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[46][47] According to the German government, there is no legal basis for further compensation payments. The German population in this area was expelled, together with the Germans of the Sudetenland and the German populations scattered throughout the rest of Eastern Europe. [64] In particular, the U.S. abhorred the use of Swedish ships to transport the ore to Germany and of her allowing Germany to transport soldiers and war materials across Sweden and through the Baltic under Swedish naval protection. The steady toll of attrition against her merchant marine was a major factor in Japan's eventual defeat, but the Allies agreed that the situation was far more complex with Germany, where a range of measures including strategic bombing would be required to achieve final victory. [10], The Netherlands sought to annex large parts of Western Germany as reparations for WWII. Please SUPPORT my work on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2LT6opZ Visit my 2ND CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/2ILbyX8 Facebook: https://bit.ly/2INA7yt Twitter: https://b. In the years following World War I, there was spiraling hyperinflation of the German currency (Reichsmark) by 1923.The causes included the burdensome reparations imposed after World War I, coupled with a general inflationary period in Europe in the 1920s (another direct result of a materially catastrophic war). Roosevelt had already managed to negotiate an amendment to the acts on 21 September 1939, known as Cash and Carry, which though in theory maintained America's impartiality, blatantly favoured Britain and her Commonwealth. Between 1.5 and 2 million are said to have died in the process, depending on source. All rights reserved. [13] As in World War I, Britain emerged from the war militarily triumphant but economically poorer (rationing did not end until 1953), and economist John Maynard Keynes was sent to America to negotiate a low-interest emergency loan of 3.75 billion to tide Britain over; the final repayment of 45.5m (then about $83m) was made on 31 December 2006.[84]. 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. [citation needed], In America herself, while many small businesses which relied on overseas trade were badly affected; because cheaper foreign imports were unavailable, home producers, such as the North Carolina peppermint trade and the handmade glassware industry in Maryland and Pennsylvania now had the entire domestic market to themselves. The Germans also gained the occupied country's natural resources and industrial capacity. [59][57] While more German politicians and members of the Bundestag are calling on the federal government to compensate Greece financially for the effects of the Nazi occupation,[60][61] the German government replied that the stipulations of the Two Plus Four treaty still stand and the issue was resolved in 1990. 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. Portugal also defended her right to neutral trade, fearing German reprisals such as invasion or the bombing of her cities and shipping if she ceased tungsten shipments; however the US Secretary of State Cordell Hull believed that he could have achieved the objective if he had had wholehearted British support. The Soviet Union occupied East Germany and East Berlin. In the aftermath of World War I, Germans struggled to understand their country's uncertain future. 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. By far Britain's best weapon was her navy, which not only enforced the blockade, but also, despite the attempts of the U-boats and aircraft, continued to largely control the seas and keep her supplied with most of her needs. Post-War Italy Republic & Recovery | What Happened to Italy After WWII? In July 1940 Winston Churchill asked the Lord President (Neville Chamberlain) to define its structure and the document held at Kew CAB66/1 Extract 2 thereafter became known as the Charter of SOE. Germany also made big purchases in Greece and Turkey and viewed the region as part of its supply hinterland. ", "Die deutsche Frage und die Reparationen", Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_War_II_reparations&oldid=1141985330, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Transferring all manufacturing equipment, machinery and machine tools to the Allies, Transferring all railroad cars, locomotives and ships to the Allies, Confiscation of all German investments abroad, All gold, silver and platinum in bullion or coin form held by any person/institution in Germany, All patents and research data relevant to military application and processes, Requisition of current German industrial production and resource extraction, Forced labour provided by the German population, This page was last edited on 27 February 2023, at 22:30. [1] The Allied demands were further outlined during the Potsdam Conference. They began by raiding airfields and railway stations in France and the Netherlands and badly damaged the Heroya aluminium centre near Trondheim in Norway which produced synthetic cryolite, used in the manufacture of aluminium. Subsequently the Dutch government seized and annexed 69 square kilometres (27sqmi) of border territory from Allied occupied Germany in 1949, almost all of which was returned to West Germany in 1963 in exchange for 280 million Deutschmarks paid by the Federal German government to the Dutch. Once new supplies of oil, rubber, and tungsten began flowing from the newly occupied Far East, mutually beneficial barter agreements were agreed whereby the Germans would acquire these vital commodities in exchange for the precision tools, blue prints and ball bearings which Japan badly needed. 