Following the collapse of the Mussolini regime, thousands of escaped Allied POWs were given sanctuary and the crews of damaged Allied bombers (both sides regularly invaded Swiss airspace) returning from raids over Germany often put down in Swiss territory and were allowed refuge. [7] The most fundamental consideration was the defence of trade in home waters and the Atlantic in order to maintain imports of the goods Britain needed for her own survival. From that point on, the Greek Orthodox Church, through its charity efforts in the United States and the International Red Cross, were allowed to distribute sufficient supplies to the Greek people, though the total death toll from the famine was at least 70,000, probably much higher.[69]. Some are listed below: An accident led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. 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. [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. Greece received an additional share of reparations from other Axis powers as a result of the Paris Peace Treaties from 1947. 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 the invasion of Germany from 1944 to 1945, many German cities were bombed extensively. 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. 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. However, Britain refused to allow this aid through their blockade. The Big Three, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain met at the Yalta conference in the Soviet Union to discuss the final partitioning and division of Germany. 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. In fact, Germany produced large volumes of very high quality coal in the Saar region, but much of it was now being used to produce synthetic rubber, oil and gas. [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. [46], Hitler's best chance of beating the blockade was by knocking Britain out of the war. Because she was an island, the blockade of Japan was a fairly straightforward matter of sinking the transport ships used to ferry materials from the occupied lands to the home islands, and remained a largely American affair. Example: At the Yalta Conference, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt agreed to partition Germany into four different zones, largely in response to the Soviet need for border security. [26][22][25][27][28][29], On 10 September 2004, the Polish parliament (Sejm) passed a resolution stating that: "The Sejm of the Republic of Poland, aware of the role of historical truth and elementary justice in Polish-German relations states that Poland has not yet received adequate financial compensation and war reparations for the enormous destruction and material losses caused by German aggression, occupation and genocide. 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. But despite the British Foreign Office urging the Ministry of Economic Warfare to be cautious for fear of damaging relations with the US, the British claimed to have uncovered a nationwide US conspiracy to send clothing, jewels, securities, cash, foodstuffs, chocolate, coffee and soap to Germany through the post, and there was no climbdown. Via its Commercial Corporation, the US engaged in a preclusive buying programme under British direction of its materials, particularly the chromite ore. 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. 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. [83], Britain's economy was badly hit by the abrupt ending of Lend-Lease a few days after the final defeat of Japan in August 1945. 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. 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. Together they attempted to persuade the remaining neutrals Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Switzerland, Ireland (and Argentina) that by supplying Germany with the materials it needed they were prolonging the war, and over time a number of measures were tried to pressure these countries into reducing or ending trade with the Axis, with varying degrees of success. Churchill considered this to be the "greatest impediment to the blockade", and continually pressed for the mining of the Skjaergaard to force the German ships to come out into the open seas where Contraband Control could deal with them, but the Norwegians, not wishing to antagonise the Germans, steadfastly refused to allow it. 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. The pre-war stockpiles of goods were running down and more ersatz substitutes were being used. Vichy France's ambassador to the United States, Gaston Henry-Haye, continued to press for a relaxation of the blockade on humanitarian grounds, and the US government found itself in a difficult moral dilemma. 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. Additional payments by German companies which exploited forced workers have been made. The MEW became concerned at the "steady trickle" of Japanese blockade runners reaching Europe, which one estimate put at 15 ships by the end of 1942,[41] and on the anniversary of the German and Italian declarations of war on the US, General Tojo expressed his pleasure that Japan was able to contribute the resources captured in the South Pacific to the Axis cause. Coal was now very difficult to obtain however, and although sufficient crayfish were imported from the Danubian nations to allow an enjoyable festive meal, people went cold that Christmas. [59], For the Nazis, the capture of the Russian landmass, one-sixth of the Earth's land surface or 8,000,000 square miles (21,000,000km2), not only provided the Lebensraum they demanded, but also provided the answer to all their raw material problems. This sum rose significantly due to the growing size of the reparations seized by the Allies and Greece ultimately received compensations in the form of money and industrial goods with a worth of about 25 billion dollars.