Before very long, livestock was being slaughtered because of a lack of fodder the pigs so undernourished that they broke their legs walking to slaughter. It also allowed them to continue to ship high quality Swedish iron ore from the port of Narvik, the trade which Britain tried to prevent with Operation Wilfred. Germany after WWII | What Happened to Germany after WWII? - Video Tanya has over 16 years of experience teaching various social studies subjects. [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. 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 Allied powers did not want Germany to have to possibility of waging another war. Portugal was Europe's leading supplier of tungsten (and scheelite, another member of the wolframite series of tungsten ore minerals), annually providing Germany with at least 2,000 metric tons between 1941 and mid-1944, about 60 percent of her total requirement. Sweden received very little by way of imports due to the various blockades, and the Allies tried to use offers of a relaxation to persuade her to reduce her assistance of Germany, which they believed was actively prolonging the war. The British urgently set to work to find a defence against the magnetic mine and began preparations to recreate the Northern Barrage, established between Scotland and Norway in 1917 as a safeguard against increasing U-boat attacks. Those complications related to the problems of German unity and the future of Berlin. [46], Hitler's best chance of beating the blockade was by knocking Britain out of the war. [6] The problem was not getting supplies to the continent, but getting them to forward troops, which might be 500 miles (800km) from supply depots. However the collection of around 200 works, which includes medieval sculptures and masterpieces by Czanne, Renoir and van Gogh has been mired in controversy since the war because of the unclear provenance of some pieces, leading to the return of 13 paintings to the former French-Jewish owners or their families. Indeed, without the rise of the worldwide struggle between communism and capitalism, Germany may have merely been occupied by the four different countries until the occupiers could agree Germany was sufficiently rehabilitated. Furthermore, in 1942, the Greek Central Bank was forced by the occupying Nazi regime to lend 476 million Reichsmarks at 0% interest to Nazi Germany. Most of the econmy in the post war years was geared towards physical rebuilding. [16] Another important target was ball-bearing manufacture, most of which was concentrated at Schweinfurt, which in the months to come, despite the German deployment of smoke screens, mock factories, jamming devices, searchlights and flak in the area received special attention from the USAAF; Albert Speer and Erhard Milch, the Inspector-General of the Luftwaffe, realised that from this point onwards the writing was on the wall. Turkey still maintained its good relations with the US and Britain despite the trade, which the economic warfare agencies sought to minimize. Like Germany, Japan was heavily deficient in natural resources, and since 1931 had become increasingly nationalistic, building up her military forces and embarking upon a series of ruthless conquests in Manchuria, China and French Indochina to create an empire. [11][12], Belgium and Luxembourg also sought to annex German territory as reparations for WWII. The Germans sank 117 ships in the Atlantic during the first two months of the year, and in Russia Hitler was about to launch a huge offensive to take the Caucasus oilfields. The largest refinery, Astra Romn, processed two million tons of petroleum a year but, as Britain's fortunes waned from the beginning of 1940, Romania turned to Germany using its oil as a bargaining tool, hoping for protection from Soviet Union. On 20 August Benito Mussolini announced a blockade of all British ports in the Mediterranean, and over the next few months the region would experience a sharp increase in fighting. Cheap restaurants in big towns served dishes comprising turnip or carrot tops made without any kind of fat, and although householders still received a fair ration of rough wine, all spirits were confiscated for industrial use. Eucken helped establish the new German currency, argued for large tax cuts, and oversaw the removal of price controls. On 11 March 1941 Roosevelt and Congress passed into law the programme of Lend-Lease, which allowed for the sending of vast amounts of war material to Allied countries, and Churchill thanked the American nation for a 'new Magna Carta'. Immediately after the end of the war, the Netherlands demanded 25 billion Guilders as compensation for among other things the Dutch winter famine of 19441945. [27] In mid-October Adolf Hitler called for fiercer action by his U-boat crews and the Luftwaffe to enforce his counter-blockade, and warned the Allies of his new "secret weapon". Maximum prices were fixed for everything, but the black market pushed prices 515 times beyond the official tariff. Switzerland during World War II had the most complex relationship with Germany of all the neutral countries. Vichy France's ambassador to the United States, Gaston Henry-Haye, continued to press for a relaxation of the blockade on humanitarian grounds, and the US government found itself in a difficult moral dilemma. When the Allied warships opened fire the crew scuttled the ship, and 78 Germans were captured. East Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union with communist and socialist actions. Supplies of copper from Turkey and Spain had been cut off, and the Germans had lost contact with sources of copper ores at Bor in Yugoslavia and Outokumpu in Finland. After World War II, according to the Potsdam conference held between July 17 and August 2, 1945, Germany was to pay the Allies US$23 billion mainly in machinery and manufacturing plants. They were also forbidden by Hitler from withdrawing to better positions a few miles inland, and as a result suffered a relentless barrage of heavy calibre gunfire from British and American battleships moored offshore. 