What to do With Occupied Germany?

[ESay]

Division of Germany (what is left from it after partitions after WWII) into for independent states more or less based on boundaries of the occupation zones was the best idea.

All ideas of the solutions of world war 1+2 were bad ideas. After world war 2 for example you sold a big part of the east of Europe to Stalin and his Soviets. And today we have the problem that Poland and Hungaria - but also Turkey and others - prefer to be governed from autocrats and the USA follows this bad examples.

The Soviets emerged there fighting your buddy Hitler. You can complain about authoritarian Polish government all you want, but without the USSR there would be neither Poland nor the Pollacks.

 

[zaangalewa]

Division of Germany (what is left from it after partitions after WWII) into for independent states more or less based on boundaries of the occupation zones was the best idea.

All ideas of the solutions of world war 1+2 were bad ideas. After world war 2 for example you sold a big part of the east of Europe to Stalin and his Soviets. And today we have the problem that Poland and Hungaria - but also Turkey and others - prefer to be governed from autocrats and the USA follows this bad examples.

The Soviets emerged there fighting your buddy Hitler. You can complain about authoritarian Polish government all you want, but without the USSR there would be neither Poland nor the Pollacks.

The USA - and all other allies - sold Poland to Stalin and moved it westwards on German territory, after you had displaced millions of Germans, whose ancestors had sometimes lived since decades of thousands of years in this area. For example the allies erased Silesia and Bohemia. This both cultures are gone forever. Why? Because never a German did anything bad to the USA in history? I this the reason why your nation is so damned proud that you had killed Germany two times?

By the way: Who gives you any right to call me a "buddy of Hitler"? Do you like to go to hell - or whatelse is the reason why you say so?

 

[fncceo]

Because never a German did anything bad to the USA in history?

You mean besides sinking neutral American freighters in US territorial waters?

 

[fncceo]

you had discplaced millions of Germans whose ancestors had sometimes lived since decades of thousands of years in this area.

Which is different from murdering millions of Jews who had lived in Europe for centuries?

I have to admit that I'm having a tough time mustering up a lot of sympathy for the perpetrators of The Holocaust.

 

[ESay]

Division of Germany (what is left from it after partitions after WWII) into for independent states more or less based on boundaries of the occupation zones was the best idea.

All ideas of the solutions of world war 1+2 were bad ideas. After world war 2 for example you sold a big part of the east of Europe to Stalin and his Soviets. And today we have the problem that Poland and Hungaria - but also Turkey and others - prefer to be governed from autocrats and the USA follows this bad examples.

The Soviets emerged there fighting your buddy Hitler. You can complain about authoritarian Polish government all you want, but without the USSR there would be neither Poland nor the Pollacks.

The USA - and all other allies - sold Poland to Stalin and moved it westwards on German territory, after you had discplaced millions of Germans, whose ancestors had sometimes lived since decades of thousands of years in this area. For example the allies erased Silesia and Bohemia. This both cultures are gone forever. Why? Because never a German did anything bad to the USA in history? I this the reason why your nation is so damned proud that you had killed Germany two times?

I'm sorry, man, but you seem to have some sort of dementia. I think it is a third time I tell you that I have nothing to do with the US.

 

[zaangalewa]

After world war 2 for example you sold a big part of the East of Europe to Stalin and his Soviets.

How much did we get selling off German Lebensraum?

Millions of dead people and much more millions slaves for the Soviets.

 

[fncceo]

Millions of dead people and much more millions slaves for the Soviets.

Let the punishment fit the crime...

 

[zaangalewa]

you had discplaced millions of Germans whose ancestors had sometimes lived since decades of thousands of years in this area.

Which is different from murdering millions of Jews who had lived in Europe for centuries?[/Quolte]

Interesting question. Buy a new brain.

[QWuoter]I have to admit that I'm having a tough time mustering up a lot of sympathy for the perpetrators of The Holocaust.

Lots of my Jewish family members died in the holocaust - and you know this. So why do you say such a totally stupid sentence to me? Because you are not able to accept what's wrong with the idiotic ideas in your brain about the real world? For me exists not any difference between Germans and Jews.

 

[zaangalewa]

Because never a German did anything bad to the USA in history?

You mean besides sinking neutral American freighters in US territorial waters?

View attachment 367376

A war crime of the USA. Without declaration of war you used private ships to bring weapons to England, which was in war with Germany.

 

[zaangalewa]

Division of Germany (what is left from it after partitions after WWII) into for independent states more or less based on boundaries of the occupation zones was the best idea.

All ideas of the solutions of world war 1+2 were bad ideas. After world war 2 for example you sold a big part of the east of Europe to Stalin and his Soviets. And today we have the problem that Poland and Hungaria - but also Turkey and others - prefer to be governed from autocrats and the USA follows this bad examples.

The Soviets emerged there fighting your buddy Hitler. You can complain about authoritarian Polish government all you want, but without the USSR there would be neither Poland nor the Pollacks.

