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On November 9, the Berlin Wall fell and soon after East Germany's communist regime collapsed. Your essay should be approximately one page in length, and it should describe how and why reunification came about, as well as the impacts of reunification. A joint BritishFrench staff paper on strategic policy issued in April 1939 recognised that, in the first phase of any war with Germany, economic warfare was likely to be the Allies' only effective offensive weapon. [56] Vichy Vice-Premier Admiral Darlan declared that the Vichy merchant marine had so far brought through the blockade 7m bushels of grain, 363,000 tons of wine, 180,000 tons of peanut oil together with large amounts of fruit, sugar, cocoa, meat, fish and rum. As 1940 drew to a close, the situation for many of Europe's 525 million people was dire. RAF raids on vehicle factories in Milan, Genoa, and Turin on 2 December 1942 only served to unite the Italian population behind the Mussolini dictatorship, and the plan was dropped in favour of the "disorganisation of German industry". Churchill was endlessly frustrated and bemused by the refusal of the neutrals to openly differentiate between the British and German methods of waging the sea war, and by their determination to maintain pre-war patterns of trade, but stopped short of condemning them, believing that events would eventually prove the Allies to be in the right. [22][23] In a United Nations note, dated 24 November 1969, the communist government of Poland demanded action from the organization not only to punish war criminals and those who have committed crimes against humanity but also to establish procedures and divisibility of compensation for war crimes and damages committed by Germany during World War II. [27] On 7 September wide-ranging new powers were granted to Heinrich Himmler to punish the populace for 'Endangering the defensive power of the German people'; the next day a worker was shot for refusing to take part in defensive work. Back in 1939, in the early days of the war, the Ministry of Economic Warfare was always in the headlines. For six days aircraft factories were subjected to constant pounding, with the Americans flying heavily escorted missions against airframe manufacturing and assembly plants and other targets in numerous German cities including Leipzig, Brunswick, Gotha, Regensburg, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Stuttgart and Steyr. [64] Her government refused to cooperate with US economic warfare measures or to sever financial ties with Germany, her main trading partner. In addition, about 45% of pig iron manufacturing had been lost, together with 40% of steel furnace capacity. There was a general belief however, that Sweden went too far in accommodating the Nazi regime. Her resources in gold and foreign currency are smaller; her stocks of industrial raw materials are far smaller. After six months of negotiations, Switzerland also agreed to trim by one third her $60m yearly sales of machine goods and precision instruments to Germany and to cut sales of ball bearings to 10% and ammunition to 5% of the 1942 total. There were reports that Germany, which badly needed to raise foreign currency had been trying to export bicycles and cars to adjacent countries without tyres. On 30 December the Manhattan, carrying 400 tons of small cargo, sailed from New York to deliver mail to Italy, but was stopped six days later by a British destroyer at Gibraltar. The next day the US began regular patrols at sea. By contrast, Britain and France spent 67m and 60m in the same periods respectively, and according to a writer in the New York World Telegram, exports to the 8 countries bordering Germany exceeded the loss of US exports previously sent directly to Germany. [11][12], Belgium and Luxembourg also sought to annex German territory as reparations for WWII. Several high-ranking officials followed their chancellor's lead and committed suicide, while others attempted to flee. Franco made excessive demands of Hitler which he knew could not be satisfied as his personal price for participation, such as the ceding of most of Morocco and much of Algeria to Spain by France. Believe it or not, the Allied plan for Germany wasn't all Marshall Plan and Berlin Airlift from the get-go. [23] Ships bound for European ports or en route to the North of Scotland should call at Kirkwall. In its most ambitious form, this plan included the annexation of the cities and surroundings of Cologne, Aachen, Mnster and Osnabrck. After World War II both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. But shortly later pursued a policy of radical redrawing of the longstanding Dutch-German border and the transfer of a large part of German territory to the Dutch as reparations. Of secondary importance was the defence of trade in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. [16] But after autumn 1943 the connections between industrial centres made attractive bomber targets which when effectively