that formed these new states had previously been controlled by ethnic Germans. In Germany, the rising Nazi Party had its base among that part of the population who believed Germany had been dealt with unfairly in the settlement after the Great War. It's always the case that demagogic leaders point fingers and stir people up through accusations against a supposed enemy. This is exactly what Hitler did in asserting that Germany's supposedly unfair treatment at the hands of the Allies, and all of its other problems, had been caused by the Jewish people in Germany.

The other major dysfunctional situation in Europe after World War I was the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917 would not have been possible without the war. Lenin hoped for a war in Europe that would let the revolution take place. While Lenin was in charge the Soviet Union become a totalitarian state, and once Stalin came into power things became immeasurably worse. The state created a famine and committed genocide in the late 1920s and early 1930s in order to facilitate the forced collectivization of the farmlands. The totalitarian powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, though allied at the start of World War II in 1939, were in a state of unresolvable conflict with each other. Hitler wanted to continue expanding to the East because he believed it was the destiny of the Germans to take over those lands. He also wanted to exile or exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, most of whom lived in Poland and the Soviet Union. In addition Hitler wanted to destroy Communism, which he regarded as part of the supposed "Jewish conspiracy" for world domination.

The above were the problems that had resulted, directly or indirectly, fully or partially, from World War I. In some sense World War II solved the German problem because Germany was so completely defeated. Its cities had been bombed into rubble and its infrastructure was destroyed to the point that it could never again be a military threat to Europe or to anyone else. The same was true of Japan. The US defeated them in 1945. But a more far-reaching "solution" can be said to have been reached to fix Europe's dysfunctional system that had existed for millennia even before WWII. Europe as a whole was stunned by the level of destruction in the Second World War. Its entire history had been dominated by endless wars, but now, the carnage and the overall physical destruction were so enormous that a fundamental change seems to have occurred in the European mentality. No major war has occurred in the heart of Europe in 75 years. The Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the Balkan wars of the 1990s, tragic as they were, were either limited actions or, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, conflicts on the fringes of Europe. Major European powers stayed out of conflict. The problem of Communism was not ended in 1945. But it resulted only in a "cold" war which eventually did come to an end a little over 40 years later--a time span that doesn't seem such a long period now that it's over.

But what else, besides Communism, did World War II not "solve" ? Though Europe has given up warfare as a way of life, the underlying problems that have historically created violent conflict are still there. Each country has its internal problems based on the same kinds of human weaknesses that cause wars in the first place. Prejudice and hatred still exist, now often occurring between native Europeans and people who have immigrated to Europe from its former colonies. As Brexit has revealed, the unity of Europe as it has been constructed can't be taken for granted. But of course, discord isn't something that started with World War I. As stated, this problem has existed for millennia.

Yes, World War II solved the problems left hanging at the end of World War I. Great Britain, by the time of the First World War, began to fade as a world power after a century of unquestioned dominance. Germany, which had unified in 1870, was a rising power. Germany wanted to be the new world power and, especially, wanted to challenge British dominance of the seas. To Britain, that was a non-negotiable, and the country entered into alliances to curtail German power. Germany nevertheless moved to attack France, and the disaster that was World War I followed.

The end of the war resolved nothing. Most Germans felt humiliated by the Versailles Treaty, and many didn't accept the defeat, seeing it as "Jewish" backstab. Later, countries such as Britain and France did nothing to contain Germany when Hitler started to build up its military, wanting to use a strong Germany as a buffer between themselves and the Soviets. When World War II started, it was a replay of the same old battle for who would be the dominant European power. Germany once again made its play, and once again lost.

This time the defeat was so decisive that the Germans could not blame it on a backstab. They were destroyed, their cities in rubble, their country divided, and they knew they were lucky to be treated as well as they were. The war finally established the new world order: The United States on top with the USSR vying for second place. Great Britain gave up most of its colonies and gracefully stepped down from center stage. Germany concentrated on building its economic rather than its military power.

The new world that the end of the second World War brought was more than just reshuffling the deck to put the US and the USSR on top. Ideologies of imperialism, racial hierarchy, and aristocracy began to crumble. The nineteenth-century was finally left behind.

World War II addressed some of the lingering problems from World War I insofar as it led to the end of American isolationism and the creation of international organizations. The United Nations in particular was the fulfillment (if a flawed one) of the aims of the League of Nations, which had struggled for legitimacy between the wars in part due to the fact that the United States refused to join it. Other international organizations, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, were formed in an effort to avoid the circumstances that contributed to the outbreak of the Great Depression and World War II. Additionally, World War II created an atmosphere in which European colonialism came to an end, though this process was long, painful, reluctant (on the part of many European nations), and, in some cases, bloody. These transformations went hand in hand with the advent of the Cold War, which witnessed Europe and many other places around the world divided by the struggle between the capitalist West and the Soviet Union and its satellites. World War II was undoubtedly a watershed event in the history of the world. However, whatever changes occurred came at such a high cost that it is difficult to say that World War II really "solved" any problems.

It's difficult to look through any historical lens and see World War II as a solution to anything.  It was a resolution, as in the issue of imperial competition, rivalry and violence that existed and primarily caused World War I was resolved through the physical and political destruction of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.  As evidence, neither fascism nor imperialism have reappeared in those countries since that time.

However, World War II led directly to the Cold War, a new competition between the Soviet and American empires that would last for decades and cost huge amounts of blood and treasure, so it could be argued that World War II just substituted one problem for another, and killed 60 million people in the process.