[41] There had already been some trading of silk products early in the European war. It had cut Germany off from 50% of her normal imports of nickel, cotton, tin, oil and rubber, and since the war's beginning she had also lost access to French iron ore, making her extremely reliant on Sweden for this vital material. Their view, which many in America and the occupied countries supported, was that it was Germany's responsibility to feed and provide for the people she conquered,[54] and that the plan could not avoid indirectly helping Germany; if aid were given, this would free German goods for use elsewhere. Market Garden was a disaster and did not achieve its main objective, while its few territorial gains actually stretched the supply lines even further. From the start there was close co-operation between the parallel American and British agencies,[64] over economic warfare measures, intelligence gathering and the later Safehaven Program. The beginnings of the Cold War were evident by 1947 due to different ideologies between the United States and the Soviet Union. [16], By the beginning of 1944 it was clear that the bomber offensive had not delivered the decisive defeat that was promised, and preparations were well underway for the invasion of Europe. [citation needed]. 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. Enrolling in a course lets you earn progress by passing quizzes and exams. 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. Britain was Portugal's largest trading partner and had the right to force her to fight on her side under a 500-year-old alliance, but allowed her to remain neutral; in return Portugal allowed credit when Britain was short of gold and escudos, so that by 1945 Britain owed Portugal 322 million. Other blockade runners were known to be arriving at the French port of Bordeaux, 70 miles inside the Gironde Estuary on the Atlantic coast. The speed of advance often meant there was no time to build up an orderly logistical structure and, despite the use of a truck system called the Red Ball Express, for 5 days at the end of August virtually the entire American and British advance came to a complete halt due to a lack of fuel. Sweden eventually agreed to distribute more than $66 million in liquidated German assets as reparations, including a special $36 million fund at the Riksbank to forestall disease and unrest in Germany and to finance purchases essential for the German economy. [48], In an effort to force Britain into submission, the Luftwaffe concentrated its efforts on factories, ports, oil refineries and airfields. But the sanctions did not curb Japan's imperialistic mood. [62], West Germany paid reparations to Israel for confiscated Jewish property under Nuremberg laws, forced labour and persecution. [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. An official declared "We are not asking for food that Turks would eat, but for food they refuse to eat. Years of international tension and aggressive expansion by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany culminated in the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. Shirer recorded in his diary on 15 September that the blockade was already having a direct effect. During this time, Germany was held accountable for the Allied occupations expenses, amounting to over several billion dollars. From there it was transferred to small coastal vessels and ran the blockade to French Mediterranean ports by night. Britain's Bomber Command continued to attack German strategic targets, but the task of bombing Germany was made much harder by the loss of the French airfields as it meant long flights over enemy-held territory before reaching the target. Those complications related to the problems of German unity and the future of Berlin. While some increases may have been inflationary, some from a desire to build up their own armed forces or to stockpile reserves, it was exactly the type of activity the Ministry was trying to prevent. By 1900 Germany had the biggest economy in Europe and she entered the war in 1914 with plentiful reserves of gold and foreign currency and good credit ratings. Under the new plan, weapons could now be bought by any belligerent providing they paid up front and took responsibility for delivery, but whereas Germany had virtually no foreign exchange and was unable to transport much material across the Atlantic, Britain had large reserves of gold and foreign currency, and while U-boats would be a threat, the likelihood was that her vast navy would ensure that the majority of equipment safely delivered to port. The Treaty of Versailles was designed mostly to punish Germany, reflecting the bitter and vengeful feelings that Britain and France felt towards their World War I enemy. Despite protests from many beneficiaries, the Marshall Plan, although in the less generous form of loans, was in 1949 extended to also include the newly formed West Germany. 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. Hintergrnde und Einschtzungen eines nicht nur innerpolnischen Streites", "Odpowied na zapytanie nr 3812 w sprawie strat poniesionych podczas II wojny wiatowej", "Germany rejects Poland's claim it owes 1.3tn in war reparations", "On Behalf of Victims of Pseudo-Medical Experiments Red Cross Action", "Fundacja Polsko-Niemieckie Pojednanie | Stiftung Polnisch-Deutsche Ausshnung", "Zweiter Weltkrieg: Polens Regierung prft Reparationsforderungen an Deutschland", "Szef Biura Analiz Sejmowych: Polska i Niemcy nigdy po II wojnie wiatowej nie zawary umowy ws. The Allies had practical control over the Suez Canal which provided passage between the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean via Port Said at the northern entry to the canal. 