bombed badly affected the distribution of coal, which formed the basis of most military and industrial operations. [16], While the armed forces were being built up, imports were reduced to the barest minimum required, severe price and wage controls were introduced, unions outlawed and, aware that certain commodities would be difficult to obtain once the blockade began, deals were made with Sweden, Romania, Turkey, Spain, Finland and Yugoslavia to facilitate the stockpiling of vital materials such as tungsten, oil, nickel, wool and cotton that would be needed to supply the armed forces in wartime. Bacon, butter and sugar followed on 8 January 1940, meat on 11 March, with tea and margarine in July. [6] The Royal Navy war plans, delivered to the fleet in January 1939 set out three critical elements of a future war at sea. What you may not know, however, is that only a quarter century ago you might have asked a follow up question: 'Which Germany?' In mid-September the Ministry published a list of 278 pro-German persons and companies throughout the world with whom British merchants and shipowners were forbidden to do business, subject to heavy penalties. Contraband Control patrols dotted all practical sea routes, stopping all neutral ships, and making life very difficult for any who tried to slip by, forcing them into ports and laying them up for days before inspection, in some cases ruining perishable goods. In December 1941 an attempt by the Swiss military to purchase American machine-gun cameras was blocked by Britain's refusal to grant a Navicert,[65] and in April 1942 the US Board of Economic Warfare considered quotas for Swiss imports from overseas sources, identifying Swiss commodities which might be bargained for. [2][3], The Allies finally agreed for German reparations to be paid in the following forms:[2], To oversee the extraction and distribution of the German reparations in their control zone, the Western Allies established the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (IARA). Germany in particular was heavily reliant on a wide range of foreign imports and suffered very badly from the blockade. On the outbreak of war, many South American countries expected to make big profits supplying the belligerents as in World War I. Invasion of Poland, Fall 1939 | Holocaust Encyclopedia In Yugoslavia, all cars were seized in 1941, and any bicycles that could be found had been taken by 1942. It quite certainly made it possible for us to win and has given us the precious time to make ready for the final blow. Aftermath of World War I and the Rise of Nazism, 1918-1933 War Guilt, and the Difference Between Germany and Japan Belgium, whose government was in exile in Britain, had its entire $260,000,000 gold reserves surrendered by the Vichy regime and by the beginning of 1943 the country's entire stock of 1,500 locomotives and 75,000 trucks had been requisitioned. Six went down in the mouth of the Thames, and the new cruiser Belfast was badly damaged at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. The Spanish Minister for Industry and Commerce defended Spain's position, saying that Spain felt it impossible to deny Germany a commodity which had a very high value in wartime. [41] There had already been some trading of silk products early in the European war. How did the Treaty of Versailles punish Germany after World War I To determine who would be in charge of the areas of occupation, the region was divided into four military zones controlled by the Big Three. [41] Any consignment going to or from ports without a certificate of non-enemy origin and any ship without a ships Navicert became liable to seizure. #11. Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet Union leader. Under Albert Speer, industrial factories were being relocated to Czechoslovakia on a considerable scale, and by the end of 1943, despite a lot of damage to towns German figures showed that 6.9m people had been bombed out or evacuated output of war material was greater than ever. Get unlimited access to over 88,000 lessons. On 11 May 1940 the RAF bombed the city of Mnchengladbach. The economic war consisted mainly of a naval blockade, which formed part of the wider Battle of the Atlantic, but also included the bombing of economically important targets and the preclusive buying of war materials from neutral countries in order to prevent their sale to the Axis powers. The UK, having deprived Spain of her exports of iron ore to Germany entered into a deal to buy the ore instead via the Bay of Biscay, along with copper, mercury and lead to enable the Spanish, who were on the verge of famine, to raise the foreign exchange she needed to buy grain from South America to feed her people. Because of Germany's new proximity on the west European coastline and the decrease in shipping traffic, ships which would normally have been used for patrolling the high seas were diverted to more urgent tasks. Berlin was located in Soviet-controlled territory, but it was decided that Berlin needed to be divided. With the appearance of more durable destroyers and new light escort carriers which could provide convoys with constant air cover, the 'Mid-Atlantic Gap', where ships could not be provided with air cover, was closed, and from mid-1943 the U-boats were all but defeated in the Battle of the Atlantic,[7] although Contraband Control at sea still continued. 