A land route across the roadless 800-mile (1,300km) expanse of Canada, long discussed, now became vital, and so on 8 March 1942 the American army began construction of the Alcan Highway, a 1,671-mile (2,689km) long stretch from Dawson Creek in British Columbia, north-west through Yukon Territory to an existing road on the Canadian/Alaskan border. 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. 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. [16] Allied air commanders next began targeting German transport networks. [3][4] (see also Operation Paperclip). By May 1944, 15 blockade runners had been sunk and the traffic had virtually ceased apart from submarines carrying very small cargoes. The largest refinery, Astra Romn, processed two million tons of petroleum a year but, as Britain's fortunes waned from the beginning of 1940, Romania turned to Germany using its oil as a bargaining tool, hoping for protection from Soviet Union. These efforts were mostly thwarted by the Western Allies and ultimately only approximately 69 square kilometres (27sqmi) of German territory was annexed in 1949. In 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and, following the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the Anschluss with Austria and the later occupation of Czechoslovakia, many people began to believe that a new "Great War" was coming,[5] and from late 1937 onwards Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, the British government's chief economics advisor, began to urge senior government figures to put thought into a plan to revive the blockade so that the Royal Navy still the world's most powerful navy would be ready to begin stopping shipments to Germany immediately once war was declared. By late 1943 the Germans became so desperate for supplies of key commodities that in one incident they sent a large destroyer force out into the Bay of Biscay to protect ships bringing a cargo into Bordeaux, and lost three vessels (Z27, T25 and T26) to Allied action (Operation Stonewall). 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. 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. 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. On 17 January 1940 the Minister of Economic Warfare, Ronald Cross said in a speech in the House of Commons: We have made a good start, we must bear in mind that Germany does not have the same resources she had some 25 years ago. Soon after, Germany's remaining generals surrendered to the Soviet Union and the Allies. 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. 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. To prevent the enemy gaining a route to acquire supplies, the occupied countries and the unoccupied (Vichy) French zone immediately became subject to the blockade, with severe shortages and extreme hardship quickly following. During World War II, Zurich industrialist and armaments exporter Emil Georg Bhrle began amassing one of the twentieth century's most important private collections of European art. [18] They were allowed one bar of soap per month, and men had to make one tube of shaving foam last five months. 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. When a ton of air mail from the Pan American Airlines (PAA) flying boat American Clipper was confiscated in Bermuda, the American government banned outright the sending of parcels through the US airmail. On 11 May 1940 the RAF bombed the city of Mnchengladbach. ", "Greece gains allies in Bundestag over WWII reparations dispute", "Greece's claims for war reparations should be resolved by int'l court: Bundestag", "Greece Nazi occupation: Athens asks Germany for 279bn euros", "Who still owes what for the two World Wars? 7.181 billion dollars were initially slated for Greece. We are in this case running a risk in view of the appalling conditions caused by the Germans in Greece." By now the V1 and V2 launch sites were being increasingly overrun, and with the Allies moving towards the Rhine and the Soviet armies rapidly closing in from the east, large numbers of refugees began to congregate in the cities, creating utter chaos. [16] Harris began pushing for a mass raid using the magic number of 1,000 bombers, although in fact the RAF barely had that many. Destabilized by these developments, East Germany erupted in protest in 1989. [1] This included food, weapons, gold and silver, flax, paper, silk, copra, minerals such as iron ore and animal hides used in the manufacture of shoes and boots. 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. We were victims of Nazi frightfulness However, it was no longer possible to entertain at home unless the guests brought their own food and though restaurants and cafes still traded they were now very expensive and crowded. At the end of WWII, Germany had suffered total defeat at the hands of the Allies. Interest on loans taken out to the pay the debt will be settled on. In order to buy from abroad without credit or foreign exchange (cash), a nation needed goods or gold to offer, but the British export ban prevented her from raising revenue. A number of other countries also downgraded their diplomatic relations with Spain for having openly supported Hitler,[64] and Spain agreed to return an estimated $25 million in official and semi-official German assets in October 1946. 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 Marshall Plan and the German economist, Walter Eucken are largely credited with the German economic comeback. ", "U.S. and Allied Wartime and Postwar Relations and Negotiations With Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey on Looted Gold and German External Assets and U.S. After six months of negotiations, Switzerland also agreed to trim by one third her $60m yearly sales of machine goods and precision instruments to Germany and to cut sales of ball bearings to 10% and ammunition to 5% of the 1942 total. German soldiers got double rations, but this was still only a modest daily diet, similar to that served to inmates in American prisons. 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. On 1 August Italy, having joined the war, established a submarine base in Bordeaux. By the end of June over 2,000 V1s had been launched; 40% of bomber resources were being redirected towards 'Crossbow' targets in the hope of destroying the 7080 launch sites north and east of the Seine.