The year is 1945. Adolf Hitler is finally dead but the chaos he caused has left the continent of Europe in ruins. Millions were dead. Cities had crumbled. The damage was irreparable.Germany, the center of the madness, was particularly rough. It was left to the Allies, America, Britain, France, and the USSR to pick up the pieces and put Germany back together. Though they were called the Allies, they were far from true allies. In fact America, Britain and France opposed almost all that the Soviets stood for. Cooperation between these two groups was nearly impossible. So to make it fair they split Germany in two; east and west sides. Britain, America and France split their Western side into three amongst each other and the Soviet Union took the eastern half of the country which contained, the capitol, Berlin.Unwilling to give the soviets the capitol, the three allies took the Western half of Berlin along with their Western Germany. Still with me? This meant that the allies occupied a tiny bit of land inside of the mass that was Communist Germany. This was a recipe for disaster. …show more content…
The capitalist West flourished into a booming and lively city. At all hours there was life. There were parties and shows, art and music. while in the communist East life remained in stagnant ruin. It was very much a reflection of the nations occupying it. Though the East was still a reflection of its occupant the life was not shared. The communist East remained in stagnant ruin under the USSR’s rule. While just miles away to the West the city bloomed from the ashes of a long war, the East sat still smoldering in the rubble. However it was just that: just a few miles
Following the conferences during World War Two, Germany was split up into two zones. Occupying West Germany and West Berlin was France, Britain and The United States, while the Soviet Union occupied Ea...
June 5: Supreme power passed to the victorious countries: USA, UK, France and the Soviet Union. (Kettenacker L, 1997) Their main purpose, according to the London Protocol of September 12, 1944 and subsequent agreements, was the implementation of complete control over Germany (Douglas R, 2013) At the heart of this policy lay partition of the country into three zones of occupation, section of Berlin into three parts and the creation of a joint Supervisory Board of three commanders. The division of Germany into zones of occupation had ever recaptured her desire for world dominance.
During the1930’s the Western economy was still in terrible shape from the Great Depression and the Stock Market Crash of 1929. “Evident instability – with cycles of boom and bust, expansion and recession - generated profound anxiety and threatened the livelihood of both industrial workers and those who gained a modest toehold in the middle class. Unemployment soared everywhere, and in both Germany and the United States it reached 30 percent or more by 1932. Vacant factories, soup kitchens, bread lines, shantytowns and beggars came to symbolize the human reality of this economic disaster.” (Strayer, 990) Like Germany, the Western democracies were economically in trouble and looking for stability and recovery. The United States’ response to the Great Depression, under Roosevelt, came in the form of the New Deal “which was an experimental combination of reforms seeking to restart economic growth. In Britain, France and Scandinavia, the Depression energized a democratic socialism that sought greater regulation of the economy and a more equal distribution of wealth, through peaceful means and electoral policies.” (Strayer, 993) The lack and need for restoration was clearly global. Hitler’s promise of civil peace, unity and the restoration of national pride would seem very appealing and very similar to the wants and needs of the Western democracies; but through peaceful means. No one was interested in or could afford setting off a heavily funded war by taking a stand against Hitler. Through a policy of appeasement allowing Hitler to take back land that was ordered dematerialized by the Treaty of Versailles, the British and the French tried to avoid all-out war but to no avail. Hitler continued his conquests eventually having most of Europe under Nazi control. A second war in Europe had
In 1943, the Allies decided to divide Germany into three zones. The US and Great Britain would split the western half of Germany and the Soviets would control the eastern half. The city of Berlin would be deep inside the Soviet side, but would be jointly occupied as a symbol of Allied unity1. This was the Attlee Plan, devised by the British and signed by US President Franklin Roosevelt, Great Britain Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin during the February 1945 Yalta conference. However, this plan did not allow for access for the United States or Britain2.
At the end of WWII, the United States, Great Britain, and France occupied the western zone of Germany while the Soviet Union occupied the east. In 1948, Britain, France, and the U.S. combined their territories to make one nation. Stalin then discovered a loophole. He closed all highway and rail routes into West Berlin. This meant no food or fuel could reach that part of the city. In an attempt to break the blockade, American and British officials started the Berlin airlift. For 327 days, planes carrying food and supplies into West Berlin took off and landed every few minutes. West Berlin might not have made it if it wasn’t for the airlift. By May 1949, the Soviet Union realized it was beaten and lifted the blockade. By using the policy of containment, the Americans and the British were able to defeat the Soviets.