27 chapters | Tanya has over 16 years of experience teaching various social studies subjects. The situation in Germany after World War II was dire. Because of Germany's new proximity on the west European coastline and the decrease in shipping traffic, ships which would normally have been used for patrolling the high seas were diverted to more urgent tasks. 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. Spain agreed to liquidate some $2023 million of private German assets on the understanding she would keep around a quarter of the proceeds, and signed an agreement in May 1946 to return $114,329 (101.6 kilograms) out of about $30 million in looted Dutch gold that the Allies had identified at the Spanish Foreign Exchange Institute. Most of the econmy in the post war years was geared towards physical rebuilding. By mid 1942 Britain was providing Soviet Union, via the Arctic convoys with an array of vehicles, artillery and ammunition as part of the Lend Lease programme. Many factories were dismantled as reparations or were simply destroyed (see also the Morgenthau Plan). 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. Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet Union leader. Bacon, butter and sugar followed on 8 January 1940, meat on 11 March, with tea and margarine in July. [77] German commanders increasingly put their faith in the new Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter and the V-weapons to turn the tide. [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]. The Big Blockade starred John Mills as "Tom", a member of a bomber crew over Hanover, Leslie Banks as an efficient Ministry of Economic Warfare civil servant, Robert Morley as the Nazi U-boat Captain Von Geiselbrecht, Michael Redgrave as a Russian based in Germany, and various others, such as Will Hay, Ronald Shiner, and Bernard Miles in bit parts.[88]. UK National Archives. The economic war consisted mainly of a naval blockade, which formed part of the wider Battle of the Atlantic, but also included the bombing of economically important targets and the preclusive buying of war materials from neutral countries in order to prevent their sale to the Axis powers. 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. Because of her geographic position and trade with Germany, Switzerland was subject to Allied blockade measures throughout, although she remained able to move imports and other exports such as sugar and benzene overland, mainly to Germany and other countries in the neutral zone. After World War II commenced in 1939, this U.S. assistance grew ever greater and included such measures as the so-called destroyer deal and the deceptively named Lend-Lease program. How the Welfare State Transformed European Life. 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. In addition, about 45% of pig iron manufacturing had been lost, together with 40% of steel furnace capacity. 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. This resulted in an Allied ran capitalist West Germany and a Soviet-controlled socialist East Germany. Chamberlain also indicated that steps were being taken to stop the Swedish iron ore trade, and a few days later the Norwegian coast was mined in Operation Wilfred. In February 1945 food supplies were reported as being collected in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps for Nazi fortresses and underground factories, and plans were apparently under way for the structural reorganization of the Nazi Party abroad by transferring money into agents' accounts in neutral countries. Portugal provided Germany with direct overland exports of a wide range of commodities including rice, sugar, tobacco, wheat, potassium chlorate, inflammable liquids and yellow pitch, and Portuguese merchants were also known to be sending industrial diamonds and platinum via Africa and South America. The explosions caused by the commando mission ruined the preparations of the SOE team, who might well have achieved a far more effective destruction of the blockade running vessels but for the Combined Operations raid. 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. As a result, all sides wanted to make it nearly impossible for Germany to ever start a war in Europe ever again. In anticipation of U.S. entry into the war, British and U.S. military staffs secretly formulated plans for joint operations. [18] Brandt said: Supplies are suddenly cut down regardless of the amount stored to scare the population and extra rations are suddenly granted to boost morale in a bad time. An error occurred trying to load this video. Along with real-life accounts of German attacks on civilian fishing trawlers, news of attempts to defeat the magnetic mine, and official statistics of the monthly totals of seized cargoes, popular titles such as War Illustrated, Picture Post and the American magazine Life served up a weekly diet of photographs and patriotic accounts of the latest British or French war successes, often with captions such as, Mr Briton'll see it through But after those early days we went to the other extreme. [4] The Germans had used mines against freighters from the beginning, but now began laying a new type, which