Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Germans Reaction to the British and Americanââ¬â¢s Occupation Essay Example for Free
Germans Reaction to the British and Americanââ¬â¢s Occupation Essay What was the reaction of the Germans to the British and Americanââ¬â¢s occupation in the West Germany region? The reasons for their occupation of the allied forces could be traced to the causes of the Second World War. After the Second World war was over conflict arose between the soviet union and the united states of America an its allies such as Britain and France and this led to the division of Germany into two regions that is, West Germany and East Germany. The allied forces occupied West Germany while the other part was for the Soviet Union. The bone of contention was about the future structure of Germany, the United States wanted a stable Germany that would grow economically and even help its ailing western European nations but the soviet union wanted Germany to be completely weakened so as it would never be able to cause another world war. This disagreement led to the eventual division that made the West Germanââ¬â¢s to protest against this occupation. They saw this as an aggression act for during the war the allied forces bombed the towns and cities in Germany. My main focus on this essay will be to discuss how the West Germans viewed the occupation of the Allied forces. According to the opinion polls that were done in Germany after the world war two showed that most West Germans were very pre-occupied with health, security and even physical survival and because of that they were much worried with the fate of their constitution. Drawing up a new constitution did not prove to be a very hard task as it was thought to be as there were a lot of constitutional drafts that had been drawn by the Germans who were in opposition to the Hitlerââ¬â¢s ruling style. Most of those proposals were against dictatorship that the regime of Hitler was using and thus they were advocating for democratic model. The United States and the allied forces, which supported the free trade system of economy, were much worried about the communism spread after the Second World War. These forces were ready to do anything in their capacity to check its spread. Both USA and USSR had different interests that is, the US and its allied wanted to advance the capitalization mode of economy while the eastern European countries spearheaded by the Soviet Union wanted to spread communism. (Lammerder F. R 1999, 7) Most Germans were bitter because their friends who were in other countries were killed on suspicion that they supported the Vichy government. For example in France, more than two thousand five hundred people were killed in France. Women who were believed to have been cooperating with German soldiers were clean shaved and those who had a sign of Swatistika on their head were stripped naked in public. This did not go along well with Germans at home to see their fellow Germans in Diaspora being humiliated. (Nelson D. J. 1987: 48-57) Starting from May 7th 1995 more than eighty million members of the Nazi Party who were ardent supporters of the Nazi regime were greatly surprised to hear that their party had surrendered. They thought that all would be well little did they know the magnitude of difficulties that were awaiting them. Over the period of the four years that followed they were humiliated and frustrated by the western governments that occupied this region, which was created in 1945 at the Yalta Conference in 1945. The three forces after agreeing to demarcate this region set an allied control collectively pursued their goals such as demilitarization so as to pave way for democracy but as time went by, the Soviet Union distanced itself from the Western nations in terms of its economy. Soviet tried to disassemble Germany ruthlessly as a way of getting its reparations. It grabbed the state owned industries and everything that was alleged to be owned by the criminals and those who supported Hitlerââ¬â¢s government were taken and confisticated. The allied control government also carried out some agrarian reforms that saw all tracts of land that belonged to the members of Nazi as well as those that were owned by the war criminals being taken away from them. This government reduced the size of land that one individual was supposed to possess to 1km2. About five hundred Junker estates were turned into settlement farms and over thirty thousand kilometer squared (30,000km2) of land was given to five hundred thousand landless peasants, casual laborers in the agricultural sector and to the refugees who were in the country. (Nelson D. J. 1987: 48-57)
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