6.9 to 7.5 million Germans had been killed, roughly 8.26 to 8.86% of the population (see also World War II casualties). 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. Aftermath of World War I and the Rise of Nazism, 1918-1933. In the Soviet Zone of Occupation (later the German Democratic Republic) virtually all double tracked rail lines were reduced to a single track with the material being taken to the Soviet Union. Men were allowed one overcoat and two suits, four shirts and six pairs of socks, and had to prove that the old ones were worn out to get new. 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. Her vast empire gave her formidable resources to draw on, excellent foreign credit facilities and gold reserves, and British rationing was nowhere as severe as in Germany. On 12 May the USAAF hit East German synthetic oil plants at Leuna, Bhlen, Zeitz and Lutzendorf; they were so badly damaged they could supply no oil for several weeks, being hit again later that month before they returned to production. 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. The German synthetic-oil programme was so successful and advanced that during the world fuel crisis of the 1970s, caused by conflict and uncertainty in the Middle East, large American industrial concerns such as Dow Chemical, Union Carbide and Diamond Shamrock began to reconsider the Nazi-era technology to see if it might provide a partial solution to their problems. In World War I, even after two years of war Germany still had gold reserves worth 2.5m marks and over 30 billion marks invested abroad, giving her easy access to exports. Germany had suffered heavy losses during the war, both in lives and industrial power. Much of the arable land had been ruined by opening the dikes during the Nazi invasion and many farmers refused to sell the Germans cattle, but soon there was such a meat shortage that the authorities had to confiscate bootlegged dog-meat sausages. Coal was now very difficult to obtain however, and although sufficient crayfish were imported from the Danubian nations to allow an enjoyable festive meal, people went cold that Christmas. From the beginning of the war, Germany experienced massive labour shortages and as time went by the occupied nations labour forces were virtually enslaved, either to work in factories to supply the Reich or sent to Germany to work in the factories or farms there. They ranged from small 200lb (91kg) mines dropped dozens at a time to large one-ton versions dropped by parachute on shoal bottoms which were almost impossible to sweep, equipped with magnetic triggers activated by a steel hull passing above. "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. Although the naval blockade, now heavily reinforced by US warships, restricted their efforts, merchants in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires smuggled important quantities of platinum, palladium, drugs, and other chemicals to Germany, and a major aim of the US contraband control was to use US exports to Argentina to put pressure on her government to turn away from Nazi influence and break financial ties. Citizens faced poor economic conditions, skyrocketing unemployment, political instability, and profound social change. In late 1942, an 8,000-ton cargo ship was caught in the Indian Ocean, where it hoisted a neutral flag and initially gave the name of a neutral vessel but misspelled the name. Turkey eventually ended trade with Germany and declared war on her in February 1945. On the night of 2829 March the RAF used incendiaries for the first time to hit factories in Lbeck, an old town with many combustible buildings, but although the British considered it a resounding success production was back to normal a week later. Germany now looked to Romania for a large part of the oil she needed and to Soviet Union for a wide range of commodities. In 1942 the RAF dropped 37,000 tons of bombs on German targets, probably three times the weight dropped on Britain in 1940 and early 1941. German air defences could no longer protect the installations, and on 12 and 20 June the RAF attacked the Ruhr hydrogenation plants and put the eastern plants completely out of action, causing a rapid drop in production; Speer predicted disaster by September if the situation did not improve. Millions of Germans were homeless from Allied bombing campaigns that razed entire cities. [35] The German government takes the same position. These treaties stripped the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary, joined by Ottoman Turkey and Bulgaria) of substantial territories and imposed significant