Eucken helped establish the new German currency, argued for large tax cuts, and oversaw the removal of price controls. [41], With increasing numbers of heavy Lancaster, Stirling and Halifax bombers, which could travel long distances and carry a heavy bomb load, reaching squadrons, Allied leaders increasingly put their faith in the cumulative effect of strategic bombing, but decided at the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 that, as with the British Blitz, the early attempts to disrupt the morale of the German people by saturation bombing of cities had achieved the opposite effect. Canada held a whole year's surplus of wheat, while the U.S. reserve was estimated to be the greatest in history, but Britain was suffering very heavy shipping losses as a result of expanding U-boat numbers. A ship stopping at a Control port raised a red and white flag with a blue border to signify that it was awaiting examination. The enormous rail marshalling yard at Hamm was badly hit, leaving some 9,000 workers permanently engaged carrying out running repairs. The job of Control Officer required great tact in the face of irate and defiant neutral skippers, particularly Dutch and Scandinavians who had a long tradition of trade with Germany. The job of co-ordinating the various agencies involved in the blockade was carried out by the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW), which in the last few weeks before the outbreak of war had been set up by Frederick Leith-Ross. Later, German agents bought non-portable assets such as farms, real estate, mines, factories and corporations. They advised neutrals to shun British waters and trade with Germany, declaring that because of the defensive minefields and contraband control, British waters were not mercantile fairways subject to the Hague Convention regulating sea warfare, but military areas where enemy ships of war must be attacked. 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 The German Problem first. During the early months of the war the so-called phoney war or Sitzkrieg the activities of the men of Contraband Control were very newsworthy and provided good morale-boosting propaganda. Along with the copper and tin she received from Russia, Yugoslav copper, Greek antimony and chromium and its Balkan sources, Germany now had sufficient supplies of most metals and coal. Germany had suffered heavy losses during the war, both in lives and industrial power. Its Donetz Basin provided 70% of the iron, 50% of the steel, 72% of the aluminium and 35% of the manganese of the USSR, as well as being one of Europe's largest coalfields, yielding 67 million tons per year. On 16 August the Luftwaffe claimed to have destroyed Tilbury Docks and the Port of London, which normally handled a million tons of cargo per week. In June 1944 the British finally secured access to the naval bases on the Azores, and the Allies thereafter threatened Portugal with economic sanctions. As tensions between the West and the Soviet Union increased, Germany found itself on the front lines of the Cold War. [32] Over the weekend of 1821 November six other neutral ships were sunk off the English coast, including a 12,000 ton Japanese liner.[27]. 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. The Marshall Plan, named after Secretary of State, George Marshall, was a $15 billion-dollar economic plan to help with the reconstruction of Germany and Europe after WWII. With the loss of high-grade French deposits and the seizure by Marshal Josip Broz Tito's forces of the island fringe of Yugoslavia, Germany's total loss of bauxite was put at around 50 per cent, while the loss of shipments of cobalt from Finland was around 80 per cent of the total quantity with which Germany sustained that part of her synthetic oil production obtained by the Fischer-Tropsch process. [64] In January 1944 the MEW estimated that Spain was still selling Germany 100 tons of tungsten a month. According to Under-Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Switzerland was the last country to fully commit to the aims of Safehaven. As more U-boats were commissioned into the German navy, the terrible toll on neutral merchant shipping intensified. Cholera broke out in concentration camps, and mass public executions added to the estimated 3 million Poles already killed during the invasion. In November all Swedish trade with Germany officially ended. In the years 19491952, West Germany received loans which totaled $1.45 billion, equivalent to around $14.5 billion in 2006. Example: Although German reunification was a joyful experience, the former East Germany had a hard time adjusting to the capitalist economy of former West Germany. So, in 1948, under the leadership of Stalin, they carried out a blockade of West Berlin with the intention of starving the western powers. (German government Statistical Office), The Statistisches Jahrbuch fr die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960, pp. [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. In 1972, West Germany paid compensation to Poles that had survived pseudo-medical experiments during their imprisonment in various Nazi camps during the Second World War. Other means of minesweeping were also developed, whereby the mines were exploded by patrolling ships and aircraft fitted with a special fuse provocation apparatus. This time they met outside of Berlin at the Potsdam Conference. A factor aggravating inflation was low productivity, caused in part by a lack of coal. Write an essay of approximately three to four paragraphs that describes the decisions made at the Yalta Conference regarding Germany. In Russia, great stimulus was given to emerging industries as a result of frenzied war production, helped in part by advanced industrial plants it took from East Germany after the occupation. By mid-1947, the success of denazification and the start of the Cold War had led to a re-consideration of policy, as the Germans were seen as possible allies in the contest, and it was becoming clear that the economic recovery of Europe was dependent on the reactivation of German industry. She holds a Master's degree in Secondary Education from Marshall University. [41] In