did not need to make contact with a ship to destroy it, off the English coast, using seaplanes to drop them in British harbours, channels and estuaries too narrow or shallow for submarines to navigate. In late 1944 the German army launched the Ardennes Offensive, an attempt to split the Allied army, recapture Antwerp and force a negotiated peace. [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. [48], In an effort to force Britain into submission, the Luftwaffe concentrated its efforts on factories, ports, oil refineries and airfields. But Britain, having already sold 1 billion of her foreign investments and taken on another 3 billion in loans to pay for war materials was now feeling the financial strain of the war. When shipments from these companies were detected they were usually made a priority for interception. Allied attempts to stop Turkish sales of chromium had begun to have the desired effect, however. 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]. After World War Two, many didn't want Germany to have any armed forces at all So successful have outsiders been in demilitarising Germany - so sensitive are Germans about their warlike past -. East Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union with communist and socialist actions. It was not until U-boat successes in the Battle of the Atlantic began severely restricting convoys in late 1940 that rationing became more widespread, and even then many workers and children still had school meals and work canteens to supplement their rations, which made a significant difference to the amount of food they actually received. Before the war total US exports to Soviet Union were estimated as less than 1 million per month; by this stage, they were known to exceed 2 million per month. It also bought commodities, e.g., tobacco, it did not really need,[65] and sent Turkey's armed forces modern equipment under Lend Lease to replace obsolete equipment, to help maintain her neutrality. A massive cotton operation was begun in Turkestan, new wheat growing regions in the centre, east and north, coal mines were opened and expanded in Siberia, rich mineral deposits tapped from the Urals, across Asiatic Russia, and immense new oil wells and refineries were developed in the Caucasus and Volga valley. As a member, you'll also get unlimited access to over 88,000 Greece received an additional share of reparations from other Axis powers as a result of the Paris Peace Treaties from 1947. 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. In early March, Admiral Raeder was interviewed by an American correspondent from NBC regarding the alleged use of unrestrained submarine warfare. [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. Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940 and, after the US ordered a total oil embargo on all "aggressor nations" on 1 August 1941, cutting Japan off from 90% of her oil supply, she looked to the huge reserves in the south Pacific and south east Asia, territories already largely under US, British and Dutch jurisdiction. [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. But shortly later pursued a policy of radical redrawing of the longstanding Dutch-German border and the transfer of a large part of German territory to the Dutch as reparations. [15][16][17] Similarly the (relatively limited) railway electrification was also dismantled with the notable exception of most of the Berlin S-Bahn which retained its third rail infrastructure for the most part. The wheat heads were light, straw was short and hay shrivelled in the meadows, causing a lack of animal fodder. Despite the humanitarian efforts, by late January 1942 between 1,700 and 2,000 men, women and children were dying in Athens and Piraeus each day, and Italy, which then occupied Greece, was forced to ship 10,000 tons of grain from her meagre domestic supplies, secretly to avoid unrest from her own people. Such was the case of the Columbus, Germany's third-largest liner at 32,581 tons, and the Glucksburg, which ran herself ashore on the coast of Spain when sighted. 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. Allied air power was now unstoppable. The East German government was dominated by a Communist Party that was closely allied with Moscow and further outlawed the existence of any other political party. Germany sits in the heart of Europe, and many of the industrial raw materials she can't supply herself can be imported from her European neighbors. The Allies exacted reparations for World War II, too. In response to German aggression, Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. [13] USAAF airpower increased, concentrating its efforts on aircraft production and repair plants in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. A number of prominent liberals denounced the release of food to France in a letter to United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull. [citation needed]. Together Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria annually exported to Germany a large part of their surplus oil, chromium, bauxite, pyrites, oil-bearing nuts, maize, wheat, meat and tobacco. 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. flashcard sets. 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 new directives called for attacks on rail transport in the Ruhr to disrupt German economy, but this was a stop gap policy; The planes were too small, carried too light a bomb load and navigation was also shown to be faulty. 