Part I: Germany 1945 until 1949

 Germany 1945 until 1949

In the last days of WWII many Germans became aware that despite the Nazi propaganda there was no way to achieve a victory or even a truce anymore. The situation was hopeless. Many German civilians and military personnel resorted to "saving their own hide" in the time to come. Many of them were burning anything that was connecting them to the Nazi regime. Flags, uniforms and especially membership books of the Nazi Party NSDAP were destroyed. Many people claimed they haven't actually been a Nazi, they just entered the Nazi party to advance their career or they have been forced to enter or they simply didn't know what was going on. 

At the end of the war the Nazis suddenly "vanished". Nobody was going to admit anymore that he was a Nazi. There was the "zero hour myth" that said that at the moment of unconditional surrender there were no Nazis anymore and it was like a "fresh start" for the german society. So, yesterday there would be a nation that followed the Nazis and the next day allegedly a democratic or socialist people that would form the new two German states. But it wasn't that easy. The people who built up Germany again were mostly the same who lived under Nazi reign. 

At the end of the war there were also mass suicides. It happened at the top of Nazi leadership (Hitler, Braun, Goebbels) but also among ordinary people. There were towns in eastern Germany where hundreds killed themselves as the Red Army was approaching. Many Germans feared retaliation from Russians and other eastern Europeans. The Red Army was very harsh towards many Germans but there was also something else at work here. The Nazis depicted Russians as cruel "Untermenschen", 'inferior people', for years now to push the German people and make them fight until the end, simply out of fear for what would happen in case of defeat. Many people believed this propaganda and thought the russians were capable of anything. A huge number of rapes did occure though.

Many people felt like it would be the end time. Again, the Nazi propaganda played a big part here. Many people didn't feel like there was "liberation" but defeat and occupation.

 

Many people tried fleeing towards the West because they thought the Allies would be more forgiving and ready to help civilians. There was a huge number of German refuges. Some came from parts of eastern Germany that are Poland today. They were displaced and lost almost everything. Other people lost their home and workplace because of bombing attacks on the cities. Other people came from liberated concentration camps. It was difficult dealing with this huge group of people. Because the cities were destroyed many homeless people were ordered to temporarily live in villages. People in villages were ordered to accommodate them. This wasn't simply a nice gesture. Often there was a lot of hatred towards each other and if there had not been allied police forces it wouldn't have worked this way. 

Until the end of the war German people were still living relatively well (partly because of forced laborers who barely got anything to survive and often died because of starvation and work). This changed in 1945. Supply broke down. It became harder and harder to get enough food and fuel. A black market began. Many people tried anything to get food. Trade, steal, sell your own body as a prostitute, whatever. 

The conditions became worse. Winter 1946/47 in Europe was particularly cold. It was the coldest winter in decades. In Germany hundreds of thousands people died because of the cold and hunger. Other european nations were also hit very hard. Europe lay in ruins and people were weakened by years of hunger.

In the years after the war people were also eager to get a job. But it was difficult to for example work for the occupational forces who were very attractive as an employer. If you had a past where you were working for the Nazis your chances weren't good. During this time the allied forces tried to pursue a program of "denazification". In short, remove anything connected to the Nazis and pursue important and particularly criminal ones. The program had some success but it also had many flaws. Many high ranking and particularly cruel Nazis got away. You could relatively easy get rid of your "dirty" past by getting a "Persilschein". Persil was the name of a famous laundry detergent and therefore "Persilschein", 'Persil paper', was a colloquial term for "getting clean again". You could bribe another civilian to vouch for you and this already might have been enough.

It was also difficult to replace all Nazi elements in administrative and other jobs. The number of people who were "dirty" was very high and it was in no way possible to quickly raise a new generation of educated people to do those jobs instead. Often it was a compromise of prosecuting Nazi criminals and keeping the state and economy running. 

In general Germans tried to hush up the past. People didn't want to know anything about it, they were busy with survival and later with getting some wealth. This lasted until the 60s when students questioned the role of their parents under the Nazi reign. 

The Allies helped building up Germany again. There was a long debate about what to do with Germany so it could never start a war again. One idea was to transform Germany into an agrarian state without any significant industry. This plan wasn't chosen in the end though. 

