the war, only the two superpowers were alone on the
world stage.  The fact that their political and economic ideologies were opposed to one
another meant that the next few decades would be dominated by the Cold War between the
two.  This is the most important fact (speaking globally) about the aftermath of
WWII.