FIFTY YEARS AGO, ON 8 May 1945, World War II ended in Europe. The outcome was much as Adolf Hitler had predicted it would be: Western Europe was under the occupation of Anglo-Saxon troops and fell within the American sphere of influence, while Eastern Europe was occupied and dominated by the Soviets. The prewar European powers of France, Britain and Germany lay broken and a new bipolar global political system, dominated by two new superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union - had emerged.