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. Britain was able to arrange alternative supplies with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Agreement, signed on 28 August 1940. 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. Back in 1939, in the early days of the war, the Ministry of Economic Warfare was always in the headlines. 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. 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. However, negotiations for the return of looted gold allegedly sent to Sweden by Germany as payment for goods dragged on for many years. ", "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? What happened to Germany after WWII was that two separate economies and ways of life developed in East and West Germany. No loss of production was caused, and losses were heavy: 54 out of 177 bombers were shot down. The US plan to completely destroy Germany after World War II. Furthermore, the Soviet Union would extract its share of reparations mostly from the territory in its own occupation zone. West Germany's development was overseen by the United States and other Allies. 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. [19], Germany concluded a variety of treaties with Western and Eastern countries as well as the Jewish Claims Conference and the World Jewish Congress to compensate the victims of the Holocaust. Because the German fleet had insufficient capital ships to mount a traditional line of battle, the British and French were able to disperse their own fleets to form hunting groups to track down and sink German commerce raiders, but the hunt for the two raiders was to tie down no less than 23 important ships along with auxiliary craft and additional heavy ships to protect convoys. 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 the fall of France Hitler, intending to invade Russia the following year, declared that the trade need continue only until the spring of 1941, after which the Nazis intended to take all they needed.[8]. If an enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Hermann Gring! Because of its distance from the sea, a naval excursion was impossible, while the RAF believed that a bombing raid would be far too inaccurate and costly in civilian life and aircraft. [75], Troops had also begun seizing furniture and household goods to be shipped back for the use of bombed-out German families. 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. [3] Leith-Ross had represented British interests abroad for many years, having embarked on a number of important overseas missions to countries including Italy, Germany, China and Russia, experience which gave him a very useful worldwide political perspective. 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. German industry was rebuilt. [citation needed] The occupying Nazi regime forced Greece to pay the cost of the occupation in the country and requisite raw materials and food for the occupation forces, creating the conditions for the Great Famine. [24] In 1970, the 1953 renunciation of reparation rights was confirmed by the Polish Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Jzef Winiewicz during the course of the negotiations leading to the normalization treaty of November 1970,[25] in which West Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse as the final border between both countries. After apologising to the captain for the trouble, they inspected the ship's papers, manifest and bills of lading. In late 1943 safes at a Swiss bank at Interlaken were rented by high-ranking Germans to store funds. In April 1955 the Dutch claim was finally proved conclusive, and Sweden returned about $6.8 million in gold. Hermann Gring proclaimed in a speech that under the Nazi New Order, the Herrenvolk were entitled to deprive the occupied peoples of their food, and that whoever starved it would not be the Germans. The West's economic productivity and Soviet-U.S. tensions led to the creation of arguably the most recognizable symbol of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. [8] Germany lacked the natural resources Soviet Union had in abundance, whereas Soviet Union was at that time still a relatively backward country in want of the latest technology. By mid-August the attacks were becoming increasingly co-ordinated and successful. Official figures showed that in the first 5 months of war, the Netherlands' imports of key materials from the US increased by 4.25m, but also Norway's purchases in the same area increased threefold to 3m a year, Sweden's by 5m and Switzerland's by 2m. Allied attempts to stop Turkish sales of chromium had begun to have the desired effect, however. As soon as 1945, the Allied forces worked heavily on removing Nazi influence from Germany in a process dubbed as "denazification".[5]. The ECSC created a common market to co-ordinate the supply of critical commodities to get the wheels of European commerce moving again. Germany was allowed to exist after WW2 because the victors couldn't consolidate their gains without her. 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. 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. 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. 