reparation payments. Via its Commercial Corporation, the US engaged in a preclusive buying programme under British direction of its materials, particularly the chromite ore. The supreme commander of Allied forces, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to advance on a broad front to overcome the West Wall (Siegfried Line), but instead accepted British General Bernard Montgomery's Operation Market Garden, the plan to try to outflank the West Wall and drive into northern Germany to encircle the industrial Ruhr via the Netherlands. The Executive Branch of the Federal Republic of Germany, France After WWII | Recovery, Politics & Decolonization, Yalta Conference | Significance, Outcomes & Attendees, Soviet Occupation of Eastern Europe | Eastern Bloc Rise & Decline, High School World History: Homework Help Resource, Glencoe U.S. History - The American Vision: Online Textbook Help, Prentice Hall World History Connections to Today Volume 1: Online Textbook Help, Major Events in World History Study Guide, MTTC Social Studies (Secondary) (084) Prep, TECEP World History (1600 to Present): Study Guide & Test Prep, History, Culture & People of the Americas, CLEP Western Civilization I: Study Guide & Test Prep, NY Regents Exam - Global History and Geography: Test Prep & Practice, Create an account to start this course today. A democratic government with a capitalist economy was established, which allowed West Germany to experience economic and industrial growth. While Britain could call on impressive flotillas of battleships and cruisers for direct ship to ship confrontations, these heavy vessels were of limited use against U Boats. 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. Up to the end of February 1940 about 70 had tried to get away, but very few reached Germany. had been sent from the United States through neutral countries to Germany by a number of US-based organisations, euphemistically termed "travel agencies", advertising special combinations of gift packages in German-language newspapers. German soldiers got double rations, but this was still only a modest daily diet, similar to that served to inmates in American prisons. Reconstruction of Germany - Wikipedia The remaining 10 men drowned, died of exposure or were captured and interrogated by the Germans before being executed. Then some people thought and some people said that the war could be won by blockade alone without fighting, that Germany would suddenly collapse for lack of fuel, lack of special steels, even lack of food. By 1950, the UK and France were finally induced to follow the U.S. lead, and stop the dismantling of German heavy industry. German labour shortages grew so acute that Germany relied increasingly on slave labour and demanded prior claim on all available Swiss labour. In other provinces, e.g., Touraine and Burgundy region, the very dry weather left vegetables and even weeds cooked in the ground so people who bred rabbits for meat had to feed them with tree leaves.[70]. [20] The pocket battleship Graf Spee herself was scuttled outside Montevideo, Uruguay, where she sought repairs to damage sustained during the Battle of the River Plate, after the British spread false rumours of the arrival of a vast naval force tasked to sink her, an early success for the Royal Navy. Heavy investment was made in ersatz (synthetic) industries to produce goods from natural resources Germany did have, such as textiles made from cellulose, rubber and oil made from coal, sugar and ethyl alcohol from wood, and materials for the print industry produced from potato tops. According to the Yalta Conference, no reparations to Allied countries would be paid in money (though that rule was not followed in later agreements). Albert Speer took over aircraft production and managed to perform miracles: the installations were soon back to something like normal capacity, and overall production including synthetic oil production was at an all-time high and still rising. The United States and Japan After World War II - ThoughtCo ", "Uchwaa Sejmu Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 10 wrzenia 2004 r. w sprawie praw Polski do niemieckich reparacji wojennych oraz w sprawie bezprawnych roszcze wobec Polski i obywateli polskich wysuwanych w Niemczech", "Deutsche Kriegsreparationen an Polen? Germany After WW2 | A Defeated People | Documentary on Germany in the The US Foreign Affairs Economist Karl Brandt described how Hitler (and Stalin) used food as a political weapon to destroy internal opposition, reward accomplishment, punish failure and smash their enemies in neutral countries. Most of Germany's institutions had crumbled, and its populace was on the brink of starvation. Even in peace, Europe was unable to feed itself, and although Germany now held two-fifths of the green fields of Europe, Germans found that despite decrees forcing farmers to sell their produce and livestock and outright requisition, in terms of food the occupied lands represented a net drain on their resources that could not be made good. Sweden had long been Germany's main source of high quality iron ore and ball bearings, and continuation of supplies from the port of Narvik, which the British tried to stop with Operation Wilfred was one of the factors which led to the German occupation of Norway. This was during the phoney war, before the fighting