Germany herself, there was a chronic shortage of men to work the fields and 30,000 agricultural labourers were brought in from Italy along with thousands of Polish slaves. Citizens faced poor economic conditions, skyrocketing unemployment, political instability, and profound social change. In response to German aggression, Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. The embassy division worked with MEW in the development of new war trade agreements and the re- negotiation of existing overseas purchase supply contracts. [citation needed] On 22 January the UK ambassador was handed a note from the State Department calling the practice "wholly unwarrantable" and demanding immediate correction[citation needed]. From Norway, across and down the North Sea, in the Channel and throughout the Mediterranean and Red Sea, Allied sea and air power began slowly to bleed away Germany's supplies. But by the end of the war, though the UK also lost a quarter of its real wealth,[13] Germany was ruined and she had since then experienced a number of severe financial problems; first hyperinflation caused by the requirement to pay reparations for the war, then after a brief period of relative prosperity in the mid-1920s under the Weimar Republic the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which in part led to the rise in political extremism across Europe and Hitler's seizure of power. [65] With the gradual turn of the war, a number of neutral countries began to take a stiffer line with Germany, in some cases refusing further credit. After WW2, The Allies decided that since Germany was largely responsible for WW2, they wanted to make sure that Germany did not have the capability to wage another war. Besides the Rumanian supply, his own synthetic industry produced 600,000 tons per year, and another 530,000 came from Poland. A large force, known as the Dover Patrol patrolled at one end of the North Sea while another, the Tenth Cruiser Squadron waited at the other. Germany's World War I Debt Was So Crushing It Took 92 Years - HISTORY [35] By this early stage of World War II, her gold reserves were down to around half a billion marks and her credit was almost nil, so any imports had to be paid for by barter, as with the high-technology equipment sent to Russia or coal to Italy. As time went on other miscellaneous items such as clothing, soap, park benches, garden tools, bed linen and doorknobs were also taken. If the early hopes were exaggerated, we must not attenuate the actual achievements. By late 1943 the Germans became so desperate for supplies of key commodities that in one incident they sent a large destroyer force out into the Bay of Biscay to protect ships bringing a cargo into Bordeaux, and lost three vessels (Z27, T25 and T26) to Allied action (Operation Stonewall). [53] Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushels (1 US bushel = 8 US gallons, about 27kg for wheat) of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children's food. In late 1944 the German army launched the Ardennes Offensive, an attempt to split the Allied army, recapture Antwerp and force a negotiated peace. [37] In 1975, the Gierek-Schmidt agreement was signed in Warsaw. 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. The surrender came after the United States had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. Dismantling in the west stopped in 1950. 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. 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. Why has Germany taken so long to pay off its WWI debt? The lost Dutch and Danish supplies of meat and dairy products were replaced by sources in Ireland and New Zealand. By 1950, the UK and France were finally induced to follow the U.S. lead, and stop the dismantling of German heavy industry. However, because of its excellent humanitarian record and protection of Allied POWs and other interests, the Allies ultimately decided against taking extreme measures against Switzerland.[64]. On October 3, 1990, the two sides were officially reunified. Nikita Khrushchev Career & Destalinization | Who was Nikita Khrushchev? The United States and the Nazi Threat: 1933-37 World War I: Treaties and Reparations | Holocaust Encyclopedia 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. [60] The whole face of the Soviet economy was transformed from 1928 onwards by Joseph Stalin's 3 Five Year Plans, and whereas three-fourths of total industry was formerly concentrated around Moscow, St Petersburg, and Ukraine[citation needed], planned industrial cities, such as Stalingorsk in west Siberia and Karaganda in Kazakhstan, places that had been barely inhabited a decade prior. The long-awaited Spitfire fighter began to enter service, the first of the new naval vessels ordered under the 1936 emergency programme began to join the fleet, and the Air Ministry made the final touches to the Chain Home early warning network of radio direction-finding (later called radar) stations, to bring it up to full operational readiness. In the run-up to the September election Chancellor Helmut Kohl pushed the idea of an enormous Holocaust memorial in Berlin, designed by the American architect Peter. [1] Germany carried out its own immensely effective counter-blockade during its war on Allied commerce (Handelskrieg), its U-boats sinking many Allied merchant ships. [11][12], Belgium and Luxembourg also sought to annex German territory as reparations for WWII. [16] Despite his incredible efforts at continually reorganising production after each setback, from early 1945 Speer admitted defeat in the armaments battle. History of Germany after Second World War - History Discussion In addition, Germany remained cut off by the blockade from oversea supplies, such as copper from Chile, nickel from Canada, tin and rubber from the East Indies, manganese from India, tungsten from China, industrial diamonds from South Africa and cotton from Brazil. 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. 