[78]. Russia was known to have enormous reserves of oil and gas but had chronically underdeveloped extraction systems, and though there was talk of German engineers going to reorganize them, it would take around two years before large quantities would begin flowing. Both East and West Germans wanted their country to be reunified, and after East Germany held its first free elections in March of 1990, a joint East-West Bundestag passed several laws during the summer of 1990 preparing to reunify Germany. As a result, the population density grew in the "new" Germany that remained after the dismemberment. Berlin, the capital of Axis Germany, had previously been split in half among the Big Three. [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. At the start of 1942 the Allies were yet to achieve a major victory. Despite these initial setbacks, the Soviets were able to relocate large portions of their industry from cities near the Dnepr River and Donbas regions further east to the Urals and Siberia. Aug 20, 2011. [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. Create a poster, chart, or some other type of graphic organizer that illustrates the differences between East Germany and West Germany. The lost Dutch and Danish supplies of meat and dairy products were replaced by sources in Ireland and New Zealand. 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. Germany rose from the ashes and destruction of the war and became the most prosperous 1955 European economy. [37] In 1975, the Gierek-Schmidt agreement was signed in Warsaw. 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. On 11 March 1941 Roosevelt and Congress passed into law the programme of Lend-Lease, which allowed for the sending of vast amounts of war material to Allied countries, and Churchill thanked the American nation for a 'new Magna Carta'. [73] A Norwegian smelting works was also destroyed by British and Norwegian commandos on 21 November 1943. But, following the British attack on the French fleet at Oran on 4 July to prevent it from falling into German hands, the British were proving they would do whatever was necessary to continue the fight, and Roosevelt was now winning his campaign to convince Congress to be even more supportive of Britain, with the Destroyers for Bases Agreement[40] and with the approval of a British order for 4,000 tanks. To free up destroyers for oceangoing and actual combat operations, merchant ships were converted and armed for escort work, while French ships were also fitted with ASDIC sets which enabled them to detect the presence of a submerged U Boat. Norway, with extensive mountainous areas relied on imports for half its food and all its coal; shortages and hunger quickly affected Belgium which, despite being densely populated and producing only half its needs, was still subjected to the widespread confiscation of food. 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 Essen and Bremen also suffered 1,000 plane raids and upwards of 1,000 tons of bombs. If the early hopes were exaggerated, we must not attenuate the actual achievements. Britain and the US again had the option of launching an oil embargo on Spain but hesitated for fear of pushing Franco to side with Germany militarily. On 1 August the USAAF attacked the Romanian Ploieti oilfields in Operation Tidal Wave as part of the Oil Plan to wear down Axis oil supplies. In Russia, great stimulus was given to emerging industries as a result of frenzied war production, helped in part by advanced industrial plants it took from East Germany after the occupation. Following several years of protests along with other factors, the Berlin Wall was torn down and in 1990 the two-sides were reunited. The supply problem was worsened by the Allies' failure to capture a deep-water port able to unload large ships. [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. 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. While some increases may have been inflationary, some from a desire to build up their own armed forces or to stockpile reserves, it was exactly the type of activity the Ministry was trying to prevent. 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). As well as providing refueling and repair facilities for German U-boats and other vessels at its remote Arctic port of Teriberka, east of Murmansk, the Soviets "Belligerent Neutrals" in Churchill's words also accepted large quantities of wheat, tin, petrol and rubber from America into its ports in the Arctic and Black Sea and, rather than transport them over the entire continent, released identical volumes of the same material to Germany in the west. [64] Despite the German occupation of the Balkans in spring 1941, no military action was taken against Turkey, who in October 1941 began selling Germany large quantities of chromite ore for the production of chromium. [citation needed] On 22 January the UK ambassador was handed a note from the State Department calling the practice "wholly unwarrantable" and demanding immediate correction[citation needed]. 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. There were also ersatz foodstuffs such as coffee made from chicory and beer from sugar beet. Nearly all of this territories were returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957. By late October 1943, the MEW believed that German productivity was down 30%,[74] and that half the drop had occurred in the previous six months, but the figures showed the limitations of all bombing, saturation or precision. Likewise the Netherlands, with its 2.7m cattle, 650,000 sheep, half a million pigs, and huge surplus of butter, cheese, meat, milk, margarine and vegetable oils, depended on Britain for its animal fodder. 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. [48], In an effort to force Britain into submission, the Luftwaffe concentrated its efforts on factories, ports, oil refineries and airfields. 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 clothing allowance was so meagre that for all practical purposes people had to make do with whatever clothing they already possessed until the war was over. West Germany was controlled by the Allies with a capitalist system. [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. After World War II began in September 1939, most Americans hoped the United States would remain neutral. Indeed, the Soviet occupation zone and the three Western occupation zones were completely cut off from one another. This was known as Conditional Contraband of War. The only rationing introduced immediately at the war's beginning was petrol. Years of international tension and aggressive expansion by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany culminated in the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. As soon as 1945, the Allied forces worked heavily on removing Nazi influence from Germany in a process dubbed as "denazification".[5]. Example: A poster with two columns (one for East Germany and one for West Germany) might work best here. Austria was not included in any of these treaties. On the outbreak of war, many South American countries expected to make big profits supplying the belligerents as in World War I. Controlled by the socialist economic policies of the communist Soviet Union, East Germany suffered a decline in the standard of living. Norway provided good stocks of chromium, aluminum, copper, nickel and 1m annual pounds of molybdenum, the chemical element used in the production of high speed steels and as a substitute for tungsten. In total Britain sent more than 4,500 Valentine, Churchill and Matilda tanks, and 4200 Hurricane and Spitfire fighter aircraft.[6]. 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. Payments to Israel until 1987 amounted to about 14 billion dollars,[63] equivalent to $36.5 billion in 2022. 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. As a result of Allied economic measures and German defeats, by 1943 Spain adopted a more genuinely neutral policy. [38] In 1992, the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation was founded by the Polish and German governments, and as a result, Germany paid Polish sufferers approximately zl4.7 billion (equivalent to zl37.8 billion or US$7.97 billion in 2022[citation needed]). Up to the end of February 1940 about 70 had tried to get away, but very few reached Germany. [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 ). 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. The ECSC created a common market to co-ordinate the supply of critical commodities to get the wheels of European commerce moving again. In other provinces, e.g., Touraine and Burgundy region, the very dry weather left vegetables and even weeds cooked in the ground so people who bred rabbits for meat had to feed them with tree leaves.[70]. 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. [citation needed]. This message sank deeply into the nation's subconsciousness, but when attacks did not come immediately, hundreds of thousands of evacuees gradually began to make their way home over the next few months. copyright 2003-2023 Study.com. Its like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. Although France, unlike Britain, was largely self-sufficient in food and needed to import few foodstuffs, she still required extensive overseas imports of weapons and raw materials for her war effort and there was close co-operation between the two allies. This time they met outside of Berlin at the Potsdam Conference. In response to German aggression, Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. The ship, known as the "Lonely Queen of the North" had seen little action through lack of fuel, and spent much of the war moored in a remote fjord. On 29 May 1940 it stopped sending its oil to Britain, and signed an arms and oil pact with Germany; Romania was soon providing half her oil needs. 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. 194243 was another lean year for agriculture in France. Rearmament, and later war brought these resources to life, which combined with rising investment and an intact infrastructure kept American industry buoyant, although considerable residual unemployment remained. Besides the Rumanian supply, his own synthetic industry produced 600,000 tons per year, and another 530,000 came from Poland. Ships leaving port could be provided with a limited protective screen from aircraft flying from land bases, but at this stage of the conflict, a 'Mid-Atlantic Gap', where convoys could not be provided with air cover existed. Sources. East Germany experienced the opposite effect, with a weaker economy, a low standard of living and a decreased population. The massive expansion of ship building stretched British shipbuilding capacity including its Canadian yards to the limit. At the Potsdam Conference, the victorious Allies ceded roughly 25% of Germany's pre-Anschluss territory to Poland and the Soviet Union. 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. 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. Many fertile regions such as the Vexin, the Beauce, and the Brie suffered seriously from drought. Motor launches of new Admiralty design were brought into service for coastal work, and later, a larger improved version of the corvette, the frigate was laid down. 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. Despite the German trade and various measures for food self-sufficiency, Switzerland eventually used up her food stockpiles and suffered severe shortages of fuel through lapses in the German coal supply, increasingly relying on her forests and hydroelectric power. 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. On the morning of 7 December 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a massive pre-emptive strike against ships of the US Pacific Fleet at its base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii with simultaneous invasions of the British possessions of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaya. 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. Millions of Germans were pressed into forced labour for several years to work for the Allies in camps, mining, harvesting or industry. In the final year of the war, multiple conferences were held between Stalin, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to determine just what to do with Germany when the country was finally defeated. 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. The third period started in December 1941 after the, The final period came after the tide of war finally turned against the Axis after heavy military defeats up to and after, All ammunition, explosives, chemicals or appliances suitable for use in, Fuel of all kinds and all contrivances for means of transportation on land, in water or the air, All means of communication, tools, implements and instruments necessary for carrying on hostile operations, This page was last edited on 6 February 2023, at 16:47. Germany is finally paying off World War I reparations, with the last 70 million euro (60m) payment drawing the debt to a close. 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. This was the first direct action between Germany and America of World War II. 9,000 factories and 60,000 commercial enterprises were taken over for exploitation, and 80% of the 1942 harvest was sent to Germany. 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. On 21 December 1942 the USAAF attacked the Krupp plant in Essen and, although they were unsuccessful at first, demonstrated their intention to paralyse German industry by concentrating on key sectors and persevering until lasting damage was inflicted. With the repudiation of the U.S. occupation directive JCS 1067 in July 1947, the Western Allies were able to start planning for the introduction of a currency reform to halt the rampant inflation.