on land and air had begun. Also, the report noted that according to the minutes of the Council of Ministers of 19 August 1953, the renunciation concerned only the German Democratic Republic not the Federal Republic, and that no diplomatic note was ever sent to the East German government officially informing it of Poland's decision. The Germans tried various ways of avoiding the loss of the ships, such as disguising themselves as neutral vessels or selling their ships to foreign flags, but international law did not allow such transactions in wartime[citation needed]. Whereas West Germany developed a strong capitalist economy fully integrated with the rest of Europe, East Germany was fully integrated into the Soviet communist economy. Although the commandos displayed exceptional courage and the expedition was essentially successful in that a number of ships were damaged, only 2 men survived, including the leader, Major Herbert Hasler, who had to make their way across 80 miles of France, Spain and Gibraltar back to safety. Over the next few decades, these different economic philosophies would lead to huge economic disparities between the two Germanys - the West's economy eventually being far healthier than the East's. Allied attempts to stop Turkish sales of chromium had begun to have the desired effect, however. Even in the normally plentiful Balkan region there were now food shortages caused by an extremely hard winter in the east and flooding of the lower Danube which devastated the agricultural plains and prevented the planting of crops. Churchill himself believed that Sweden could be instrumental in defeating Germany and after the heavy German defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943 the Russians became vocal in calling on Sweden to do more to aid the Allies. Although Swiss-German trade was generally considered to have ceased after November 1944, some companies, such as the Tavaro Munitions factory at Geneva, Switzerland, clandestinely shipped explosives to Germany, and German assets amounting to one billion francs still remained in Switzerland after November 1945. Factories and oil wells were blown up, crops burnt and animals slaughtered so that nothing would be left for the Germans to use. Germany was almost entirely dependent on Hungary and Yugoslavia for bauxite, used in the production of Duralumin, a copper alloy of aluminium critical to aircraft production. 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. The highway also allowed the linking up of the Northwest Staging Route, a series of rough Canadian airstrips and radio ranging stations built to convey aircraft from Alberta and the Yukon to Soviet Union and China. Under the Treaty of Versailles, it could not number more than 100,000 soldiers. Example: German states were not allowed to have any standing armies. In early August Germans installed Dover Strait coastal guns. [64] On 23 November 1940 Churchill wrote to Roosevelt to inform him that the peninsula was now near starvation point, and that a US offer to provide a month by month supply of food might be decisive in keeping Spain out of the war. In total the US provided Soviet Union with $11 billion worth of goods, including 4,800 Grant and Sherman tanks, 350,000 trucks, 50,000 jeeps, 7,300 Airacobra fighter aircraft, and 3700 light and medium bombers. The Turkish chromite ore, which like tungsten was an irreplaceable and essential war material, was the only supply available to Germany, who paid using iron and steel products and manufactured goods in order to draw Turkey into her sphere of influence. Britain, who also made considerable purchases of Spanish tungsten, favoured a compromise that would allow Spain to maintain her German tungsten exports at the 1943 level, but the United States demanded a complete ban and the oil embargo was eventually reimposed. The Ministry of Blockade published a comprehensive list of items that neutral commercial ships were not to transport to the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). When a ton of air mail from the Pan American Airlines (PAA) flying boat American Clipper was confiscated in Bermuda, the American government banned outright the sending of parcels through the US airmail. Germany's heavily overburdened railway network was reinforced with 4,000 French locomotives, and 300,000 (over half) of her freight cars.[45]. [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. By late 1942, there were claims that Germany was paying for deliveries using forged US dollars and had begun to default on its Romania trade, receiving deliveries while not supplying the much-needed machinery and war materials in return. Additionally, the U.S. and the U.K. acquiesced to Soviet demands of influence over most of Eastern Europe. The blockade almost certainly saved us from defeat. What you may not know, however, is that only a quarter century ago you might have asked a follow up question: 'Which Germany?' The MEW continued to receive requests for a partial relaxation of the blockade, often in the belief it would make no appreciable difference to the effect on the enemy, but the pleas were steadfastly refused. The next day the US began regular patrols at sea. The blockade is more important now at the climax, on the eve of invasion, when the strain is telling, than ever before. An erroneous announcement was