Out of the ordeals of the Second World War emerged a new Polish state starkly different from the pre-war republic in terms of its territory, the size and composition of its population, its political and social order, and its relations with its neighbours. Poland's territorial losses in the east and its compensatory expansion in the north and west dramatically altered the country's shape and position on the map of Europe. The new Poland was 20 per cent smaller, but it was more compact and it had acquired a 300-mile-long Baltic coastline. Although much devastated, the ex-German lands were more developed than the provinces lost to the USSR. The demographic changes were also conspicuous. The new Poland had just under 24 million inhabitants in 1946, as opposed to 35 million in 1939, but it now contained an overwhelmingly ethnic Polish population. Death, displacement and dispossession had all but obliterated the country's pre-war political and social elite. With wartime material destruction estimated at two-fifths of its productive capacity, Poland was the most devastated country in Europe, comparable only to the ravaged Soviet republics of Belarus and the Ukraine. Accompanying this were malnutrition, acute shortages of housing, and the widespread incidence of tuberculosis and venereal diseases. The war had also left thousands of invalids and orphans.