The USA - and all other allies - sold Poland to Stalin and moved it westwards on German territory, after you had discplaced millions of Germans, whose ancestors had sometimes lived since decades of thousands of years in this area. For example the allies erased Silesia and Bohemia. This both cultures are gone forever. Why? Because never a German did anything bad to the USA in history? I this the reason why your nation is so damned proud that you had killed Germany two times?

I'm sorry, man, but you seem to have some sort of dementia. I think it is a third time I tell you that I have nothing to do with the US.

And what did you say is your nationality?

 

[ESay]

Division of Germany (what is left from it after partitions after WWII) into for independent states more or less based on boundaries of the occupation zones was the best idea.

All ideas of the solutions of world war 1+2 were bad ideas. After world war 2 for example you sold a big part of the east of Europe to Stalin and his Soviets. And today we have the problem that Poland and Hungaria - but also Turkey and others - prefer to be governed from autocrats and the USA follows this bad examples.

The Soviets emerged there fighting your buddy Hitler. You can complain about authoritarian Polish government all you want, but without the USSR there would be neither Poland nor the Pollacks.

The USA - and all other allies - sold Poland to Stalin and moved it westwards on German territory, after you had discplaced millions of Germans, whose ancestors had sometimes lived since decades of thousands of years in this area. For example the allies erased Silesia and Bohemia. This both cultures are gone forever. Why? Because never a German did anything bad to the USA in history? I this the reason why your nation is so damned proud that you had killed Germany two times?

I'm sorry, man, but you seem to have some sort of dementia. I think it is a third time I tell you that I have nothing to do with the US.

And what did you say is your nationality?

Ukrainian.

 

[zaangalewa]

@fncceo

As far as I can see you are an anti-Semite, because of a message, which you wrote and deleted. How comes?

Here's the message you deleted:
I said: Lots of my Jewish family members died in the holocaust
You said: Did you help round them up?

Why do you use Moshe Dayan as your avatar? What has an anti-Semite to do with him?

 

[zaangalewa]

Division of Germany (what is left from it after partitions after WWII) into for independent states more or less based on boundaries of the occupation zones was the best idea.

All ideas of the solutions of world war 1+2 were bad ideas. After world war 2 for example you sold a big part of the east of Europe to Stalin and his Soviets. And today we have the problem that Poland and Hungaria - but also Turkey and others - prefer to be governed from autocrats and the USA follows this bad examples.

The Soviets emerged there fighting your buddy Hitler. You can complain about authoritarian Polish government all you want, but without the USSR there would be neither Poland nor the Pollacks.

The USA - and all other allies - sold Poland to Stalin and moved it westwards on German territory, after you had discplaced millions of Germans, whose ancestors had sometimes lived since decades of thousands of years in this area. For example the allies erased Silesia and Bohemia. This both cultures are gone forever. Why? Because never a German did anything bad to the USA in history? I this the reason why your nation is so damned proud that you had killed Germany two times?

I'm sorry, man, but you seem to have some sort of dementia. I think it is a third time I tell you that I have nothing to do with the US.

And what did you say is your nationality?

Ukrainian.

Ah yea - I remember now.

 

[fncceo]

@fncceo

As far as I can see you are an anti-Semite, because of a message, which you wrote and deleted. How comes?

Here's the message you deleted:
I said: Lots of my Jewish family members died in the holocaust
You said: Did you help round them up?

Why do you use Moshe Dayan as your avatar? What has an anti-Semite to do with him?

When I hear you rambling on about how badly The Nazis were treated in defeat while, at the same time, claiming to be Jewish, I'm reminded of Adolph Eichmann.

When Eichmann was arrested by Mossad agents in Argentina, he for a short time, tried to convince the Mossad agents he was Jewish. He even knew enough to rattle off the Shema. A fitting prayer as Mossad was taking him off to be tried and executed.

 

[zaangalewa]

@fncceo

As far as I can see you are an anti-Semite, because of a message, which you wrote and deleted. How comes?

Here's the message you deleted:
I said: Lots of my Jewish family members died in the holocaust
You said: Did you help round them up?

Why do you use Moshe Dayan as your avatar? What has an anti-Semite to do with him?

When I hear you rambling on about how badly The Nazis were treated in defeat while, at the same time, claiming to be Jewish, I'm reminded of Adolph Eichmann.

When Eichmann was arrested by Mossad agents in Argentina, he for a short time, tried to convince the Mossad agents he was Jewish. He even knew enough to rattle off the Shema. A fitting prayer as Mossad was taking him off to be tried and executed.

Now you got a serios problem with god. Your words show to me that you are as well an anti-Semite and anti-German, what's more typical for Soviets in the world of the Slaws. For sure no one gives you any right to call all Germans Nazis ... and to call me "Adolf Eichmann" is more funny than anyone is able to take serios. You seem to suffer Hanna Ahrendts "naivity of the evil" on your own.

 

[harmonica]

..not ALL of the Germans were for the war or hitler
..the Germans were and are very organized and disciplined--they did fine post war
..the Germans were producing a lot DURING the massive bombings
..they adapted/etc.....