made stating that travel would be allowed outside of the wall and that the policy was to immediately go into effect. With the war all but won, there were increasing reports mostly based on paranoia and hearsay that Nazi leaders were preparing to escape justice[81] and were already preparing the way for the next war by secreting funds in neutral nations and moving resources abroad. At the start of 1942 the Allies were yet to achieve a major victory. France assumed it would become entitled to large volumes of German coal from the Ruhr as war reparations, but the Americans, who kept France and other countries going with a number of short-term loans and Marshall Aid, began to realise correctly that Europe needed the powerhouse German economy to restart growth and prevent the spread of communism, and refused to agree to reparations,[83] the very thing which led to German resentment after World War I and the rise of Hitler. Germany was divided after WWII because it was to blame for WWI and WWII. [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). many Germans died in the war, leaving a generation gap just like WWI. German preparations to counter the effects of the military and economic war were much more severe than in Britain. History of Germany after Second World War! After World War I, the German army, once the strongest in Europe, presented a pitiful sight. In Germany herself, the people were left to start again from almost nothing, partitioned into zones which became east and west Germany for many years by the Allied powers, a time sometimes referred to as Hour Zero. Possession of a Navicert proved that a consignment had already been passed as non-contraband by His Majesty's Ambassador in the country of origin and allowed the captain to pass Contraband Control patrols and ports without being stopped, sparing the navy and the Ministry the trouble of tracking the shipment. Although U-boats were the main threat, there was also the threat posed by surface raiders to consider; the three "pocket battleships" which Germany was allowed to build under the Versailles Treaty had been designed and built specifically with attacks on ocean commerce in mind. In fact, Germany produced large volumes of very high quality coal in the Saar region, but much of it was now being used to produce synthetic rubber, oil and gas. Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev's attempted reforms did little to solve the crisis and the relaxation of political suppression gave citizens of Eastern Europe greater freedom to protest communism. Even so, the combined Allied air forces and navies eventually began to track down the blockade runners. Blake Stilwell. The wall was one of the most visible symbols of the Cold War. When the ministry's consent was received, the ship's papers were returned to the captain along with a certificate of naval clearance and a number of special flags one for each day signifying that they had already been checked and could pass other patrols and ports without being stopped. 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On August 1, the Big Three signed the Potsdam agreement. In early November the MEW published a summary of the position in the occupied lands, giving an assessment of what the Germans were believed to have appropriated from the territories they conquered in 1940 and 1941. Prompted by Germany, all the neutrals protested, but the overall effect was to slow the flow of neutral shipping to a standstill. In the aftermath of World War I, Germans struggled to understand their country's uncertain future. [64], On 20 February 1944 the USAAF began Operation 'Big Week', a plan to wear down the Luftwaffe arms base to secure Allied air superiority during the invasion. At the time, crude oil was readily available at $2 per barrel, a fifth of the cost of man-made oil, and there was very little interest in the German documents. On 28 December 1940 Mussolini appealed for urgent German help in the Greco-Italian War. Of secondary importance was the defence of trade in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. An explicit aim of the ECSC and its successors was to minimise risk of future intra-European war, due to the trading links and better knowledge of one another. In comparison with the RAF, the US 8th Air Force was at that point still small, having dropped less than a tenth the bomb tonnage on Germany as the RAF. [53][54] Other sources put the total number of deaths resulting from the Axis occupation at 273,000 to 747,000 Greeks, or 3.7-10.2% of the prewar population. Efforts began to repair the peacetime neglect, but it was too late to prevent a U Boat creeping into the Flow during the night of 14 October and sinking the veteran battleship Royal Oak with over 800 fatalities. [41] According to Jzef Menes from the Council of the Polish War Loss Institute, no diplomatic note was presented to the East German government and that "Probably the meeting of the Council of Ministers of August 23, 1953 did not take place at all" - citing relation of Kazimierz Mijal (head of the office of the Council of Ministers from 21 November 1952 to 1 February 1956). Over time, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States became strained and it was determined that the best course of action concerning the occupation of Germany was to divide the country into two halves.