[56]. German agents were permitted to operate and spread propaganda freely and subsidiaries of IG Farben, Staudt and Co. and Siemens also operated in Argentinian territory, maintaining their links with Germany and supporting Nazi espionage operations in the region. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which was founded in 1863 in Geneva, did a great deal of invaluable humanitarian work, particularly in the worst-affected occupied territories, for example Greece. In the aftermath of World War I, Germans struggled to understand their country's uncertain future. Tanya graduated from Concord University with a Bachelor's degree in Education and a certification in Social Studies 5-12. The Allies exacted reparations for World War II, too. Despite impressive statistics of the quantities of contraband captured, by the spring of 1940 the optimism of the British government over the success of the blockade appeared premature and a feeling developed that Germany was managing to maintain and even increase imports. [2][3], The Soviet Union annexed the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse, leading to the expulsion of 12 million Germans. 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. Ministry of Economic Warfare minutes from May 1944. Because the Germans forced Dutch fishermen to return to port before dark there was also a shortage of fish, and although Dutch overseas possessions were among the world's main providers of tobacco, it could not breach the blockade. By May 1944, 15 blockade runners had been sunk and the traffic had virtually ceased apart from submarines carrying very small cargoes. [citation needed] Germany's economy continued to improve until the 1973 oil crisis. The Nazi official who took the leading role in preparing German industry for war was Hermann Gring. Japan knew that she could not win a prolonged war against the 'Occidental Powers',[6] but hoped that by striking first at Pearl Harbor to knock out the American Pacific fleet then using her huge reserves of men and machines to occupy the territories she coveted while America was still unready for war, Britain was engaged in all-out struggle with Germany and the Netherlands was herself occupied, she could establish her empire and consolidate herself so firmly that although her enemies would attempt to batter at her defensive line they would eventually be forced to accept the new position and make peace on the basis of the new status quo. As a result, economic conditions got worse in eastern Germany before they got better. On 10 April the destroyer USSNiblack, which was picking up survivors from a Dutch freighter that had been sunk detected that a U-boat was preparing to attack, and launched depth charges to drive it away. 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Unoccupied France ( Zone libre ) was left with only the rubber industries and textile factories around Lyon and its considerable reserves of bauxite, which because of the British blockade ended up in German hands anyway, giving her abundant supplies of aluminum for aircraft production. Immediately, newspapers in the United States printed articles speculating about how the Nazi Party's political goals and antisemitic policies might transform Germany. However, after East Germany's neighbors like Czechoslovakia and Hungary began opening their borders to the West, East Germans flocked to their neighbors to permanently resettle in West Germany. In 1948, hoping to promote European recovery and further democracy, the United States, led by President Truman, enacted the Marshall Plan. The war changed the pattern of the international economy, leaving the US in a very strong bargaining position, having managed to free up international trade to its benefit as a consequence of LendLease, and forcing the British to agree to currency convertibility. 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. The first V1 flying bomb was launched against England on 13 June 1944, and soon 120 V1s per day were being fired at London, killing large numbers of civilians. It also allowed them to continue to ship high quality Swedish iron ore from the port of Narvik, the trade which Britain tried to prevent with Operation Wilfred. The signing of the armistice with France in the Compigne Forest on 24 June 1940 greatly changed the conditions of the Economic War. Germany also invested in foreign industries and agricultural schemes aimed at directly meeting their particular needs, such as a plan to grow more soya beans and sunflower instead of maize in Romania.[17]. The American Embassy in London acted as the base for the American BEW activities in Europe and was organized in March 1942, "to establish a more intimate liaison between the manifold economic warfare activities centered in the Ministry of Economic Warfare and comparable activities in the United States Government." 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. It was made in 1942 in a similar episodic manner to David Lean and Nol Coward's In Which We Serve, but featuring gentle light-hearted propaganda, with a series of sketches designed to illustrate how the British blockade was gradually squeezing the life out of the Nazi war effort. When the bombing continued, the Nazi leadership ordered the Luftwaffe to begin bombing British cities on 7 September in the belief that this would damage civilian morale so much that Britain would sue for peace.