 

[Hawk1981]

Norman M. Naimark in his 1995 book The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation 1945 – 1949, expands on the idea that Stalin and the Soviets did not occupy Germany with "specific long-range goals" in mind.

According to Naimark, Soviet occupation was shaped largely by a complex mixture of opportunism, "Bolshevik principle,” and conflict with the West. Most importantly, Moscow wanted to build popular support among ordinary Germans for its policies and those of the German Communists (KPD, after April 1946 the Socialist Unity Party, or SED). More generally, the Soviets wanted to edge out the Americans and the British for hegemony over the entire country, eliminate all traces of Nazism, guarantee the creation of a "democratic" and "antifascist" German state, and collect reparations.

Soviet goals for building popular support was almost immediately undercut by the behavior of Red Army soldiers during the initial period of occupation. Naimark's research supports the estimate made by German historians that Soviet soldiers raped as many as two million German women between the time their counteroffensive reached German territory and well past the formal end of hostilities. While Berlin was hardest hit, the problem was endemic in the Soviet zone.

Though aware of the mass rapes, The Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SVAG), KPD/SED leaders, and high-level Soviet officials remained unable or unwilling to do much to stop them. The extent to which Stalin was aware of the situation is unclear, but there is evidence he condoned the practice in general. The implications to Soviet/German relations were always serious, and the result was that so long as Russians ruled in the Eastern zone, there could be no legitimacy for the Communist Party of Germany, which initially might have been counted on to be one of the most promising in Europe.

German women and men in the Eastern Zone were plagued by Soviet depredations throughout the occupation period. The Soviets fundamentally altered the economy of eastern Germany by forcibly redistributing land and expropriating factories and production. Soldiers and occupation officials took an enormous quantity of loot, everything from wristwatches to priceless artwork.

After the failure of the Allies to settle the reparations question, the Soviets went ahead with large-scale removals from the Eastern Zone. Naimark estimates that the Soviets achieved their goal of ten billion dollars in reparations through removals and ongoing (or current) production by 1950. The costs to the German economy were enormous, Moscow's "insatiable" demand for reparations resulted in the loss of perhaps one third of eastern Germany's industrial base.

Another factor critical to occupation history and to the stability of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), was the creation of the extensive secret police apparatus that would become the “Stasi.” At the same time, relations with the East German public were further undermined by the activities of the NKVD/MVD which led an almost completely independent Soviet secret policy operation in the zone rounding up a total of 122,671 suspected Nazis and anti-Soviet elements and depositing them in "special camps" where as many as 43,889 perished.

Naimark concludes that the Soviet occupation of Germany was a failure for the Soviets and a disaster for the Germans. Moscow obtained extensive reparations only at the cost of nearly crippling the East German economy. Heavy-handed Soviet and German Communist tactics in the zone encouraged the Western allies (and Western Germans) to accept Germany's division. Terrorized and often deprived of their livelihoods, Germans in the east came to despise SVAG and the SED.

 

[Zebra]

who remembers Adenauer!

 

[Zebra]

The continued division of Germany for almost fifty years following the Second World War was in some respects a result of the Marshall Plan. The United States regarded it as crucial to its own security to get the European economies going again.

The necessity of including the western part of Germany, under the control of the western Allies, into the Marshall Plan meant its separation from the east.

View attachment 367192

The German currency reform agreement of 1948 resulted in dramatic results for the western zones with a regulated conversion of old currency to a new Deutschmark and the abolishment of price controls. In a short time the black market virtually disappeared. Goods reappeared in the shops and production began to increase.

The conversion was not without pain. German workers faced years of stagnant wages and their saving were decimated. Hardest hit were the Soviets who were now forced to introduce a separate currency in the east in order to prevent their zone from being flooded with the former currency, now worthless in the west.

1948 .... before there even was a German state

 

[Zebra]

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Konrad Adenauer worked to construct a new Christian Democratic Union (CDU) political party in Germany's western occupied zones. He hoped the new CDU would be embraced by democratically minded Protestants and Catholics that would prevent the resurgence of the Prussianism that he felt had led to the rise of National Socialism and Hitler.

Adenauer's guiding vision was to integrate the new Federal Republic with other western states, especially with France and the United States, oppose Communism and build a reconstructed Germany. Adenauer recognized that the price of this Policy of Strength might lead to a permanently divided Germany. The leading opposition party advocated a united, Socialist (though anti-Communist) and neutral Germany.

View attachment 367189

Adenauer prevailed, and though elderly at age 73, he would lead the West German government for the next 14 years. Taking advantage of opportunities provided by the developing Cold War and successfully balancing the political desires of the German people with those of the occupying western powers, Adenauer succeeded in restoring German national sovereignty, the establishment of close ties with the West, the reconciliation with France, and the unification of Europe; and the construction of a novel social market economy that led to the German “Economic Miracle.” His popularity waned in the early 1960s and he stepped down from power after one last triumph with the signing of the Franco-German Treaty which helped solidify the foundations of the European Union.

Once i met Adenauer in the Black Forest