Question: In what shape was Europe at the end of WWII?
About the article "Marshall Plan", section "Wartime destruction".

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  4 January — WWII: (Axis powers): Luftwaffe General Hermann Göring assumes control of most war industries in Germany.
10 January — WWII: Mechelen Incident: A German plane carrying secret plans for the invasion of western Europe makes a forced landing in Belgium, leading to mobilization of defense forces in the Low Countries.
16 February — WWII: Altmark Incident: The British destroyer "Cossack" pursues the German tanker "Altmark" into Jøssingfjord in southwestern Norway.
18 March — WWII: Axis powers: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom.
31 March — WWII: Commerce raiding "hilfskreuzer Atlantis", leaves the Wadden Sea for what will become the longest warship cruise of the war.
(622 days without in-port replenishment or repair)  9 April — WWII: Germany carries out Operation Weserübung, and invades Denmark and Norway.
German forces land in several Norwegian ports and take Oslo; The Norwegian Campaign lasts two months.
The Allied campaign in Norway is simultaneously commenced.
9 April — German invasion of Norway: German heavy cruiser "Blücher" is sunk by gunfire and torpedoes from the Norwegian coastal fortress Oscarsborg in the Oslofjord.
Of the 2,202 German crew and troops on board, some 830 died (at least 320 of them crewmen).
Most either drowned or burnt to death in the flaming oil slick surrounding the wreck.
20 April - on his 51st birthday, Hitler orders a new SS regiment to be set containing Norwegians and Danes as well as Germans  10 May — WWII: Battle of France begins – German forces invade Low Countries.
13 May — WWII: German armies open a wide breach in the Maginot Line at Sedan, France.
14 May — Rotterdam is subjected to savage terror bombing by the Luftwaffe; 980 are killed, and 20,000 buildings destroyed.
17 May — Brussels falls to German forces.
20 May — WWII: German forces (2nd Panzer division), under General Rudolf Veiel, reach Noyelles on the English Channel.
20 May — Holocaust: The Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the German concentration camps, opens in occupied Poland near the town of Oświęcim.
Between May 1940 and January 1945, around 1.1 million people were killed there.
3 June — The Holocaust: Nazi leader Franz Rademacher proposes the Madagascar Plan according to which the Jewish population of Europe would be relocated to the island of Madagascar.
3 June — WWII: Paris is bombed by the Luftwaffe for the first time.
10 June — WWII: Norway surrenders to German forces.
14 June — WWII: Paris falls under German occupation.
15 June — WWII: Verdun falls to German forces.
17 June — A Luftwaffe Junkers 88 bomber sinks the British ship "RMS Lancastria", which was evacuating troops from near Saint-Nazaire, France, killing some 5,800 men.
(Wartime censorship prevents the story from becoming public.)
21 June — WWII: Vichy France and Germany sign an armistice at Compiegne, in the same wagon-lit railroad car used by Marshal Ferdinand Foch to accept the surrender of Germany in 1918.
23 June — WWII: German leader Adolf Hitler surveys newly defeated Paris in now occupied France.
30 June — WWII: German forces land in Guernsey, marking the start of the 5-year Occupation of the Channel Islands.
14 July — WWII: Winston Churchill, in a worldwide broadcast, proclaims the intention of Great Britain to fight alone against Germany whatever the outcome.
19 July — WWII: Adolf Hitler promotes 12 generals to field marshal during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony following the swift victory over France, and makes a peace appeal to Britain in an address to the Reichstag.
Lord Halifax, British foreign minister, flatly rejects peace terms in a broadcast reply on 22 July.
8 August — WWII: Wilhelm Keitel signs the "Aufbau Ost" directive, which eventually leads to the invasion of the Soviet Union.
30 August — Second Vienna Award: Germany and Italy compel Romania to cede half of Transylvania to Hungary.
5 September — WWII: Commerce raiding "hilfskreuzer Komet" enters the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait after crossing the Arctic Ocean from the North Sea with the help of Soviet icebreakers "Lenin", "Stalin", and "Kaganovich".
7 September — WWII: The Blitz – Germany begins to rain bombs on London (the first of 57 consecutive nights of strategic bombing).
27 September — WWII: Germany, Italy and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact.
18 October – 19 October — WWII: Thirty-two ships are sunk from Convoy SC 7 and Convoy HX 79 by the most effective wolfpack of the war including U-boat aces Kretschmer, Prien and Schepke  11 November — WWII: The German "Hilfskreuzer" (commerce raider) "Atlantis" captures top secret British mail, and sends it to Japan.
14 November — WWII: The city of Coventry, England is destroyed by 500 German Luftwaffe bombers (150,000 fire bombs, 503 tons of high explosives, and 130 parachute mines level 60,000 of the city's 75,000 buildings; 568 people are killed).
16 November — WWII: In response to Germany levelling Coventry 2 days before, the Royal Air Force begins to bomb Hamburg (by war's end, 50,000 Hamburg residents will have died from Allied attacks).
18 November — WWII: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.
12 December & 15 December — WWII: "Sheffield Blitz" – The City of Sheffield is badly damaged by German air-raids.
16 December — WWII: Operation Abigail Rachel – RAF bombing of Mannheim.
29 December — WWII: Luftwaffe carries out a massive incendiary bombing raid on London, starting 1,500 fires.
Many famous buildings, including the Guildhall and Trinity House, are either damaged or destroyed.  
Traditional ways of life in the Indigenous inhabitants villages in the New Territories collapsed at the end of WWII.
Unable to earn a living in the newly industrialised economy of post-war Hong Kong, many villagers exercised their right of abode in the United Kingdom and left for Europe. 
In 1942, Swedish SIGINT successes were such that it was split out from the General Staff's intelligence branch and made autonomous.
At the end of WWII, it was suggested that of European nations, Sweden's SIGINT was second only to Great Britain's.
Sweden's Defence Radio Institute, while neutral, was reported to be cooperating with the other Scandinavian countries in obtaining SIGINT on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe  
  4 January — WWII: The Battle of Monte Cassino begins.
20 January — WWII: The Royal Air Force drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin.
27 January — WWII: The 2-year Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
29 January — WWII: The Battle of Cisterna takes place.
15 February — WWII – Battle of Monte Cassino: The monastery atop Monte Cassino is destroyed by Allied bombing.
20 February — WWII: The "Big Week" begins with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
26 February — Holocaust: Shooting begins on the Nazi propaganda film, "The Fuehrer Gives a Village to the Jews" in Theresienstadt.
15 March — WWII: Battle of Monte Cassino: Allied aircraft bomb German-held monastery and stage an assault.
17 March — WWII: The Nazis execute almost 400 prisoners, Soviet citizens and anti-fascist Romanians at Rîbniţa.
19 March — WWII: German forces Operation occupy Hungary.
23 March — WWII: Members of the Italian Resistance attack Nazis marching in Via Rasella, killing 33.
9 May — WWII: In the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol, Soviet troops completely drive out German forces, who had been ordered by Hitler to “fight to the last man.”  12 May — WWII: Soviet troops finalize the liberation of the Crimea.
15 May — Holocaust: Deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz begins.
18 May — WWII: Battle of Monte Cassino: The Germans evacuate Monte Cassino and Allied forces take the stronghold after a struggle that claimed 20,000 lives.
June — German V-2 rockets on test from Peenemünde become the first man-made objects to enter space.
By the end of the month, more than 380,000 Hungarian Jews have been transferred to concentration camps - around half of the country's Jewish population.
4 June — WWII: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the , marking the first time a U.S. Navy vessel has captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
5 June — WWII: More than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.
5 June — The German navy's Enigma messages are decoded almost in real time.
6 June — WWII: Battle of Normandy: "Operation Overlord", commonly known as D-Day, commences with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France.
The Allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland, in the largest amphibious military operation in history.
This operation helps liberate France from Germany, and also weakens the Nazi hold on Europe.
10 June — WWII: 642 men, women and children are killed in the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre in France.
13 June — WWII: Germany launches a V1 Flying Bomb attack on England.
22 June — WWII: Operation Bagration: A general attack by Soviet forces clears the German forces from Belarus, resulting in the destruction of German Army Group Centre, possibly the greatest defeat of the Wehrmacht during WWII.
3 July — WWII: Soviet troops liberate Minsk.
7 July — Holocaust: Hungarian Regent Horthy orders Jewish transports to Auschwitz halted; 437,000 Jews have already been deported, mostly to their deaths.
10 July — WWII: Soviet troops begin operations to occupy the Baltic countries.
31 July — WWII: Vilnius is liberated.
20 July — WWII: Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt by Claus von Stauffenberg.
24 July — Holocaust: Russian troops liberate the first concentration camp, at Majdanek, where 360,000 Jews have been exterminated.
1 August — WWII: The Warsaw Uprising begins.
2 August — WWII: Turkey ends diplomatic and economic relations with Germany.
4 August — Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family.
5 August — Holocaust: Polish insurgents liberate a German labor camp in Warsaw, freeing 348 Jewish prisoners.
6 August — Holocaust: Lodz, the last remaining Jewish ghetto in Poland, is liquidated and 60,000 Jews are sent to Auschwitz.
19 August — WWII: An insurrection starts in Paris.
20 August — WWII: American forces successfully defeat Nazi forces at Chambois, closing the Falaise Gap.
20 August — WWII: 168 captured allied airmen, including Phil Lamason, accused of being "terror fliers" by the Gestapo, arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp.
24 August — WWII: Liberation of Paris: The Allies enter Paris, successfully completing Operation Overlord.
25 August — WWII: German surrender of Paris: General Dietrich von Choltitz surrenders Paris to the Allies in defiance of Hitler’s orders to destroy it.
25 August — WWII: Maillé massacre: Massacre of 129 civilians (70% women and children) by the Gestapo at Maillé, Indre-et-Loire.
25 August — WWII: Hungary decides to continue the war together with Germany.
3 September — WWII: The Allies liberate Brussels.
4 September — WWII: Finland breaks off relations with Germany.
8 September — WWII: London is hit by a V-2 rocket for the first time.
2 October — Holocaust: Nazi troops end the Warsaw Uprising.
7 October — Holocaust: A revolt by Jewish slave labourers at Auschwitz-Birkenau results in the complete destruction of Crematory IV.
10 October — Holocaust: Porajmos: 800 Gypsy children are systematically murdered at the Auschwitz death camp.
14 October — WWII: German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide rather than face execution for allegedly conspiring against Adolf Hitler.
18 October — WWII: The Volkssturm is founded on Hitler's orders.
20 October — WWII: Belgrade is liberated by Yugoslav Partisans and the Red Army.
21 October — WWII: Aachen,the first German city to fall, is captured by American troops.
25 October — WWII: The Red Army liberates Kirkenes, the first town in Norway to be liberated.
30 October — Holocaust: The last gassings take places at Auschwitz.
25 November — Holocaust: Himmler orders the destruction of the crematories at Auschwitz.
16 December — WWII: Germany begins the Ardennes offensive, later known as Battle of the Bulge.
17 December — WWII: German troops carry out the Malmedy massacre.
19 December — WWII: The entire territory of Estonia is taken by the Red Army.
26 December — WWII: American troops repulse German forces at Bastogne.
31 December — WWII: Hungary declares war on Germany.  
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was concerned that, with the enormous size of Soviet forces deployed in Europe at the end of WWII and the unreliability of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, there was a serious threat to Western Europe.
In April–May 1945, British Armed Forces developed Operation Unthinkable, thought to be the first scenario of the Third World War.
Its primary goal was ""to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire.""
The plan was rejected by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible.