Even so, a bombing campaign offered the only hope of damaging the German economy,[16] and directives at the end of 1940 stated two objectives: precision attack on German production of synthetic oil, and an attack on German morale by targeting industrial sites in large cities. [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. [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. The country had been partitioned and had suffered, like so many others from inflation caused by the occupation mark system. In particular the Swiss were, and continue to be, criticised for the way they aided the shipment of Nazi funds abroad and provided banking facilities for the concealment of looted art treasures and gold, much of it stolen from Jews. In the early months of the war Japan launched a series of stunning conquests in the region, among them Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Burma and the East Indies, and soon threatened Australia far to the south. [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. Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and Britain and France declared war two days later. A democratic government with a capitalist economy was established, which allowed West Germany to experience economic and industrial growth. The Allies agreed as part of the Potsdam Agreement, that the Soviet Union collects and distributes the Polish share of reparations. From there it was transferred to small coastal vessels and ran the blockade to French Mediterranean ports by night. Diplomats from the Scandinavian nations, as well as Italy and the Balkan countries, who were also major suppliers to Germany, were given quota lists of various commodities and told they could import these amounts and no more, or action would be taken against them. On the outbreak of war, many South American countries expected to make big profits supplying the belligerents as in World War I. Commercial agreements were negotiated with Spain, Turkey, and Greece, aimed at limiting material to Germany. [or] Leith-Ross had not been put off by Chamberlain's initially lukewarm reception to his plan to revive the blockade, but had in fact spent the time after Munich to continue his preparations regardless. The supply problems also led to disagreements, as each commander pressed for his unit to be given priority. 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. [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 Soviet Union received compensation under the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947 from four Axis allied powers, in addition to the large reparations paid to the Soviet Union by the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany and the eventual German Democratic Republic in the form of machinery (entire factories were dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union) as well as food, industrial products, and consumer goods. This was during the phoney war, before the fighting on land and air had begun. Portugal was Europe's leading supplier of tungsten (and scheelite, another member of the wolframite series of tungsten ore minerals), annually providing Germany with at least 2,000 metric tons between 1941 and mid-1944, about 60 percent of her total requirement. Until late 1940 Hitler hoped to establish peaceful German hegemony over the Balkans as part of his supply hinterland, but after the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina from Romania in late June, his hand was forced. The Allies publicly acknowledged that Spain had not been aware it was looted, and later Spain returned $1.3 million in gold bars and gold coins it had seized from German State properties at the end of the War. Ukraine was a major industrial region. [64] In January 1944 the MEW estimated that Spain was still selling Germany 100 tons of tungsten a month. The American journalist William L. Shirer, who had lived in Berlin since 1934 and who made regular radio broadcasts to the US for CBS, noted that there were all kinds of shortages even before the war began. It will be won on the assembly line". While World War II was certainly a geopolitical event, some of its underlying causes have been revealed to be economic. By this time the Nazis had begun executing otherwise healthy mental patients in German institutions, in part to save on food, and there was a clamour from family members to have their loved ones removed. [6] The Royal Navy war plans, delivered to the fleet in January 1939 set out three critical elements of a future war at sea. Shirer recorded in his diary on 15 September that the blockade was already having a direct effect. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. D-Day Summary, Date & Invasion | When was D-Day? [86] Some 300,000 documents relating to the history of the programme, including plant diagrams, patent descriptions, detailed reports on which catalysts and additives worked best, and monthly reports from the 25 oil from coal plants had fallen into American hands at the end of the war. The building or completion of ships that would not be finished until after 1940 was scaled back or suspended in favour or ships that could be completed quickly, while the commissioning into the fleet of a series of four new aircraft carriers of the Illustrious class, ordered under an emergency review in 1936 and which were all finished or near completion, was delayed until later in the war in favour of more immediately useful vessels. 