Efforts began to repair the peacetime neglect, but it was too late to prevent a U Boat creeping into the Flow during the night of 14 October and sinking the veteran battleship Royal Oak with over 800 fatalities. D-Day Summary, Date & Invasion | When was D-Day? This time they met outside of Berlin at the Potsdam Conference. The creation of East and West Germany after the end of WWII largely occurred for two reasons: the rest of the world blaming Germany for instigating WWI and WWII and the development of a global rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States and its Western allies. Eventually, a method of de-magnetising ships, known as degaussing was developed, which involved girding them in electric cable, and was quickly applied to all ships. By the end of September 1939, regular ocean convoys were in operation, outward from the Thames and Liverpool, and inwards from Gibraltar, Freetown and Halifax. ", Despite past enmity between the two nations, Turkey quickly responded, chartering the SSKurtulus and, after receiving permission from the British, the ship sailed from Istanbul to Piraeus on 6 October with wheat, maize, vegetables, dried fruits and medicines. On the outbreak of war, many South American countries expected to make big profits supplying the belligerents as in World War I. [73] A Norwegian smelting works was also destroyed by British and Norwegian commandos on 21 November 1943. 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. But by far the biggest prize was France. This six-nation agreement facilitated the exchange of resources between Western European countries and promoted economic growth throughout the region. 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. Austria was not included in any of these treaties. However, many factories maintained production right up to the moment Allied forces arrived at the gates. Although the US managed to secure alternative non-Arabian oil supplies mainly from Venezuela synthetic oils are widely used today, mainly in specialised areas such as the airline industry and as lubricants. The long-awaited Spitfire fighter began to enter service, the first of the new naval vessels ordered under the 1936 emergency programme began to join the fleet, and the Air Ministry made the final touches to the Chain Home early warning network of radio direction-finding (later called radar) stations, to bring it up to full operational readiness. To patrol the Mediterranean and the Red Sea access to the Indian Ocean, Britain would work together with the French, whose own navy was the world's fourth largest, and comprised a good number of modern, powerful vessels with others nearing completion. Around this time the RAF began reducing its attacks on synthetic oil production sites because none of the plants were now operating. After the first 6 months of the war, Norway had lost 49 ships with 327 men dead; Denmark 19 ships for 225 sailors killed and Sweden 32 ships for 243 men lost. A third of Dutchmen derived their livelihood from German trade, and Dutch traders were long suspected of acting as middle men in the supply of copper, tin, oil and industrial diamonds from America. At this point Franco saw that the Royal Navy had reduced the German navy in Norway to an impotent surface threat, the Luftwaffe had lost the Battle of Britain, the Royal Navy had destroyed much of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kbir, had also destroyed Italian battleships at Taranto and the British Army was routing the Italian army in North & East Africa. [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]. [27] Germany then began seizing Danish ships carrying butter, eggs and bacon to Britain, in breach of a promise to allow Denmark to trade freely with her enemies. 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. Europe After WW2 Economy & Conditions | Economic Reconstruction of Europe, The Yalta Conference and The Potsdam Conference: US Diplomacy & International Politics During World War II. On 24 September the RAF breached the DortmundEms Canal an inland waterway linking the Ruhr with other areas with Tallboy bombs, draining a six-mile (10km) section. Even today, though Germany is extremely short of oil, she has enough for actual military operations, and her people are still reasonably well fed. Over the next few days many ships of all sizes blew up in waters close to shore, mostly by explosions under or near the keels although the waters had been swept. [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 airlift allowed the Allies to support West Berlin with food and other goods via airplanes for over a year. Danish farmers paid large taxes, and merchant sailors were driven to work as labourers in Germany because of the blockade. The Germans, employing their scorched-earth policy, destroyed all dock facilities as they withdrew from the occupied territories in order to deprive the Allies of any logistical advantages. However, only small areas were occupied and then returned after German compensation payments. 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. 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How did the United States government and American people respond to To bridge the gap during the first crucial weeks while the auxiliary anti-submarine craft were prepared, aircraft carriers were used to escort the numerous unprotected craft approaching British shores. During an early visit to the base, Churchill was unimpressed with the levels of protection against air and submarine attack, and was astounded to see the flagship HMSNelson putting to sea with no destroyer escort because there were none to spare. Millions of German prisoners of war were for several years used as forced labor, by both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. [citation needed] As Germany's most important industrial region, it had been equipped with strong air defenses Hermann Gring had already declared, "The Ruhr will not be subjected to a single bomb. The US travel agencies were eventually closed down along with the German consulates and information centres on 16 June 1941. She has a Master's degree in History. The German merchant fleet and all other ships were handed over. 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. The newly formed Weimar Republic faced much opposition from both right- and left-wing groups. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947. #11. 