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." [1][2] The country's cities were severely damaged from heavy bombing in the closing chapters of the war and agricultural production was only 35% of what it was before the war. Millions of Germans were homeless from Allied bombing campaigns that razed entire cities. The Marshall Plan and the German economist, Walter Eucken are largely credited with the German economic comeback. 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. Despite an initial pathfinding force being sent to light up the target area with flares, only one bomb in 20 fell within five miles (8km) of the town. [3] It was their job to compile and sift through the raw intelligence being received from the various overseas and other contacts, to cross-reference it with the known data on ship movements and cargoes and to pass on any relevant information to Contraband Control. Its own substantial fleet of modern warships was hemmed into its bases at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven and mostly forbidden by the leadership from venturing out. [35] The German government takes the same position. But only 10% of bombs fell close enough to their targets to be called hits, and heavily bombed installations often had to be bombed again to knock them out. That winter was harsh, causing the Danube to freeze and heavy snow slowed rail transport, stalling Germany's grain and oil imports from Romania. Contraband was also Deborah Kerr's first film, though her scene as a nightclub cigarette girl did not make the final cut. The Allies exacted reparations for World War II, too. 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. 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. 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. "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. 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. 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. By 1917 this had almost swung the war the way of the Central Powers. Repulse sunk? [43] This began with a vast physical looting, in which trains were requisitioned to carry to Germany all movable property such as captured weaponry, machinery, books, scientific instruments, art objects and furniture. In Romania, farm hands were still mobilized into the Army and, along with Hungary and Yugoslavia, she needed all the wheat that could be produced, but the Germans made heavy demands on them, backed up by threats.[46]. 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 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. This was the first "area raid", but photography after the raid showed that most of the 300 bombers had missed the target, and that Bomber Command lacked the means of carrying out precision raids. [3][4] (see also Operation Paperclip). By this time, attacks on German fuel installations had been so successful that September's output was 8% that of April, and supplies were soon exhausted, just when fighter production reached its highest level. 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. France, normally able to feed itself, now had an extra 5 million refugees from other countries to care for. [15] The works were located in the area bounded by Hanover, Halle and Magdeburg, which was considered safe from land offensive operations, and a programme was initiated to relocate existing crucial industries nearest the borders of Silesia, Ruhr and Saxony to the more secure central regions. In Norway the Germans requisitioned personal property right down to woollen blankets, ski trousers and windproof jackets, and in Denmark all trade and industry of consequence was now controlled by Germans. Within hours the British liner Athenia was torpedoed by U-30 off the Hebrides with the loss of 112 lives, leading the Royal Navy to assume that unrestricted U-boat warfare had begun. [50] When the Germans stripped the farms of half a million horses and mules for their army, causing a large drop in agricultural productivity, they also took 11% of remaining food stocks, a million tons. The looted goods were taken to Germany mainly by trains, which themselves were mostly kept by Germany.[44]. Germany was divided after WWII because it was to blame for WWI and WWII. [25] LeithRoss spent the months before the war compiling a massive dossier on the annual quantities of materials the countries bordering Germany normally imported so that if they exceeded these levels in wartime, pressure could be brought on the authorities in those countries to take action. and loss of civilian life (7.0211.17% of its citizens). To the Nazis' glee, the skipper of one Brazilian freighter stated that southern Britain was finished and nothing could save her,[47] but although the damage was severe, ships from all parts of the Empire, South America and the Far East continued to unload food and war goods for Britain and to load cargoes for export. succeed. Life was particularly harsh in Poland. Following the results of a plebiscite, France had to relinquish its control of the Saar region on 1 January 1957. East Germany struggled economically, while West Germany flourished under a capitalist system. Learn why and how Germany was divided after WWII. by zig-zagging or navigating without lights. While World War II was certainly a geopolitical event, some of its underlying causes have been revealed to be economic. flashcard sets. 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 Germans also gained the occupied country's natural resources and industrial capacity. 