194243 was another lean year for agriculture in France. Between May and December the RAF made 105 separate raids over Germany but were unable to make any inroads into industrial capacity and suffered heavy losses in the process. After World War II began in September 1939, most Americans hoped the United States would remain neutral. Portugal also allowed Germany generous credit terms, partly because after the fall of France the presence of a direct land route enabled Germany to threaten Portugal with invasion if she curtailed critical exports. Norway provided good stocks of chromium, aluminum, copper, nickel and 1m annual pounds of molybdenum, the chemical element used in the production of high speed steels and as a substitute for tungsten. In many cases these cargoes proved useful for the Allies' own war effort Contraband Control also intercepted a consignment of 2 tons of coffee destined for Germany, where the population had long been reduced to drinking substitutes not made from coffee beans at all. Germany needed to be divided into four postwar occupied zones. In the two emerging superpowers, Russia and America, post-war productivity rose remarkably by 1948, although the reasons were very different. [67], By early 1942, the food shortages in Greece, which had been invaded by the Germans in April 1941 along with Yugoslavia, and which was now subject to the blockade, reached the famine proportions foreseen by Hoover. Following their disastrous invasion of Greece from occupied Albania on 28 October 1940, Italian reserves of rubber, cotton, wool and other commodities began to dwindle, and the high prices charged by Germany to haul coal across the Alps from Trieste made heat a luxury. Unoccupied France ( Zone libre ) was left with only the rubber industries and textile factories around Lyon and its considerable reserves of bauxite, which because of the British blockade ended up in German hands anyway, giving her abundant supplies of aluminum for aircraft production. [51] Following losses of 10% during a raid on 7 November the RAF was ordered to conserve and build up its forces for a spring offensive, by which time a new navigation aid known as GEE would be available and the Avro Lancaster heavy bomber would be entering service. Although most South American republics were sympathetic to the Allied cause, the US State Department was frustrated by the attitude of Argentina from the very beginning. A few years after the end of WWII, Germany was officially separated when the Soviet Union set up the communist government in East Germany and the Western three occupiers fostered the creation of West Germany. February was an important month. Poland After WWII History & Economy | What Happened to Poland After WWII? [13] USAAF airpower increased, concentrating its efforts on aircraft production and repair plants in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. It stipulated that 1.3 billion DM was to be paid to Poles who, during Nazi occupation, had paid into the German social security system but received no pension. Swiss individuals and financial institutions also acted as third-party go-betweens for transactions by others, such as for contraband shipments of cotton to Italy from the United States via a Portuguese factory, and transactions took place in Zurich which facilitated the trade of mercury between Japan and Spain. These ports froze in the winter, but an alternative route was available from the Norwegian port of Narvik from which the ore was transported down a partially hidden sea lane (which Churchill called the Norwegian Corridor) between the shoreline and the Skjaergaard (Skjrgrd), a continuous chain of some 50,000 glacially formed skerries (small uninhabited islands), sea stacks and rocks running the entire 1,600km length of the west coast. Churchill now embraced Soviet Union as an ally and agreed to send arms to make up the shortfall while Soviet industry reorganised itself for the fight. Allied economic warfare experts believed that without the Swedish exports the war would grind to a halt,[64] but Sweden was surrounded by Axis countries and by those occupied by them, and could have herself been occupied at any time if they failed to give Germany what she wanted. by zig-zagging or navigating without lights. [32] Chamberlain said that although he realised this would be detrimental to the neutrals, (Norway got nearly all its coal from Germany) the policy was in strict adherence to the rules of law and that whereas Germany's use of mines and submarine warfare had already caused many innocent deaths regardless of nationality, no loss of life had been caused by the exercise of British sea