Aftermath Main articles: Aftermath of World War II and Consequences of Nazism Ruins of Warsaw in January 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces The Allies established occupation ministrations in Austria and Germany. The er became a neutral state, non-aligned with any political bloc. The latter was divided into western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. A denazification programme in Germany led to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg s and the removal of ex-Nazis from power, although this policy moved towards amnesty and re-integration of ex-Nazis into West German society. Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war (1937) territory. Among the eastern territories, Silesia, Neumark and most of Pomerania were taken over by Poland, and East Prussia was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union, followed by the expulsion to Germany of the nine Germans from these provinces, as well as three Germans from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. By the 1950s, one-fifth of West Germans were refugees from the east. The Soviet Union also took over the Polish provinces east of the Curzon line, from which 2 Poles were expelled; north-east Romania, parts of eastern Finland, and the three Baltic states were incorporated into the Soviet Union. Defendants at the Nuremberg s, w the Allied forces prosecuted prominent s of the political, military, judicial and economic leership of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity In an effort to maintain world peace, the Allies ed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, and opted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as a common standard for all nations. The great powers that were the victors of the war—France, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States—became the permanent s of the UN's Security Council. The five permanent s remain so to the present, although t have been two seat changes, between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1971, and between the Soviet Union and its or state, the Russian Federation, follog the dis of the Soviet Union in 1991. The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union h begun to deteriorate even before the war was over. Post-war b changes in Central Europe and creation of the Eastern Bloc Germany h been de facto divided, and two independent states, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), were created within the bs of Allied and Soviet occupation zones. The rest of Europe was also divided into Western and Soviet sps of influence. Most eastern and central European countries fell into the Soviet sp, which led to establishment of Communist-led regimes, with full or partial support of the Soviet occupation authorities. As a result, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslov akia, and Albania became Soviet satellite states. Communist Yugoslavia conducted a fully independent policy, causing tension with the Soviet Union. Post-war division of the world was alised by two international military alliances, the United States-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The long period of political tensions and military competition between them, the Cold War, would be accompanied by an unprecedented arms race and proxy wars. In Asia, the United States led the occupation of Japan and ministrated Japan's er islands in the Western Pacific, while the Soviets annexed South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Korea, erly under Japanese rule, was divided and occupied by the Soviet Union in the North and the United States in the South between 1945 and 1948. Separate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th parallel in 1948, each claiming to be the legitimate government for all of Korea, which led ultimately to the Korean War. David Ben-Gurion proclaiming the Israeli De claration of Independence at the Independence Hall, 14 May 1948