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. [3], In World War I, neutral ships were subject to being stopped to be searched for contraband. On 22 June 1941 Churchill proclaimed that Britain would bomb Germany night and day, in ever increasing numbers, but because of the size of Germany and because the fleet continued to be eroded by planes going overseas, Bomber Command remained too weak for effective attacks on the German war machine. Apart from allowing Hitler to secure his eastern borders and annihilate Poland, the Nazi-Soviet Pact brought Germany considerable economic benefits in August 1939. [46], Hitler's best chance of beating the blockade was by knocking Britain out of the war. [20], On 23 August 1953, the People's Republic of Poland, under pressure from the Soviet Union,[21] announced it would waive its right to further war reparations from East Germany on 1 January 1954. Germany: Reluctant military giant? - BBC News Photographs of abundant fruit markets, butchers, fishmongers and grocers were placed in foreign publications to prove to American and Commonwealth readers that Britain was not, as the Nazis claimed, starving. Prominent in these purchases were cotton, petrol, iron, steel and copper materials essential for waging war. 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. 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. On 4 September a tax of 50% was placed on beer and tobacco, and income tax went up to 50%. Griechische Reparationsforderungen an Deutschland vor dem Hintergrund der Schuldenkrise", "Spiegel: 278 . The Allies, who also bought Portuguese tungsten, believed that if they could persuade the Portuguese to stop selling the ore the German machine tool industry would very quickly be crippled and she would be unable to continue to fight. Neutral ships were warned against joining Allied convoys, Scandinavian merchants were ordered to use the Kiel Canal to facilitate the German's own Contraband Control and the US City of Flint, which had rescued survivors of the Athenia became the first American ship captured as prize of war by the Germans, although the episode proved farcical and the ship was eventually returned to its owners. Sweden had long been Germany's main source of high quality iron ore and ball bearings, and continuation of supplies from the port of Narvik, which the British tried to stop with Operation Wilfred was one of the factors which led to the German occupation of Norway. [55], After the war, Greece received its share of the reparations paid by Germany to the Allies as part of the proceedings of the Paris Reparation Treaty of 1946 which the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency enforced. 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. During most of 1942, the US . UK National Archives. [41] Britain discontinued its contraband control bases at Weymouth and The Downs and removed all but a skeleton staff from the control base at Kirkwall to continue searching the few ships bound for Sweden, Finland, Russia and her recently annexed Baltic satellites ( Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania surrendered on 21 June 1940 ). Occupied countries were subjected to relentless, systematic requisitioning of anything Germany required or desired. 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. Because Britain and France together controlled 15 of the 20 refuelling points along the main shipping routes, they were able to threaten those who refused to comply, by the withdrawal of their bunker fuel control facilities. The Allies agreed as part of the Potsdam Agreement, that the Soviet Union collects and distributes the Polish share of reparations. [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]. East Germany struggled economically, while West Germany flourished under a capitalist system. 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. "[30] A month later, on 19 October 2004 the Polish Council of Ministers put out a statement stating: "The Declaration of 23 August 1953 was adopted in accordance with the constitutional order of the time, in compliance with international law laid down in the UN Charter. 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. When the Allied warships opened fire the crew scuttled the ship, and 78 Germans were captured. After World War I, the German army, once the strongest in Europe, presented a pitiful sight. Despite early success, caused in part by severe Allied supply shortages, particularly of fuel, the operation eventually petered out. Great efforts went into finishing the new battleships King George V and Prince of Wales before the Bismarck could be completed and begin attacking Allied convoys, while the French also strained to complete similarly advanced battleships, the Richelieu and the Jean Bart by the autumn of 1940 to meet the Mediterranean threat of two Italian battleships nearing completion. Example: German states were not allowed to have any standing armies. 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. 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. 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. At the start of 1942 the Allies were yet to achieve a major victory. East Germany continued to struggle under its Soviet communist leadership. [citation needed]. 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[15] The works were located in the area bounded by Hanover, Halle and Magdeburg, which was considered safe from land offensive operations, and a programme was initiated to relocate existing crucial industries nearest the borders of Silesia, Ruhr and Saxony to the more secure central regions. Try refreshing the page, or contact customer support. While Denmark, the "Larder of Europe", produced massive quantities of bacon, eggs and dairy products, this was heavily dependent on imports of fertilizer from Britain. In December 1941 the United States joined the economic warfare system that the British had created and administered over the previous two years. Following several years of protests along with other factors, the Berlin Wall was torn down and in 1990 the two-sides were reunited. 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. In 1955, the military occupation of West Germany ends. The situation in Germany after World War II was dire. Germany in particular was heavily reliant on a wide range of foreign imports and suffered very badly from the blockade. [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. [75], Troops had also begun seizing furniture and household goods to be shipped back for the use of bombed-out German families. 