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. Years of international tension and aggressive expansion by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany culminated in the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. [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. But following subsequent discussions with Reichsbank Vice President Emil Puhl, the Swiss later reneged on this agreement, and through the remainder of 1945 showed an unwillingness to embrace the Allied proposals to turn German assets in Switzerland towards the benefit of ravaged Europe and stateless victims of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. World War II left devastation in various parts of Europe, but especially in Germany. Meanwhile, at the beginning of 1940 there were still 60 German merchant ships alone in South American harbours, costing 300,000 per month in port and harbour dues, and Hitler eventually ordered them all to try to make a break for home. [citation needed] This course of action, which Hitler called "the greatest breach of faith of all time",[9] caused horrendous suffering among the German people and, according to some authors, led to an estimated half a million deaths from starvation. 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. Payments to Israel until 1987 amounted to about 14 billion dollars,[63] equivalent to $36.5 billion in 2022. At the allotted moment the resistance seized the port, keeping the Germans out until the Allies arrived, and Belgium was liberated in less than a week, although the port of Antwerp itself was not fully operational and capable of landing large cargoes until after the Battle of the Scheldt in late November. 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. After World War II both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Later Britain signed the Anglo-Swiss Trade Deal, and negotiations for war trade agreements were also concluded with Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Minutes of Ministry of Economic Warfare Committee report, 1940, UK National Archives. Between May and December the RAF made 105 separate raids over Germany but were unable to make any inroads into industrial capacity and suffered heavy losses in the process. [2] Britain dominated the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and, due to its control of the Suez Canal with France, access into and out of the Indian Ocean for the allied ships, while their enemies were forced to go around Africa. As Soviet troops conducted a prolonged siege of Berlin in the first few months of 1945, Adolf Hitler, Germany's chancellor-cum-dictator and the orchestrator of the murder of six million Jews during the war, committed suicide in his bunker. [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]. Though very few people knew of it at the time, the new organisation, the earlier version of which carried out the attempt to dynamite the Iron Gate on the Danube, marked a new direction in the Economic War that would pay dividends later on, providing vital intelligence on potential strategic targets for the offensive bomber campaigns that came later in the war. On 9 February Albert Speer became the new head of the German Armaments Ministry. 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. 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. On 12 November the battleship Tirpitz was sunk by RAF Tallboy bombs near Troms, Norway. Norway, a great seafaring nation since the days of the Vikings had lost almost half its fleet in World War I, yet now possessed a merchant navy of some 2,000 ships, with tonnage exceeded only by Britain, the US, and Japan. [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. 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. It stipulated that 1.3 billion DM was to be paid to Poles who, during Nazi occupation, had paid into the German social security system but received no pension. US files show that there was a belief that neutrals that traded with the Axis should be threatened with post-war reprisals, but although the Americans believed that the Swiss trade with Germany justified bombing her,[65] it was also thought that her exports should be cut down without endangering the work of the Red Cross and intelligence work underway in Switzerland. Many fertile regions such as the Vexin, the Beauce, and the Brie suffered seriously from drought. Under the Dutch-German treaty made in The Hague on 8 April 1960, West Germany agreed to pay to The Netherlands the sum of 280 million German marks in compensation for the return. 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. [6] The problem was not getting supplies to the continent, but getting them to forward troops, which might be 500 miles (800km) from supply depots. Each division required 600700 tons of supplies per day while artillery and mortars used 8 million rounds per month. The program provided for immediate measures to prevent any disposition, transfer, or concealment of looted gold or other assets, to deny any safe haven for Nazi looted assets in neutral countries, and for the eventual return of looted artefacts to their original owners. 