[15][49]. [39] Franco continued to play for time. The Ministry of Blockade published a comprehensive list of items that neutral commercial ships were not to transport to the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). The highway also allowed the linking up of the Northwest Staging Route, a series of rough Canadian airstrips and radio ranging stations built to convey aircraft from Alberta and the Yukon to Soviet Union and China. Additionally, the U.S. and the U.K. acquiesced to Soviet demands of influence over most of Eastern Europe. [56] In 1960, Germany concluded a treaty with the Greek government to compensate Greek victims of Nazi German terror which amounted to 115 Million German mark. Directed by Michael Powell, written by Emeric Pressburger and starring Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson, Contraband (renamed Blackout in the US) was released in May 1940, just before the start of the German attack on France. Indeed, without the rise of the worldwide struggle between communism and capitalism, Germany may have merely been occupied by the four different countries until the occupiers could agree Germany was sufficiently rehabilitated. This was the last serious attempt by the German army to regain the initiative on land, although the Luftwaffe launched one final offensive with 800 aircraft against Allied airfields in Belgium, the Netherlands and France early in 1945. 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. The Allies used a variety of measures to keep Spain neutral, such as limiting her oil supply and making trade deals at critical times to provide her with much-needed foreign exchange to buy food from South America. 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. 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. On 24 July 1943 Hamburg, a major manufacturing centre for Tiger tanks and 88mm guns was virtually destroyed in Operation Gomorrah. [13] Later the Western Allies softened their stance in favour of the Marshall Plan, while Eastern Germany continued to deliver industrial goods and raw materials to the Soviet Union until 1953.[14]. Firms such as the Fischer Steel and Iron Works at Schaffhausen were added to the blacklists because of their exports, causing them to eventually curtail supply and remodel their plant. 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. East Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union with communist and socialist actions. But after those early days we went to the other extreme. The Soviet Union occupied East Germany and East Berlin. In late 1944 the German army launched the Ardennes Offensive, an attempt to split the Allied army, recapture Antwerp and force a negotiated peace. On 12 November the battleship Tirpitz was sunk by RAF Tallboy bombs near Troms, Norway. Sweden received very little by way of imports due to the various blockades, and the Allies tried to use offers of a relaxation to persuade her to reduce her assistance of Germany, which they believed was actively prolonging the war. Wanting to create economic reforms, he instituted a policy of glasnost, an openness allowing greater economic freedoms. In 1950, the dismantling of West German heavy industry ends. Post war Germany evolved into two separate Germanys. 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. In early February 1941 the main exporting Plata nations (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia) held a conference in Montevideo to discuss ways of improving trade between themselves and the rest of the continent. 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. Spain, the world's second-largest producer of tungsten after Portugal, provided Germany with 1,100 metric tons of the ore per year between 1941 and 1943 (between them Spain and Portugal provided 90% of Germany's annual 3500 tons requirement). The remaining 10 men drowned, died of exposure or were captured and interrogated by the Germans before being executed. Pavel Polian-Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR Central European University Press 2003. State expenditures had almost trebled to pay Germany's occupation and other costs and levies. [75], Troops had also begun seizing furniture and household goods to be shipped back for the use of bombed-out German families. After satisfying themselves that the cargo corresponded with the written records, the party returned ashore and a summary of the manifest, passengers, ports of origin and destination was sent by teleprinter to the Ministry. [65] With the gradual turn of the war, a number of neutral countries began to take a stiffer line with Germany, in some cases refusing further credit. What would happen if these neutrals, with one spontaneous impulse were to do their duty in accordance with the Covenant of the League [of Nations] and stand together with the British and French Empires against aggression and wrong?. Because of this, many people began migrating to West Germany. [77] German commanders increasingly put their faith in the new Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter and the V-weapons to turn the tide. The individual central banks were forced to underwrite and finance German industrial schemes, insurance transactions, gold and foreign exchange