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. Although Hitler was credited with lowering unemployment from 6 million (some sources claim the real figure was as high as 11m) to virtually nil by conscription and by launching enormous public works projects (similar to Roosevelt's New Deal), as with the Autobahn construction he had little interest in economics and Germany's "recovery" was in fact achieved primarily by rearmament and other artificial means conducted by others. [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. The Italians were also buckling under a strong British and Indian counter-offensive in Eritrea in East Africa. The neutral commerce which Churchill found most perplexing was the Swedish iron ore trade. Maximum prices were fixed for everything, but the black market pushed prices 515 times beyond the official tariff. 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]. 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. So much smog was produced by these industries that precision bombing was almost impossible. The conquest of Poland brought Germany half a million tons of oil per year and more zinc than it would ever need, and Luxembourg, though tiny, brought a well-organized iron and steel industry 1/7th as great as Germany's. [51] But the British at this point had no effective means of taking offensive action against the enemy, and began to look towards a renewed bomber strategy. Between 1.5 and 2 million are said to have died in the process, depending on source. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947. [11][12], Belgium and Luxembourg also sought to annex German territory as reparations for WWII. Steel, iron and wood were so hard to obtain that the work of rebuilding Rotterdam came to a standstill. 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. If she holds out, it will be his triumph. They penetrated deep into Soviet territory, and within a week completed an encirclement of 300,000 Red Army troops near Minsk and Bialystok. Much of the arable land had been ruined by opening the dikes during the Nazi invasion and many farmers refused to sell the Germans cattle, but soon there was such a meat shortage that the authorities had to confiscate bootlegged dog-meat sausages. [53] Under the plan, the Germans agreed to supply 1m bushels (1 US bushel = 8 US gallons, about 27kg for wheat) of bread grains each month, and the committee was to provide 20,000 tons of fats, soup stock and children's food. In September 1936 he established the Four Year Plan, the purpose of which was to make Germany self-sufficient and impervious to blockade by 1940. [32] Chamberlain said that although he realised this would be detrimental to the neutrals, (Norway got nearly all its coal from Germany) the policy was in strict adherence to the rules of law and that whereas Germany's use of mines and submarine warfare had already caused many innocent deaths regardless of nationality, no loss of life had been caused by the exercise of British sea power. What you may not know, however, is that only a quarter century ago you might have asked a follow up question: 'Which Germany?' 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. The defeat of Germany in the World War II and her occupation by the Soviet Union and the Western Powers gave rise to complications in the field of European and international politics. 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. [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. Finally, there was the need for a vigorous blockade against Germany and Italy. [60], Russia had had a reputation as a backward, agrarian country, but the communist government was well aware of the dangers of overly relying on the Ukraine and of the need to modernise its industry. Why has Germany taken so long to pay off its WWI debt? America meanwhile, had been under severe depression in 1938, with vast industrial resources lying idle and 20% of the population unemployed. [3] It was their job to compile and sift through the raw intelligence being received from the various overseas and other contacts, to cross-reference it with the known data on ship movements and cargoes and to pass on any relevant information to Contraband Control. This was known as Conditional Contraband of War. 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. However, by the end of December 1939 the Soviets didn't agree to start sending raw materiel since they weren't satisfied by German offers, citing refusal to get some of what they wanted and overly high prices on everyone else, and the actual trade within the framework treaty signed in August only took off in 1940 (see below). They weren't paid in actual money, but. [18] They were allowed one bar of soap per month, and men had to make one tube of shaving foam last five months. | 22 The Soviets had not been happy about the division of Berlin, since it was technically in their occupation zone. In early August Germans installed Dover Strait coastal guns. In total Britain sent more than 4,500 Valentine, Churchill and Matilda tanks, and 4200 Hurricane and Spitfire fighter aircraft.[6]. [16] In early March the USAAF raided the Erkner ball-bearing works, scoring 75 direct hits, stopping production for some time, and commenced the "Plan for Completion of Combined Bomber Offensive". by zig-zagging or navigating without lights. At the end of four and a half months, Germany is in something like the same economic stress she was in after two years of the last war.[14]. [23] Ships bound for European ports or en route to the North of Scotland should call at Kirkwall. [citation needed] Despite their declared neutrality, the politically unstable Balkan nations found themselves in an uncomfortable position, surrounded by Germany to the North, Italy to the West and Soviet Union to the East, with little room to refuse German veiled threats that, unless they continued to supply what was requested, they would suffer the same fate as Poland. Payments [ edit] At the most important of these conferences, at Yalta in the southern Soviet Union, the three leaders agreed to split Germany into four different occupation zones, with roughly the eastern third of the country controlled by the Soviet Union, and the western two-thirds split between American, British, and French control. East & West Germany Partition, Conflict & Reunification | When Did Germany Reunite? France sought to ultimately annex the Saar as well as the entire Ruhr region into France proper, but was denied so by the rest of the Allies. [58] Nearly all of Bolivia's copper, lead, tin and silver was exported to Europe, while Uruguay and southern Brazil supplied wool and canned and frozen beef. 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. Spanish suppliers of oranges and mandarins also refused to ship deliveries until they were paid. The work of the actual inspection of cargoes was carried out by customs officers and Royal Naval officers and men who, together with their ships, were assigned to Contraband Control for various periods of duty.
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