[38] In 1992, the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation was founded by the Polish and German governments, and as a result, Germany paid Polish sufferers approximately zl4.7 billion (equivalent to zl37.8 billion or US$7.97 billion in 2022[citation needed]). What happened to Germany after WWII was that two separate economies and ways of life developed in East and West Germany. Potatoes were fried using Greek olive oil and shipped back to Germany, and the tomato crop was hurried to scurvy-ridden German troops in Africa. In the first week of the war, Britain lost 65,000 tons of shipping; in the second week, 46,000 tons were lost, and in the third week 21,000 tons. At night, aircraft of RAF Bomber Command and RAF Coastal Command flew the short distance across the channel and attacked the shipping and barges which were being assembled in the ports at Antwerp, Ostend, Calais and Boulogne to carry the invasion force across, eventually destroying over 20% of the fleet. ", "Greece gains allies in Bundestag over WWII reparations dispute", "Greece's claims for war reparations should be resolved by int'l court: Bundestag", "Greece Nazi occupation: Athens asks Germany for 279bn euros", "Who still owes what for the two World Wars? Next, a blatantly unfair artificial exchange rate was announced (1 Reichsmark to 20 francs in France) and practically valueless "Invasion Marks" brought into circulation, quickly inflating and devaluing the local currency. Romania's production was about equal to that of Ohio, ranked 16th producer in the US, then a major oil-producing nation. However it would take a while for production levels to recovers as this operation took a great deal of time as the Soviets were often forced to reassemble whole factories in remote areas. This treaty was supposed to close all open questions regarding Germany and the aftermath of WWII and paved the way for German reunification. On 16 September Time magazine wrote "Even if Britain goes down this fall, it will not be Lord Beaverbrook's fault. At the end of WWII, Germany had suffered total defeat at the hands of the Allies. British aircraft factories, led by the Minister of Aircraft Production, Lord Beaverbrook worked around the clock to greatly increase production and prevent a collapse of the RAF. No loss of production was caused, and losses were heavy: 54 out of 177 bombers were shot down. Between 1.5 and 2 million are said to have died in the process, depending on source. What you may not know, however, is that only a quarter century ago you might have asked a follow up question: 'Which Germany?' 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. [55] He described how the "warrior caste" were given the most, followed by essential workmen (in Berlin, William Shirer and the other foreign journalists were classed as "heavy labourers" and received double rations) while at the bottom prisoners, Jews and the insane got the least. The U.S. and Britain were sympathetic to Sweden's difficult position and of her attempts to maintain her neutrality and sovereignty by making important concessions to the Nazis, such as continuing to export timber and iron ore and by allowing the Germans use of their railway system, a privilege which was heavily abused. In Normandy, Brittany and along the Channel coast, rain spoilt the potato crop and tomatoes and beans did not mature. [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. 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. On 29 May 1940 it stopped sending its oil to Britain, and signed an arms and oil pact with Germany; Romania was soon providing half her oil needs. Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the United States pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how, as well as all patents in Germany. Berlin was located in Soviet-controlled territory, but it was decided that Berlin needed to be divided. 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. In August 1944 Sweden determined that the danger to its merchant and naval vessels engaged in the iron ore trade to Germany had become too great,[80] and ceased exports in exchange for permission to import some of her own stores of cotton and wool shut off by the Allied blockade. Factories and oil wells were blown up, crops burnt and animals slaughtered so that nothing would be left for the Germans to use. [30] Despite high prices, one mail company, the Fortra Corporation of Manhattan admitted it had sent 30,000 food packages to Germany in less than three months, a business which exceeded US$1 million per year. However, attacks on the already strained German railway system did seriously affect military operations in early 1943 around 150 locomotives and many freight cars were being destroyed each month. An official declared "We are not asking for food that Turks would eat, but for food they refuse to eat. Following the collapse of the Mussolini regime, thousands of escaped Allied POWs were given sanctuary and the crews of damaged Allied bombers (both sides regularly invaded Swiss airspace) returning from raids over Germany often put down in Swiss territory and were allowed refuge. She also had around 2/3 of Europe's industrial capacity but lacked the necessary raw materials to feed the plants, many of them working at low capacity or closed[citation needed] because of RAF bombing, the general chaos and the flight of the populations. Harris was known for his sharp tongue and lack of remorse for the German civilians being killed by the raids; one of his subordinates said of him. One lesson that was learnt from World War I was that although the navy could stop ships on the open seas, little could be done about traders who acted as the middleman, importing materials the Nazis needed into their own neutral country then transporting it overland to Germany for a profit. This was known as Conditional Contraband of War. [59], For the Nazis, the capture of the Russian landmass, one-sixth of the Earth's land surface or 8,000,000 square miles (21,000,000km2), not only provided the Lebensraum they demanded, but also provided the answer to all their raw material problems. Although numerous attempts were made to bypass the blockade, the net was extremely hard to avoid, and most neutral captains voluntarily stopped at one of the eight Allied Contraband Control ports.