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. The first territories to be conquered included the most productive. But despite veiled threats and the constantly strained relations between the two nations, Switzerland was of no strategic importance to Germany, and of far more use as a workshop. Although the US managed to secure alternative non-Arabian oil supplies mainly from Venezuela synthetic oils are widely used today, mainly in specialised areas such as the airline industry and as lubricants. By the time the embargo ended in November 1944 an unusually early and harsh winter had set in, leading to the Dutch famine of 1944. Most of the econmy in the post war years was geared towards physical rebuilding. [21] Because of the terrible suffering and starvation caused by the original use of the strategy, a formal declaration of blockade was deliberately not made,[22] but the communiqu listed the types of contraband of war that was liable for confiscation if carried. The massive expansion of ship building stretched British shipbuilding capacity including its Canadian yards to the limit. Germany was forced to send 40 freight cars of emergency supplies into occupied Belgium and France, and American charities such as the Red Cross, the Aldrich Committee, and the American Friends Service Committee began gathering funds to send aid. In this, it has so far been 100% successful, with no two countries ever having waged war on one another while they were both members. Negotiations continued, but with the coming of the Cold War the US softened its approach and released over $64 million in assets frozen since the war, and allowed Spain to use its remaining gold as collateral for private loans. It came to represent the different political and ideological barriers between the two areas. When shipments from these companies were detected they were usually made a priority for interception. 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. Axis Alliance in World War II | Holocaust Encyclopedia How Germany Was Divided After World War II - HISTORY Italian and Swiss press reports also stated that many leading Italians banked large sums in Swiss francs in banks in Switzerland. The country had been partitioned and had suffered, like so many others from inflation caused by the occupation mark system. 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 the outbreak of war, many South American countries expected to make big profits supplying the belligerents as in World War I. It also agreed to provide more than $8 million in gold to make up for that amount of Belgian monetary gold sold to Sweden during the War, but negotiations regarding 8,600 kilograms of Dutch gold ($9.7 million) stalled when Sweden argued that the gold had been acquired before the January 1943 London Declaration on looted gold. American companies were prevented from openly supplying arms to belligerents by the Neutrality Acts, (an amendment was made on 21 September in the form of Cash and Carry) but no restrictions applied to raw materials. (On 10 February 2008 the collection was subjected to what Zurich police declared to be "the biggest ever robbery committed in Switzerland and perhaps even Europe").[66]. Some are listed below: An accident led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Italians were also buckling under a strong British and Indian counter-offensive in Eritrea in East Africa. 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. Soon after, Germany's remaining generals surrendered to the Soviet Union and the Allies. [8] On 30 June 1940 German occupation of the Channel Islands began. 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. 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. [29] By 25 November 1939, 62 U.S. ships of various types had been stopped, some for as long as three weeks, and a lot of behind-the-scenes diplomacy took place to smooth over the political fallout[citation needed]. [18] The new legislation, frequently enforced by the Peoples Court, was made deliberately vague to cover a variety of situations, and could be very severe. The Big Blockade was written and directed by Charles Frend and made by Ealing Studios in collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Welfare. To make up the losses of merchant vessels and to allow for increased imports of war goods, negotiations began with neutral countries such as Norway and the Netherlands towards taking over their freighters on central government charter. Immediately, newspapers in the United States printed articles speculating about how the Nazi Party's political goals and antisemitic policies might transform Germany. [1] The Allied demands were further outlined during the Potsdam Conference. Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, Allied plans for German industry after World War II, Allied plans for German industry after World War II Reparations and exploitation, Forced labor of Germans after World War II, Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation, Constitution of the Polish People's Republic, London Agreement on German External Debts, Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany, Dutch annexation of German territory after World War II, World War II reparations towards Yugoslavia, Economy of East Germany Soviet occupation period, Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union, Flight and expulsion of Germans (194450), "Agreement on reparation from Germany, on the establishment of an Inter-Allied Reparation Agency and on the restitution of monetary gold", "State Department and Foreign Affairs Records - RG 84: U.S. Delegation to the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency (IARA)", National Archives and Records Administration, "Alltag zwischen Mark und Gulden - der Selfkant unter niederlndischer Auftragsverwaltung 1949 bis 1963", "Das Grenzland von Nordrhein-Westfalen, die Traktatlndereien und die niederlndischen Grenzkorrekturen 1949 bis 1963", "Vor 75 Jahren: Aufbau der Bahn nach Kriegsende | MDR.DE", "Die Stunde Null in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone (SBZ)", "Wirtschaftsentwicklung von 1945 bis 1949 | BPB", "Gubahn: wechselvolle Historie, ungewisse Zukunft", "Die Entschdigungszahlungen an jdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus", Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Deutschen Bundestages, "Germany owes Poland over $850 billion in WW2 reparations: senior lawmaker", "Legal Aspects of the Unification of the Two German States", "Die versptete Rechnung. Between 1.5 and 2 million are said to have died in the process, depending on source. The great Danube, Elbe, Rhine, Oder, Weser, Main and Neckar rivers were dredged and made fully navigable, and an intricate network of canals was built to interlink them and connect them to major cities. "Oh, we love him, he's so bloody inhuman. Large shipments of steel, coal, but also other industrial products were seized and transported out of the country. 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.

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