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. After Italy's disastrous invasion of Greece on 28 October the British intervened in accordance with the Anglo-Greek Mutual Aid Agreement, occupying Crete and establishing airfields within bombing distance of the Romanian oilfields. [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]. There was a general belief however, that Sweden went too far in accommodating the Nazi regime. [16] On 14 February the British War Cabinet took the decision to adopt area bombing as a means of undermining civilian morale and on 22 February Air Marshal Arthur Harris was appointed head of Bomber Command. It came to represent the different political and ideological barriers between the two areas. [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. Britons were pleased as it showed Britain was able to hit back, and the next day Berliners were reported to be stunned and disillusioned; Gring, who had said it would never happen, was ridiculed by both sides. 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. Since before the war, pro-Nazi Spain had suffered chronic food shortages which were made worse by the blockade. Although the captain went ashore to make a furious protest to the authorities with the American Consulate, the ship was delayed for 40 hours as British Contraband Control checked the records and ship's manifest, eventually removing 235 bags of mail addressed to Germany. What was supposed to have happened was that people could apply the next day for a visa to allow for travel. [2][3], The Soviet Union annexed the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse, leading to the expulsion of 12 million Germans. [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. Make a poster, chart, or some other type of graphic organizer that depicts how the Allied powers went about ensuring that Germany would not cause another world war. The British Supreme War Council met in London on 28 March to discuss ways to intensify the blockade. [67], By early 1942, the food shortages in Greece, which had been invaded by the Germans in April 1941 along with Yugoslavia, and which was now subject to the blockade, reached the famine proportions foreseen by Hoover. Indeed, Germany was largely to blame for the two major wars of the 20th century, World War I (WWI) and WWII, both of which cost millions of lives. immediately after the war, millions (~7.7m) of German soldiers were kept in POW camps. [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. 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. After World War II both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. This time they met outside of Berlin at the Potsdam Conference. [citation needed]. in history and taught university and high school history. [15] Despite the success in evacuating a third of a million men at Dunkirk and the later evacuations from St Malo and St Nazaire, the British army left behind 2,500 heavy guns, 64,000 vehicles, 20,000 motor cycles and well over half a million tons of stores and ammunition. The Marshall Plan and the German economist, Walter Eucken are largely credited with the German economic comeback. Half of German synthetic oil production came from plants in the Ruhr, areas that were highly vulnerable to area attacks, and they became the primary target of Bomber Command from 1943.[16]. But by far the biggest hole in the blockade was in the Balkans. [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. RAF raids on vehicle factories in Milan, Genoa, and Turin on 2 December 1942 only served to unite the Italian population behind the Mussolini dictatorship, and the plan was dropped in favour of the "disorganisation of German industry". Germany had suffered heavy losses during the war, both in lives and industrial power. E tank), thirty of their latest aircraft including the Messerschmitt 109, Messerschmitt 110 and Junkers 88, locomotives, turbines, generators, the unfinished cruiser Ltzow and the plans to the battleship Bismarck. 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. They declare that the united Germany, too, will abide by these commitments. Cholera broke out in concentration camps, and mass public executions added to the estimated 3 million Poles already killed during the invasion. 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. [clarification needed] The ships were based in the Rhine port of Basel, which gave access to the seaport of Rotterdam, until Allied bombing of a German dam interrupted it. The Battle of Britain raged throughout August and September 1940, but the Luftwaffe was unable to destroy the RAF to gain the air supremacy which was a prerequisite for the invasion. 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. Pavel Polian-Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR Central European University Press 2003. Try refreshing the page, or contact customer support. [48] On 4 January 2023 the deputy minister of foreign affairs of Poland Arkadiusz Mularczyk stated that "We do not recognize this German position, we reject it in its entirety as absolutely unfounded and erroneous." On 24 August 1939, a week before the invasion of Poland which started the war, Germany announced rationing of food, coal, textiles and soap, and Shirer noted that it was this action above all which made the German people wake up to the reality that war was imminent. 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 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. [62] The Japanese began with a barely adequate 6.1m merchant tons which American submarines and aircraft gradually whittled away until only 1.5m tons remained. The enormous rail marshalling yard at Hamm was badly hit, leaving some 9,000 workers permanently engaged carrying out running repairs. Germany had suffered heavy losses during the war, both in lives and industrial power.
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