transfers etc. [16] Attacks on oil targets remained a priority, and successful raids were mounted against Hamburg, Bremen and Kiel in May, with Kiel suffering almost complete production losses. Sir Arthur Harris and his USAAF counterpart, Major General Ira Eaker assured Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt that Germany could be bombed out of the war by the end of 1943 on the condition that nothing was allowed to reduce the forces already allocated to the bombardment of Germany. Shirer recorded in his diary on 15 September that the blockade was already having a direct effect. Meanwhile, in Spain, which had still not recovered from her own civil war in which over one million died and which was in the grip of famine, General Francisco Franco continued to resist German attempts to persuade him to enter the war on the Axis side. However, negotiations for the return of looted gold allegedly sent to Sweden by Germany as payment for goods dragged on for many years. During the last 12 months of peace, Britain and France carried out a vigorous buildup of their armed forces and weapons production. They bow humbly in fear of German threats of violence, each one hoping that if he feeds the crocodile enough the crocodile will eat him last and that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. The newly formed Weimar Republic faced much opposition from both right- and left-wing groups. The report estimated that more than $12,800,000,000 had been collected from the occupied territories in occupation costs and other direct charges and continued to be collected at a yearly rate of $4,800,000,000. [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. On November 9, the Berlin Wall fell and soon after East Germany's communist regime collapsed. 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. This exacerbated the already stark disparities in wealth between eastern and western Germany, a situation that is still somewhat present today. With the war all but won, there were increasing reports mostly based on paranoia and hearsay that Nazi leaders were preparing to escape justice[81] and were already preparing the way for the next war by secreting funds in neutral nations and moving resources abroad. Control ports were often very overcrowded, teleprinters constantly sending out cargo listings and manifests to be checked against import quota lists. [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. The next day the war became a truly global conflict as America joined the British Empire in the war against Japan, Germany and the other Axis powers. As the Cold War ended, Germany was quickly reunified, but the legacy of the division still remains in Germany today. German memories of the Versailles Treaty and of the turbulent years of reparations, food shortages and high inflation during the years immediately after World War I caused wealthy France to be treated as a vast material resource to be bled dry, and her entire economy was geared towards meeting Germany's needs. [16] But after autumn 1943 the connections between industrial centres made attractive bomber targets which when effectively bombed badly affected the distribution of coal, which formed the basis of most military and industrial operations. 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. Churchill himself believed that Sweden could be instrumental in defeating Germany and after the heavy German defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943 the Russians became vocal in calling on Sweden to do more to aid the Allies. [87] An earlier silent film of the same name had been made in 1925, centred around similar events from World War I. 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. Darlan, who during the battle of France had given Churchill the solemn pledge that the French navy would never surrender to Germany, claimed that the British were reluctant to risk a third bloody clash like those at Dakar and Oran, and that, while they had sunk seven unescorted French food ships, they had never sunk, or even stopped, a French ship escorted by warships. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. UK National Archives. 1941, the United States declared war against Japan and entered World War II. In some cases, as with the crucial Swedish iron ore trade, it was done openly, but elsewhere, neutrals secretly acted as a conduit for supplies of materials that would otherwise be confiscated if sent directly to Germany. [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. 9,000 factories and 60,000 commercial enterprises were taken over for exploitation, and 80% of the 1942 harvest was sent to Germany. Her resources in gold and foreign currency are smaller; her stocks of industrial raw materials are far smaller. There were 16m French Americans alone, and by early March at least 15 different organizations collectively known as the Coordinating Council for French Relief were distributing aid in France through The American Friends Service Committee, while the Quaker Committee also distributed around $50,000 worth of food, clothing and medical supplies a month throughout France. 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. In comparison with the RAF, the US 8th Air Force was at that point still small, having dropped less than a tenth the bomb tonnage on Germany as the RAF. Minutes of Ministry of Economic Warfare Committee report, 1940, UK National Archives. 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.
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