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. [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. Czechoslovakia had lost its grain, its gold reserves, mines, heavy industries and important textile industry. 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. Scapa Flow was again selected as the main British naval base because of its great distance from German airfields, however the defences built up during World War I had fallen into disrepair. Instead of leaving in 1961, the Allies carried out the Berlin Airlift. On 12 November the battleship Tirpitz was sunk by RAF Tallboy bombs near Troms, Norway. The Board of Economic Warfare, (BEW) which evolved from the earlier Economic Defense Board, was created by President Roosevelt on 17 December 1941. The US travel agencies were eventually closed down along with the German consulates and information centres on 16 June 1941. reparacji", "Czonek Rady ISW: zrzeczenie si reparacji w 1953 r. wtpliwe prawnie", "Sprawozdanie w przedmiocie strat i szkd wojennych Polski w latach 1939-1945", "Mularczyk: Nie ma dokumentu speniajcego formalne wymogi uchway rzdu z 1953 r. o zrzeczeniu si reparacji", "Uchwaa Sejmu ws. [citation needed], In the U.S., with its tradition that "the mail must always get through", and where armed robbery of the mail carried a mandatory 25-year jail term, there were calls for mail to be carried on warships, but the exercise as with all such journeys was repeated on the homeward leg as Contraband Control searched the ship again for anything of value that might have been taken out of Germany. The Allied response to the blockade was the Berlin Airlift, in which the Allies supplied West Berlin by bringing in food and supplies on airplanes. 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. The airlift allowed the Allies to support West Berlin with food and other goods via airplanes for over a year. Before the war, Britain recognised Germany's special interest in the region and took a very small percentage of this market, but now, via the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation they used their financial power to compete in the Balkans, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, underselling and overbidding in markets to deprive Germany of goods, although Germany was so desperate to maintain supplies that they paid considerably over the normal market rate. 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. The three principal partners in what was eventually referred to as the Axis alliance were Germany, Italy, and Japan.These countries were led by German dictator Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and Japanese Emperor Hirohito. They had already lost 23 ships, with many more attacked and dozens of sailors killed, while Sweden, Germany's main provider of iron ore, had lost 19 ships, Denmark 9, and Belgium 3. Though Germany, with the resources of the conquered territories was still able to produce three times as much steel as Britain,[76] as a result of military action she was beginning to lose other sources of special metals which could not be replaced. Eucken helped establish the new German currency, argued for large tax cuts, and oversaw the removal of price controls. 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? At the beginning of the war, Germany possessed 60 U-boats, but was building new vessels quickly and would have over 140 by the summer of 1940. This was known as Conditional Contraband of War. Most of Germany's institutions had crumbled, and its populace was on the brink of starvation. Raeder maintained that because the British blockade was illegal, the Germans were entitled to respond with "similar methods", and that because the British government had armed many of its merchant ships and used civilians to man coastal patrol vessels and minesweepers, any British ship sighted was considered a legitimate target. [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. Europe After WW2 Economy & Conditions | Economic Reconstruction of Europe, The Yalta Conference and The Potsdam Conference: US Diplomacy & International Politics During World War II. Spain supplied Britain with iron ore from the Bay of Biscay, but, as a potential foe, she was a huge threat to British interests as she could easily restrict British naval access into the Mediterranean, either by shelling the Rock of Gibraltar or by allowing the Germans to lay siege to it from the mainland. Additionally, the German political structure, which in the past decade had increasingly become a centralized dictatorship under Adolf Hitler, had entirely collapsed. The Soviets also received 2.3 million tons of steel, 230,000 tons of aluminium, 2.6 million tons of petrol, 3.8 million tons of food and huge quantities of ammunition and explosives. On 4 September a tax of 50% was placed on beer and tobacco, and income tax went up to 50%. It included all kinds of foodstuffs, animal feed, forage, and clothing, and articles and materials used in their production. The Germans tended to prefer to sink the ships themselves rather than allow the Allies to capture them, even at risk to those aboard. Example: German states were not allowed to have any standing armies. Berlin was located in Soviet-controlled territory, but it was decided that Berlin needed to be divided. The Big Blockade was written and directed by Charles Frend and made by Ealing Studios in collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Welfare. 