Living in the crumbled remains of Germany, or the Weimar Republic, in the 1920’s was a dismal existence. Hyperinflation was rampant and the national debt skyrocketed as a result of the punishing features of the Treaty of Versailles. During the depression, however, a mysterious Austrian emerged from the depths of the German penal system and gave the desperate German people a glimpse of hope in very dark times. He called for a return to “Fatherland” principles where greater Germany was seen as the center of their universe with zealous pride. Under Hitler’s leadership, Nazi Germany rapidly grew and expanded, continually approaching the goal of world domination and the “Thousand-Year Reich” that Hitler promised the German people. Only a few years later, Nazi Wehrmacht soldiers could be seen marching the streets from Paris to Leningrad (St. Petersburg, Russia). The German Empire, however, like all other expansive empires, had its limits and integral components such as resources, manpower, and industrial capacity began to fall in short supply further crippling the Nazi war machine. Basically, by 1944, “Nazi Germany’s fundamental problem was that she has conquered more territory than she could defend” (Ambrose, 27). Hitler conquered a vast area and vowed to defend every single inch of his empire with every last drop of blood at his disposal. As Frederick the Great warned, “He who defends everything, defends nothing” (Ambrose, 33). It is interesting to study any empire’s rise and fall because similarities are always present, even with some nations today promising to fight the evil, when it reality, it might be becoming what it vows to fight.
The Soviet citizens during the 1930s, particularly the younger ones, believed “they were participants in a history process of transformation, their enthusiasm for what was called ‘the building of socialism’” (68). The Soviets built hotels, palaces, and had blueprints displayed all throughout “that was supposed to set a pattern for urban planning throughout the country and provide a model of the socialist capital for foreigners” (69).
Even though Berlin lay deep within the Soviet sector, the Allies thought it would be the best to divide this capital. Therefore Berlin was also divided into four parts. Since the Soviet Union was in control of the eastern half of Germany, they made East Berlin the capital of East Germany. The other three counties were each in control of a small part of what was to be West Germany. The Allies decided that they would come together to form one country out of their three divided parts. Those three divided parts formed West Germany. After all the land was divided the Soviet Union controlled East Germany. Just like the Soviet Union, the economy in East Germany was struggling to get back on its feet after the war. While West Berlin became a lively urban area like many American cities, East Berlin became what many thought of as a ‘Mini-Moscow’. In East Germany there was literary almost nothing. The shelves in the stores were practically bare, and what was there was not in very good quality.
World War II, known as the largest armed conflict in history, began in Europe in the 1930s and led to effect many people. The war resulted in not only the involvement of more countries than any other war but also introduced powerful, new, nuclear weapons that also contributed to the most deaths. As Hitler rose to power in 1933 the Holocaust began, his quest for the ‘perfect’ race resulted in the use of concentration camps, which would help to create the largest genocide of people in history.
After Germany lost World War I, it was in a national state of humiliation. Their economy was in the drain, and they had their hands full paying for the reparations from the war. Then a man named Adolf Hitler rose to the position of Chancellor and realized his potential to inspire people to follow. Hitler promised the people of Germany a new age; an age of prosperity with the country back as a superpower in Europe. Hitler had a vision, and this vision was that not only the country be dominant in a political sense, but that his ‘perfect race’, the ‘Aryans,’ would be dominant in a cultural sense. His steps to achieving his goal came in the form of the Holocaust. The most well known victims of the Holocaust were of course, the Jews. However, approximately 11 million people were killed in the holocaust, and of those, there were only 6 million Jews killed. The other 5 million people were the Gypsies, Pols, Political Dissidents, Handicapped, Jehovah’s witnesses, Homosexuals and even those of African-German descent. Those who were believed to be enemies of the state were sent to camps where they were worked or starved to death.
In 1947, the Western portion of Germany instituted a government under the watchful eyes of the Western Allies. The Soviet sector followed suit in 1949. During this period, the elaborate governance structure of greater Berlin broke under the strain of Cold War tensions. What emerged was West Berlin, which took up ties with West Germany, known as the Federal Republic of Germany. East Berlin, which comprised the ruins of the old and historic center of Berlin and outlying districts to the East, became the capital of the German Democratic Republic. After World War II, the Americans pumped capital into West Germany through the Marshall Plan, which resulted in one of the world's strongest economies, enormous prosperity and a stable democracy. Germany has been divided ever since and though at every opportunity, lip service was paid by all western nations to its eventual reunification, no one took the matter seriously.
Millarand, James and Wolchik, Sharon, eds. The Social Legacy of Communism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
... US and the British zones joined to become the Bizonia, shortly after, Bizonia and the French quarter launch a common currency, the Deutsche Mark. On the other hand, the soviet side of Germany had communist influences and was the complete opposite from the other parts, that’s the reason of the 1948 Berlin Blockade. Later on, the rising of the Berlin Wall in 1961 was an anti-fascist barrier, as they thought the west hadn’t been completely de-nazified. Nevertheless, ever since the demolition of the wall Germany has become one of the global powers and an example of stability and organization.
On November 11th, 1918, the Second Reich of Germany formally surrendered to the Allied powers and officially ended World War 1. In its wake, millions were dead and many of the European economies in ruin. Germany, a unified nation since 1871, was at the center of this conflict and blamed by most for the destruction of much of Europe. But how did this young nation go from a couple dozen states and city-states, to a European power, to lying in ruins for such a short period of time? Several factors, such as increased nationalism, shifts in cultural and sociopolitical factors, and an increase in military power all led to the quick rise and fall of the Second Reich of Germany.