[24]. Essential items such as pasta, flour and rice were severely rationed, leading to riots, and any farmer withholding his crops from compulsory storage could be imprisoned for a year. Shirer recorded in his diary on 15 September that the blockade was already having a direct effect. 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. After World War II began in September 1939, most Americans hoped the United States would remain neutral. Concerning the division of Germany after WWII, the division was reconfigured. 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. In 1957, West Germany is one of the founding nations of the, In 1991, a unified Germany is allowed by the Allies of World War II to become fully, This page was last edited on 2 February 2023, at 17:15. In 1961, the East German government put an end to this by erecting a wall to stop the migration. 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. Those complications related to the problems of German unity and the future of Berlin. The individual central banks were forced to underwrite and finance German industrial schemes, insurance transactions, gold and foreign exchange transfers etc. However, many factories maintained production right up to the moment Allied forces arrived at the gates. As more U-boats entered service, the weekly toll on Allied merchant ships continued to mount, and by June eggs, cheese, jam, clothing and coal were added to the rationed list. 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). West Germany's development was overseen by the United States and other Allies. Ships proceeding eastward through the English Channel with the intention of passing the Downs, if not calling at any other Channel port, should call at Weymouth for contraband control examination. They decided to set up military zones of occupation in Germany after WWII and split up parts of Germany. Example: German states were not allowed to have any standing armies. From early July the German air force began attacking convoys in the English channel from its new bases and cross-channel guns shelled the Kentish coast in the opening stages of the Battle of Britain. There were reports of grave-robbing by people desperate to find the money to feed their families, but in the towns there were none of the staple potatoes, figs, raisins or tomatoes available and it was not long before the population began to die in droves from hunger, cholera, typhoid and dysentery. Despite impressive statistics of the quantities of contraband captured, by the spring of 1940 the optimism of the British government over the success of the blockade appeared premature and a feeling developed that Germany was managing to maintain and even increase imports. 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. [9], France occupied the Saar protectorate from 1947 to 1956, with the intention of using its coal and steel industrial output to boost the French economy as reparations for the war. The intense fears of retribution that Germans articulated during the immediate post-war period contradict this statement. Austria was not included in any of these treaties. Motor launches of new Admiralty design were brought into service for coastal work, and later, a larger improved version of the corvette, the frigate was laid down. The German public realized their currency was now valuable, which put an end to the bartering that had been occurring. The Soviets began a blockade of West Germany. In an ominous foreshadowing of the unrestricted submarine warfare to come, the Kriegsmarine (navy) sent out battle instructions in May 1939 which included the ominous phrase "fighting methods will never fail to be employed merely because some international regulations are opposed to them".[7]. [82] In February 1945, an American delegation sent to Switzerland initially thought it had achieved a substantial reduction in Swiss exports to Germany and an acknowledgment of Safehaven objectives for the blocking of German assets in Switzerland. East Germany, though technically its own state, was essentially a client state of the Soviet Union. One example was the Mefo bill, a kind of IOU produced by the Reichsbank to pay armaments manufacturers but which was also accepted by German banks. At the start of 1942 the Allies were yet to achieve a major victory. Post-War Italy Republic & Recovery | What Happened to Italy After WWII? Although Spain could gain the restoration of the rock itself and Catalonia under French administration, Franco could see Britain was far from defeated and that British forces backed by its huge powerful navy would occupy the Canary Islands. 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. [36] "We cannot understand how men of the German forces can find such a practice in accordance with their honour or humanitarian feelings". Nazi Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. West Germany developed a capitalist economy and a better way of life since it was occupied by the Allied forces. [83], Britain's economy was badly hit by the abrupt ending of Lend-Lease a few days after the final defeat of Japan in August 1945. Furthermore, the main industrial sector of Germany, the Rhine Valley in the southwest, was turned into a quasi-police state under French control. As well as providing refueling and repair facilities for German U-boats and other vessels at its remote Arctic port of Teriberka, east of Murmansk, the Soviets "Belligerent Neutrals" in Churchill's words also accepted large quantities of wheat, tin, petrol and rubber from America into its ports in the Arctic and Black Sea and, rather than transport them over the entire continent, released identical volumes of the same material to Germany in the west. Over the following decades, the West German government was largely allowed to operate as an independent state with democratic republican institutions, although the Western military presence remained and they were still not allowed to have a domestic military. In Scandinavia, an important supply of nickel was now prevented from being delivered from Petsamo in Finland, and the mines at Knaben in Norway were no longer providing molybdenum. [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". 