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]. Why was Germany divided after WWII? Neutral captains often expressed utter astonishment and bemusement at the level of British advance knowledge of their activities, and soon realised it was hard to hide anything. D-Day Summary, Date & Invasion | When was D-Day? 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. 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. Since a peace conference never took place, the areas were effectively ceded by Germany. Initially the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was not keen on the idea and still hoped to avoid war, but following his appeasement of Hitler at Munich in September 1938, which was widely seen as a stopgap measure to buy time, he too began to realise the need for urgent preparations for war. To prevent the enemy gaining a route to acquire supplies, the occupied countries and the unoccupied (Vichy) French zone immediately became subject to the blockade, with severe shortages and extreme hardship quickly following. 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. 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. Because Portugal depended on the U.S. for petroleum, coal and chemical supplies, the Allies' economic warfare agencies considered achieving their aim by embargoes, but hesitated because they also wanted access to Portuguese military bases on the Azores. Plants and machinery were dismantled, the railroad system deconstructed and everything was transported to the Allies. Spanish companies did important aircraft work for the Germans, Spanish merchants furnished Germany with industrial diamonds and platinum,[65] and General Franco, still loyal to Hitler because of his support during the civil war, continued to supply Germany with war materials, among them mercury and tungsten. It had been decided by the Big Three that the threat from Germany required a joint occupation of the country. [16] From the beginning of Overlord on 6 June, the Allies enjoyed complete control of the skies over the beachhead, and were able to transport adequate oil across the sea via tanker and use of the PLUTO underwater pipeline, while the artificial Mulberry jetties and the capture of small harbours initially enabled them to bring enough ammunition and food supplies ashore. On November 9, the Berlin Wall fell and soon after East Germany's communist regime collapsed. Although the Allies kept up the round-the-clock pressure, raiding countless lines-of-communications targets in the build-up to the invasion, they were slow to grasp what German commanders were all too aware of that Germany had plenty of tanks and aircraft and their real achilles heel was the oil supply. 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. Two months into the war, the Ministry reintroduced the "Navicert" (Navigational Certificate), first used to great effect during World War I. This was during the phoney war, before the fighting on land and air had begun. The German Problem first. Using his contacts and position, as well as bribes and secret deals he established his own vast industrial empire, the Hermann Gring Works, to make steel from low-grade German iron ore, swallowing up small Ruhr companies and making himself immensely rich in the process. From the outset, although they had formerly been hated enemies, large-scale direct trade took place between the two countries because both were able to offer something the other wanted. 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. Ukraine was a major industrial region. Write an essay of approximately three to four paragraphs that describes the decisions made at the Yalta Conference regarding Germany. Between 1.5 and 2 million are said to have died in the process, depending on source. Meanwhile, in an attempt to assist the Allies in their liberation of the Netherlands, the exiled Dutch government called for a national rail strike to further disrupt German operations. 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. Lesley has taught American and World History at the university level for the past seven years. Reparations imposed on Germany following WWI left the country . [citation needed], During the first six months the Soviets were in almost complete disarray,[61] and lost whole armies of men, over 70% of their tanks, a third of their combat aircraft and two-thirds of their artillery. (1) The Governments of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic reaffirm their renunciation of the manufacture and possession of and control over nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Political Reconstruction in Europe After WWII: History & Impact, Economic Reconstruction in Europe After WWII: Recovery Programs & Their Effect, US After WWII: Politics, Culture & Counter-Culture, Federal Republic of Germany | Government, History & Structure. [39] The Swiss Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust (which had obtained settlement money from banks in Switzerland) used some of its funds to pay compensation between 1998 and 2002 to Polish Jews and Romani who were victims of Nazi Germany. 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. West Germany was controlled by the Allies with a capitalist system. During the war Britain lost many of its lucrative export markets and now confronted an annual balance of payments deficit of 1.2billion. Making use of tip-offs provided by a vast array of individuals such as bankers, merchant buyers, waterfront stevedores and ship operators doing their patriotic duty, the Navy could have priceless advance knowledge of which ships might be carrying contraband long before they reached port.