Western Germany profited massively from the Marshall Plan in which the US gave money to help rebuild western Europe. This plan wasn't just for Germany alone but it was one of the reasons for the inequality between both German states. The economic conditions in Eastern Germany were very different. The Soviet forces took a lot of machinery and valuable things (even railway tracks) and brought them home as reparations. This made the construction of an industrial state more difficult.

The Soviets had their own equivalent to the Marshall Plan, the Molotov Plan. The Soviet Union didn't allow Eastern European states to enter the Marshall Plan and the Molotov Plan was supposed to both help those states as well as keep socialist structures intact.
One important goal of the Marshall Plan was to fight against communism. Western Germany was supposed to be a bulwark against it. And it couldn't be this way if it were an agrarian state; it needed industry. 

Western Germany also profited from the socialist nature of Eastern Germany. Many wealthy people fled before the Soviets because they feared expropriations and persecution. While many of them lost everything there were also people who saved some of their wealth. Especially important was the escape of whole companies. For example Saxony was one of the most important industrial areas of Germany. Many industries had their home at this place. But they feared the arrival of the Soviets because they would dismantle their factories, reorganize them and dictate them what to do. Many companies chose to flee to Western Germany instead. Some of them went to Bavaria which was going to be occupied by US forces and a federal state that was very agrarian  at this time. One example of those companies was the car company "Auto Union AG" that was founded in the saxon city Chemnitz and later moved to Ingolstadt that had almost no industry at this time. This company later became the car-manufacturer Audi. Events like those massively helped to shape Western German industries.

The Western Allies and the Soviet Union fought together against the Nazis but even during the war there were some tensions. Stalin pushed his forces to a race towards Germany and Berlin to seize as much territory as possible before western forces could arrive. This even lead to a higher number of Soviet losses.

Soon it became more and more apparent that there was going to be an enmity between both sides. Their systems were radically different and now they were supposed to live "side by side". All kinds of problems came up regarding how to deal with occupied Germany, for example economic ones. Even years after the war many Germans fled from Eastern Germany to Western Germany because it was more attractive. This was called "Abstimmung mit den Füßen", 'foot voting'. People in Eastern Germany weren't able to freely express their opinion so they just left instead to escape the economic and political conditions. This weakened the Eastern German state. There was also a brain drain of valuable educated people. 

Tensions rose higher and higher. Nobody knew if there wouldn't be another war. In the past the balance of power in Europe had been radically different, there were many different nations with their own goals. Now only two blocks were left whose military forces were represented by the Western NATO and the Eastern Warsaw Pact. Both sides had those huge armies but for what purpose? There were no enemies anymore that matched their power except the respectively other side. 

The Warsaw Pact couldn't invade Western Europe because of Allied nuclear weapons. If nuclear weapons were being used everyone would be destroyed. A new theory came up. It was called "Mutual assured destruction", in short: MAD. The only way of preventing an enemy nuclear strike is to make sure that you could annihilate him as well. Both sides knew that attack would be suicide, like shooting yourself (see this political cartoon about Kennedy and Khrushchev arm wrestling with each other. They are both sitting on a hydrogen bomb). But this principle of mutual assured destruction was only true as long as both forces were equal. A nuclear arms race was starting. 

Both sides couldn't directly confront each other. There were some very close scenes (american and russian tanks were looking at each other like this in Berlin). But no firefight with either conventional or nuclear weapons broke out. Nobody wanted to uncontrollably escalate things. 

This didn't mean though that they didn't fight each other with different means. In 1948 the Soviets blocked access to Western Berlin. They wanted to create political pressure because Western Berlin was a thorn in their side because both its political and economic position. 

Western Berlin was cut off from supply. It wasn't able to sustain itself. Millions of people had to be fed and needed fuel. Allied forces didn't respond with an attack but instead installed an airlift to supply the whole town by using planes.

                                         Berliners watching a C-54 land at Berlin Tempelhof Airport, 1948.
                                                  USAF, C-54landingattemplehof, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

Their aid was a strong sign not just to the population of Western Berlin but also to the rest of Western Germany and any other american allies. There wasn't going to be any retreat and they were not giving up this city and those citizens. 

It was a very complicated, expensive and dangerous procedure but it did work. One year later the Soviet Union gave up in this matter and the blockade was removed. Some call this incident "the first battle of the Cold War".