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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. 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. 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 turn, Portugal imposed a complete embargo on all tungsten exports to both sides, leaving Germany with only its small supply from Spain, while the Allies had alternative sources in the Far East and South America. Finally, on 12 October, the invasion was called off until spring 1941, although British cities, notably London, Birmingham and Liverpool continued to be heavily bombed for another 6 months. Although Swiss citizens largely rejected the Nazis and subscribed to the Internationalist view expressed by the League of Nations, in order to survive and continue to receive imports, Switzerland had little choice but to trade with Germany, for which she was paid largely in coal. Expecting hardship, the Swiss government spent heavily in the years prior to World War II on stockpiling food and buying armaments and, anticipating an invasion, kept its forces constantly mobilised. Canada held a whole year's surplus of wheat, while the U.S. reserve was estimated to be the greatest in history, but Britain was suffering very heavy shipping losses as a result of expanding U-boat numbers. The airlift allowed the Allies to support West Berlin with food and other goods via airplanes for over a year. [75], Troops had also begun seizing furniture and household goods to be shipped back for the use of bombed-out German families. As a result, the population density grew in the "new" Germany that remained after the dismemberment. Learn why and how Germany was divided after WWII. The German economy after WWII has been referred to as the Wirtschaftswunder, or the economic miracle of 1955. In the first 15 weeks of the war the Allies claimed to have taken 870,000 tons of goods, equal to 10% of Germany's normal imports for an entire year. It also agreed to provide more than $8 million in gold to make up for that amount of Belgian monetary gold sold to Sweden during the War, but negotiations regarding 8,600 kilograms of Dutch gold ($9.7 million) stalled when Sweden argued that the gold had been acquired before the January 1943 London Declaration on looted gold. 7.181 billion dollars were initially slated for Greece. The second period began after the rapid Axis occupation of the majority of the European landmass (Scandinavia, Benelux, France and the Balkans) in 19401941, resulting in Axis control of major centres of industry and agriculture. Italy, though an ally of Hitler, had not yet joined the war, and its captains enjoyed much faster turnarounds by following the Navicert system than the Americans, who largely refused to accept its legitimacy. It quite certainly made it possible for us to win and has given us the precious time to make ready for the final blow. Immediate steps were also taken towards the appropriation of the best of the conquered nation's food. Its own substantial fleet of modern warships was hemmed into its bases at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven and mostly forbidden by the leadership from venturing out. The Allies had practical control over the Suez Canal which provided passage between the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean via Port Said at the northern entry to the canal. [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 port, also a base for German and Italian submarines, was one of the most heavily defended waterways in Europe, protected by numerous patrol boats, searchlights, shore batteries and thousands of troops. 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. They remained in boxed storage at the National Archives in Washington for the next 30 years until chemical engineers began the arduous task of collating all the information and feeding it into a computer at the federally run Oak Ridge Energy Center. [64] In January 1944 the MEW estimated that Spain was still selling Germany 100 tons of tungsten a month. Official figures showed that in the first 5 months of war, the Netherlands' imports of key materials from the US increased by 4.25m, but also Norway's purchases in the same area increased threefold to 3m a year, Sweden's by 5m and Switzerland's by 2m. Cholera broke out in concentration camps, and mass public executions added to the estimated 3 million Poles already killed during the invasion. 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. The Germans also gained the occupied country's natural resources and industrial capacity. Acute food, housing and medical shortages continued for some time and around 10 million refugees housed in temporary encampments or on the roads. Belgium, whose government was in exile in Britain, had its entire $260,000,000 gold reserves surrendered by the Vichy regime and by the beginning of 1943 the country's entire stock of 1,500 locomotives and 75,000 trucks had been requisitioned. Cheap restaurants in big towns served dishes comprising turnip or carrot tops made without any kind of fat, and although householders still received a fair ration of rough wine, all spirits were confiscated for industrial use. Spanish suppliers of oranges and mandarins also refused to ship deliveries until they were paid. [1] Germany carried out its own immensely effective counter-blockade during its war on Allied commerce (Handelskrieg), its U-boats sinking many Allied merchant ships. These territories were incorporated into communist Poland and the Soviet Union respectively and resettled with citizens of these countries, pending a final peace conference with Germany. [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. How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor But the sanctions did not curb Japan's imperialistic mood. 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. [37] On the night of 15/16 May 1940, RAF Bomber Command, which until that point had been used for little more than attacking coastal targets and dropping propaganda leaflets, set off on a night time raid on oil production and railway marshalling yards in the Ruhr district. Soon large parts of Germany's remaining transport network were paralysed, and the Ruhr became economically isolated from the rest of the Reich. Some years ago an economic writer put it like this: "The blockade won't make Germany crack, but it will make her brittle." In a bitter school we soon learnt differently. [22][23] In a United Nations note, dated 24 November 1969, the communist government of Poland demanded action from the organization not only to punish war criminals and those who have committed crimes against humanity but also to establish procedures and divisibility of compensation for war crimes and damages committed by Germany during World War II. To the Nazis, food is a beautiful instrument for manoeuvring and disciplining the masses. 