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. 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. It quite certainly made it possible for us to win and has given us the precious time to make ready for the final blow. 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? The US now accepted that it needed to increase spending for its own defense, especially with the growing threat of Japan, but there was real concern that Britain would fall before the weapons were delivered. 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. Following the results of a plebiscite, France had to relinquish its control of the Saar region on 1 January 1957. On August 1, the Big Three signed the Potsdam agreement. Together they attempted to persuade the remaining neutrals Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Switzerland, Ireland (and Argentina) that by supplying Germany with the materials it needed they were prolonging the war, and over time a number of measures were tried to pressure these countries into reducing or ending trade with the Axis, with varying degrees of success. [56][58], In 1990, West Germany and East Germany signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany ('Two Plus Four Agreement') with the former Allied countries of the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union. [28] Even more was done at the other two contraband stations at Orkney and Kent. The Ministry was also of the view that the strong blockade had probably prevented further large amounts from being transported. 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. This was the first direct action between Germany and America of World War II. 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. 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. 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. The signatories agreed to postpone additional German debts until a final peace treaty with Germany would be made. In the former occupied countries, severe inflation caused in part by the large amount of money hoarded during the war, particularly by collaborators caused further spiralling food prices and a persisting black market. Additionally, the U.S. and the U.K. acquiesced to Soviet demands of influence over most of Eastern Europe. With its economy and infrastructure ruined by the war with Italy, Greece was compelled to pay occupation costs and to grant Germany a "war loan", and was subjected to the same confiscation of food and raw materials practiced elsewhere. 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. 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. Later, a series of events developed that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. 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. These were all available to be reconditioned, cannibalised or stripped down for scrap by the men of Organisation Todt. February was an important month. Britain now retained less than half the total of 339 destroyers she had at the height of the battle in 1917 when the U-boats almost forced Britain to consider surrender. On the morning of 7 December 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a massive pre-emptive strike against ships of the US Pacific Fleet at its base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii with simultaneous invasions of the British possessions of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaya. However, it was no longer possible to entertain at home unless the guests brought their own food and though restaurants and cafes still traded they were now very expensive and crowded. Between Baku on the Caspian Sea and Batum on the Black Sea lay the rich oilfields of Transcaucasia, while bordering Poland and Romania was the abundant "Granary of Russia", Ukraine, about the size of France, 40million acres (160,000km2) of some of the most fertile agricultural land on earth. If the early hopes were exaggerated, we must not attenuate the actual achievements. In March 2018 the issue boiled over again when Arkadiusz Mularczyk, a Polish lawmaker, asserted that Germany owed reparations that could be worth as much as $850 billion. The Germans held 1,500,000 French prisoners of war as hostages, feeding them on bread and soup so thin that grass was added to bulk it up, and most items were now heavily rationed, with a worker entitled to a daily diet of only 1,200 calories; many people rode bicycles into the countryside during the weekend to scavenge for food. 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. [4] News of the successes achieved by the men of Contraband Control were rarely out of the newspapers, and provided useful propaganda to shore up civilian morale. For months previously, all able-bodied people in cities had by law to carry out war work such as filling sandbags for defenses and air-raid shelters, and it was now made an offense to ask for a raise in salary or to demand extra pay for overtime. A ship stopping at a Control port raised a red and white flag with a blue border to signify that it was awaiting examination.
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