power. The earlier acquisitions of Austria and Czechoslovakia yielded few natural resources apart from 4m annual tons of iron ore, a good proportion of Germany's need. "Bomber" Harris had great faith in American manufacturing ability and believed that it would be the USAAF, not the RAF, who would eventually deliver the final decisive blows to the enemy. [8] On 22 June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union in a three-pronged operation, catching the Soviets completely by surprise. History of Germany after Second World War! From late 1944 onwards there were reports that rich German and Austrian Jews were being allowed to leave the Reich after paying special taxes and surrendering all their belongings to the Nazis. The country subsequently began a slow but continuous improvement of its standard of living, with the export of local products, a reduction in unemployment, increased food production, and a reduced black market. Major Alliances during World War II (1939-1945) There were two major alliances during World War II: the Axis powers and the Allied powers.. World War I: Aftermath | Holocaust Encyclopedia and loss of civilian life (7.0211.17% of its citizens). Berlin Wall History & Timeline | When was the Berlin Wall Torn Down? Its like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. The steady toll of attrition against her merchant marine was a major factor in Japan's eventual defeat, but the Allies agreed that the situation was far more complex with Germany, where a range of measures including strategic bombing would be required to achieve final victory. Lloyd's List showed that by the end of 1939 they had sunk 249 ships by U-boat, air attack, or by mines. Angry at the British export ban, the German Government accused the British of having deliberately sunk the Simon Bolivar, lost on 18 November with the loss of 120 people, including women and children. 27 chapters | When severe frost and snow came in January, food was declared the main priority,[16] although Germany still maintained the ability to defend its vital installations with formidable numbers of anti-aircraft cannons. The work of the actual inspection of cargoes was carried out by customs officers and Royal Naval officers and men who, together with their ships, were assigned to Contraband Control for various periods of duty. His plan was to revive the original World War I blockade but to make it more streamlined, making better use of technology and Britain's vast overseas business and commercial network so that contacts in key trading locations such as New York, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Rome or Buenos Aires could act as a vast information gathering system. The Soviet Union controlled East Germany. In Berlin, William Shirer recorded in his diary that there were signs of a rush to convert currency into goods to guard against inflation, but that although the blockade now meant that the German diet was very limited, there was generally enough to eat and people were at that point rarely going hungry. The German Problem first. Britain considered naval blockade to be a completely legitimate method of war,[1] having previously deployed the strategy in the early nineteenth century to prevent Napoleon's fleet from leaving its harbours to attempt an invasion of EnglandNapoleon had also blockaded Britain. Poland, the country most harshly treated, had suffered the confiscation of all state properties, all central stocks of textiles, food and livestock. E tank), thirty of their latest aircraft including the Messerschmitt 109, Messerschmitt 110 and Junkers 88, locomotives, turbines, generators, the unfinished cruiser Ltzow and the plans to the battleship Bismarck. In October 1943 the USAAF attacked Ploieti again, but according to German records total loss of petroleum to the end of 1943 had not exceeded 150,000 tons. In the Balkans, the Ploieti oilfields were lost to Germany as an oil source from August 1944, and various opposing paramilitary groups and partisans united behind Marshal Tito. Many fertile regions such as the Vexin, the Beauce, and the Brie suffered seriously from drought. [46], Hitler's best chance of beating the blockade was by knocking Britain out of the war. On the night of 1617 May 1943 the RAF carried out the famous Dambusters raid (Operation Chastise) to breach the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams which supplied the Ruhr industries with hydroelectric power and fresh water needed for the production of steel. The American Embassy in London acted as the base for the American BEW activities in Europe and was organized in March 1942, "to establish a more intimate liaison between the manifold economic warfare activities centered in the Ministry of Economic Warfare and comparable activities in the United States Government." German troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, triggering World War II. After Italy's disastrous invasion of Greece on 28 October the British intervened in accordance with the Anglo-Greek