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. Allied attempts to stop Turkish sales of chromium had begun to have the desired effect, however. When I say 'Germany', what do you think of? Italian and Swiss press reports also stated that many leading Italians banked large sums in Swiss francs in banks in Switzerland. [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 Italy's disastrous invasion of Greece on 28 October the British intervened in accordance with the Anglo-Greek Mutual Aid Agreement, occupying Crete and establishing airfields within bombing distance of the Romanian oilfields. Hermann Gring proclaimed in a speech that under the Nazi New Order, the Herrenvolk were entitled to deprive the occupied peoples of their food, and that whoever starved it would not be the Germans. On the eastern front, the Red Army had taken back its manganese mines at Balki, from which the Germans had been getting 200,000 of the 375,000 tons their war industry required each year. An explicit aim of the ECSC and its successors was to minimise risk of future intra-European war, due to the trading links and better knowledge of one another. Germany was divided after WWII because it was to blame for WWI and WWII. The Marshall Plan, named after Secretary of State, George Marshall, was a $15 billion-dollar economic plan to help with the reconstruction of Germany and Europe after WWII. Although the naval blockade, now heavily reinforced by US warships, restricted their efforts, merchants in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires smuggled important quantities of platinum, palladium, drugs, and other chemicals to Germany, and a major aim of the US contraband control was to use US exports to Argentina to put pressure on her government to turn away from Nazi influence and break financial ties. WWII had been a costly and bloody battle that created worldwide chaos. 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. Seldom before had the face of Europe been so fundamentally altered. Invasion of Poland, Fall 1939 | Holocaust Encyclopedia The canal, built largely by French capital, at that time came under British jurisdiction as a result of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936. 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. By 1900 Germany had the biggest economy in Europe and she entered the war in 1914 with plentiful reserves of gold and foreign currency and good credit ratings. The Board of Economic Warfare, (BEW) which evolved from the earlier Economic Defense Board, was created by President Roosevelt on 17 December 1941. UK National Archives. During the early months of the warthe Phoney Warthe only place where there was substantial fighting was at sea. That winter was harsh, causing the Danube to freeze and heavy snow slowed rail transport, stalling Germany's grain and oil imports from Romania. 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 US military was not prepared to fight a global war in 1941. However the collection of around 200 works, which includes medieval sculptures and masterpieces by Czanne, Renoir and van Gogh has been mired in controversy since the war because of the unclear provenance of some pieces, leading to the return of 13 paintings to the former French-Jewish owners or their families. As soon as 1945, the Allied forces worked heavily on removing Nazi influence from Germany in a process dubbed as "denazification".[5]. East Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union with communist and socialist actions. [24] In 1970, the 1953 renunciation of reparation rights was confirmed by the Polish Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Jzef Winiewicz during the course of the negotiations leading to the normalization treaty of November 1970,[25] in which West Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse as the final border between both countries. Contraband was also Deborah Kerr's first film, though her scene as a nightclub cigarette girl did not make the final cut. 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. [16], While the armed forces were being built up, imports were reduced to the barest minimum required, severe price and wage controls were introduced, unions outlawed and, aware that certain commodities would be difficult to obtain once the blockade began, deals were made with Sweden, Romania, Turkey, Spain, Finland and Yugoslavia to facilitate the stockpiling of vital materials such as tungsten, oil, nickel, wool and cotton that would be needed to supply the armed forces in wartime. They declare that the united Germany, too, will abide by these commitments. Portugal was Europe's leading supplier of tungsten (and scheelite, another member of the wolframite series of tungsten ore minerals), annually providing Germany with at least 2,000 metric tons between 1941 and mid-1944, about 60 percent of her total requirement. On 20 August Benito Mussolini announced a blockade of all British ports in the Mediterranean, and over the next few months the region would experience a sharp increase in fighting. These treaties stripped the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary, joined by Ottoman Turkey and Bulgaria) of substantial territories and imposed significant reparation payments. After World War One, Germany was severely punished by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. 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. In addition, there was Absolute Contraband, which constituted: The Royal Navy selected three locations on home soil for Contraband Control: Weymouth and The Downs in the South to cover the English Channel approaches, and Kirkwall in Orkney to cover the North Sea. As tensions between the West and the Soviet Union increased, Germany found itself on the front lines of the Cold War. 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. 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. 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. [citation needed] The occupying Nazi regime forced Greece to pay the cost of the occupation in the country and requisite raw materials and food for the occupation forces, creating the conditions for the Great Famine. State expenditures had almost trebled to pay Germany's occupation and other costs and levies. 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.