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. 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. After World War II ended, the main four Allied powers Great Britain, The United States, France, and the Soviet Union jointly occupied Germany, with the Allied occupation officially ending in the 1950s. They penetrated deep into Soviet territory, and within a week completed an encirclement of 300,000 Red Army troops near Minsk and Bialystok. 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. Despite the effects of her blockade, there was no debate about America's resolve to feed Britain herself, and she was able to, with record harvests. These were all available to be reconditioned, cannibalised or stripped down for scrap by the men of Organisation Todt. The intense fears of retribution that Germans articulated during the immediate post-war period contradict this statement. Several high-ranking officials followed their chancellor's lead and committed suicide, while others attempted to flee. In April 1955 the Dutch claim was finally proved conclusive, and Sweden returned about $6.8 million in gold. 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. 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. It had been decided by the Big Three that the threat from Germany required a joint occupation of the country. Hitler's "secret weapon" of the time was the magnetic mine. 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. The pre-war stockpiles of goods were running down and more ersatz substitutes were being used. These ports froze in the winter, but an alternative route was available from the Norwegian port of Narvik from which the ore was transported down a partially hidden sea lane (which Churchill called the Norwegian Corridor) between the shoreline and the Skjaergaard (Skjrgrd), a continuous chain of some 50,000 glacially formed skerries (small uninhabited islands), sea stacks and rocks running the entire 1,600km length of the west coast. The Prime Minister said that, while it was out of the question to purchase all exportable surpluses, concentration on certain selected commodities such as minerals, fats and oil could have a useful effect, and announced a deal for Britain to acquire the entire export surplus of whale oil from Norway. 623 French people were killed, mostly workers who had gathered outside to cheer the accurate hits. Immediately, newspapers in the United States printed articles speculating about how the Nazi Party's political goals and antisemitic policies might transform Germany. "[38] Because of the smog and the lack of aircraft fitted for aerial photography, the British were unable to determine how effective the raid had been; in fact the damage was negligible. 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. [16] Despite his incredible efforts at continually reorganising production after each setback, from early 1945 Speer admitted defeat in the armaments battle. It took away the German. Even with coupons, it was impossible to acquire many items. In order to force Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles, the original blockade was extended for an additional nine months after the end of the fighting in October 1918. (2008), pp. Plants and machinery were dismantled, the railroad system deconstructed and everything was transported to the Allies. Maximum prices were fixed for everything, but the black market pushed prices 515 times beyond the official tariff. Although the Germans had been able to find numerous ways of beating the blockade, shortages were now so severe that on 30 March 1940, when he was gearing up for his renewed Blitzkrieg in the west, Hitler ordered that delivery of goods in payment to Russia should take priority even over those to his own armed forces. 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. With no passenger trade, and with all Scandinavian and continental sea traffic suspended, the port was far less busy than normal, but as many as 35,000 men still filled the warehouses with grain, tobacco, flour, tea, rubber, sugar, meat, wool, timber and leather every day throughout August 1940. This six-nation agreement facilitated the exchange of resources between Western European countries and promoted economic growth throughout the region. 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. The RAF returned to bomb the same targets by night, and the damage was such that Milch informed Speer that the March 1944 output would be only 30% 40% of February's total. As elsewhere, Germany paid in kind with military equipment, for which they were greatly aided with their acquisition of the Czech Skoda armaments interests. in April 1940 the war was costing the UK5m per day out of total government expenditure of 6.5 7m per day. RAF assaults on medium-sized industrial towns to the east of the Rhine, the Ruhr and Berlin from mid-1942 also did little to weaken Germany economically. This is because for nearly a half-century after the end of World War II (WWII), Germany was split into two states. Romania, which had made considerable territorial gains after World War I, exported a large proportion of the oil from its Ploieti site to Britain, its main guarantor of national sovereignty. The USSR was owed $100 million from Italy, $300 million from Finland, $200 million from Hungary, and $300 million from Romania,[64] amounting to approximately $12 billion in total in 2022.