Mutual Aid Agreement, occupying Crete and establishing airfields within bombing distance of the Romanian oilfields. There were 16m French Americans alone, and by early March at least 15 different organizations collectively known as the Coordinating Council for French Relief were distributing aid in France through The American Friends Service Committee, while the Quaker Committee also distributed around $50,000 worth of food, clothing and medical supplies a month throughout France. At the Potsdam Conference, the victorious Allies ceded roughly 25% of Germany's pre-Anschluss territory to Poland and the Soviet Union. On 10 April the destroyer USSNiblack, which was picking up survivors from a Dutch freighter that had been sunk detected that a U-boat was preparing to attack, and launched depth charges to drive it away. By this time there were increasing reports of Vichy French vessels in the Mediterranean running the British blockade from North African ports and ignoring the orders of the British Contraband Control to stop and submit to search. Firms such as the Fischer Steel and Iron Works at Schaffhausen were added to the blacklists because of their exports, causing them to eventually curtail supply and remodel their plant. [28] Even more was done at the other two contraband stations at Orkney and Kent. RAF assaults on medium-sized industrial towns to the east of the Rhine, the Ruhr and Berlin from mid-1942 also did little to weaken Germany economically. Despite the German trade and various measures for food self-sufficiency, Switzerland eventually used up her food stockpiles and suffered severe shortages of fuel through lapses in the German coal supply, increasingly relying on her forests and hydroelectric power. It also bought commodities, e.g., tobacco, it did not really need,[65] and sent Turkey's armed forces modern equipment under Lend Lease to replace obsolete equipment, to help maintain her neutrality. At the allotted moment the resistance seized the port, keeping the Germans out until the Allies arrived, and Belgium was liberated in less than a week, although the port of Antwerp itself was not fully operational and capable of landing large cargoes until after the Battle of the Scheldt in late November. Though very few people knew of it at the time, the new organisation, the earlier version of which carried out the attempt to dynamite the Iron Gate on the Danube, marked a new direction in the Economic War that would pay dividends later on, providing vital intelligence on potential strategic targets for the offensive bomber campaigns that came later in the war. Overview of the reconstruction of Germany, Wirtschaft und Statistik October 1956, Journal published by Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland. In early February, Hugh Dalton of MEW told the House of Commons that Britain and America would send 8,000 tons of wheat to Greece, although there was no guarantee that the relief supplies would find their way to the starving. On 25 February 1943 the Allies began a round-the-clock strategic bombing campaign in Europe, and a few days later Bomber Command began the 5-month long Battle of the Ruhr, a massive plan to wear down Germany's industrial capacity. They weren't paid in actual money, but. The supply problems also led to disagreements, as each commander pressed for his unit to be given priority. The reunification became official in October 1990. If the early hopes were exaggerated, we must not attenuate the actual achievements. Later, high-ranking Nazi officials withdrew their deposits from German banks and transferred large sums to Swiss banks and to the Swedish Consulate at Karlsruhe. The day after the declaration, the British Admiralty announced that all merchant vessels were now liable to examination by the naval Contraband Control Service and by the French Blockade Ministry, which put its ships under British command. On 1 August the USAAF attacked the Romanian Ploieti oilfields in Operation Tidal Wave as part of the Oil Plan to wear down Axis oil supplies. Seldom before had the face of Europe been so fundamentally altered. But it was growing fast, and had begun to achieve good results. In addition, excessive secrecy and a lack of communication between Whitehall departments meant that at exactly the same time that Operation Frankton was under way, and without their knowledge, the SOE were in the final stages of their own attempt to destroy the blockade runners by deploying a team of French agents led by Claude de Baissac, posing as painting contractors who planned to carry explosives onto the ships in their baggage. In 1947, the Marshall Plan, initially known as the "European Recovery Program" was initiated. Fears of Retribution in Post-War Germany - New Orleans Zur polnischen Diskussion ber Reparationszahlungen aus Deutschland", "Nieznany dokument ONZ z 1969 r. "Wynika z niego wprost, e Polska nie zrzeka si reparacji", "The legal questions behind Poland's claim for war reparations from Germany", "What's Behind Poland's Reparation Debate?