Consequences of German Nazism: Encyclopedia II - Consequences of German Nazism - Impact on Germany

Consequences of German Nazism - Impact on Germany

More than 7 million Germans, including at least 3 million civilians, died during World War II.

After the war, the German people were often viewed with contempt because they were blamed for Nazi crimes by other Europeans. Germans visiting abroad, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, attracted insults from locals, and from foreigners who may have had their families or friends live through or perish in the attrocities. Today in Europe and worldwide (particularly in countries that fought against the Axis), Germans still might get scorned by elderly people who were alive to experience the atrocities committed by Germans during World War II. This resulted in a feeling of self-hate and guilt for many Germans, causing numerous discussions and rows among scholars and politicians in Post-War West Germany (for example, the "Historikerstreit" (historians' argument) in the 1980s) and after Reunification. Here, the discussion was mainly about the role that the unified Germany should play in the world and in Europe. A good book which shows this contempt and guilt within many post-war Germans is "The Reader" by Bernard Schlink.

Following the World War II, the Allies embarked on a program of denazification, but as the Cold War intensified these efforts were curtailed in the west.

Germany itself and the German economy were devastated, with great parts of most major cities destroyed by the bombings of the Allied forces, sovereignty was taken away by the Allies and the territory filled with millions of refugees from the former eastern provinces, moving the eastern German border westwards to the Oder-Neisse line. The remaining parts of Germany were divided among the Allies and occupied by British (the north-west), French (the south-west), US-American (the south) and Soviet (the east) troops.

After a short time the Grand Alliance broke over ideological problems (Communism versus Capitalism), and thus both sides established their own spheres of influence, creating a previously non-existent division in Germany between East and West, (although the division largely followed the borders of states which had exist in Germany before Bismarck's unification less than 100 years before).

A constitution for East Germany was drafted on 30 May 1949. Wilhelm Pieck, a leader of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany(SED) party (which was created by a forced merger of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the Soviet sector), was elected first President of the German Democratic Republic.

West Germany, (officially: Federal Republic of Germany, FRG - this is still the official name of the unified Germany today) received (de facto) semi-sovereignty in 1949, as well as a constitution, called the Grundgesetz (Basic Law). The document was not called a Constitution officially, as at this point, it was still hoped that the two Germanies would be reunited in the near future.

The first free elections in West Germany were held in 1949, which were won by the Christian Democratic Party of Germany (CDU) (conservatives) by a slight margin. Konrad Adenauer, a member of the (CDU) party, was the first Bundeskanzler (Chancellor) of West Germany.

Both German states introduced, in 1948, their own money, colloquially called West-Mark and Ost-Mark (Western Mark and Eastern Mark).

Foreign troops still remain in Germany today, for example Ramstein Air Base, but the majority of troops left following the end of the Cold War (By 1994 for Soviet troops, mandated under the terms of the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany and in the mid-1990s for Western forces). The Bush Administration in the United States in 2004 stated intentions to withdraw most of the remaining American troops out of Germany in the coming years.

The West German economy was soon rebuilt thanks to fewer reparations imposed on West Germany, while in East Germany, whole factories, including all machinery, were taken apart and moved to the Soviet Union. The Eastern Block did not accept the Marshall Plan, denouncing it as American economic imperialism, and thus it (East Germany included) recovered much more slowly than their Western counterparts.

During the Cold War, it was difficult for West Germans to visit East German relatives and friends and impossible vice versa. For East Germans, especially after the building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 and until Hungary opened up its border to the West in the late 1980s, thus allowing hundreds of thousands of vacationing East Germans to flee into Western Europe, it was only possible to get to West Germany by illegally fleeing across heavily-fortified and guarded border areas.

44 years after the end of World War II, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989. Both the East as well as the West parts of Germany were re-united on 3 October 1990.

Economic and social divisions between East and West Germany still continue to play a major role in politics and society in Germany today. It is likely the contrast between the generally well-off and economically-diverse West and the weaker, heavy-industry reliant East will continue at least until the forseeable future.

See also:

• History of Germany since 1945
• Germany
• East Germany
• West Germany
• Cold War
• Marshall Plan
• Berlin Wall
• Ostpolitik
• German reunification

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Impact on Germany", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki