Should the State of East Prussia be Returned to Germany?

But on the other side East Germany was not doing as well as West Germany was. East Germany was under the full influence of the Soviet union and was a Communist society when it became its own country. Do to the dragged economy and that the individual freedoms were restricted many citizens living in East Germany wanted to leave they could no longer stand the conditions in which they were living in.Many citizens gathered their things and left to th the West. Many of them made it across the border as for others were stopped along the way. From then on East Germany began to lose its population and labor force. As they lost more of their population the Soviets wanted to take over the West. They tried to threaten the United States by the use of nuclear weapon issue but the United States and all the other Western countries were very committed to protecting West Berlin.

East Germany is a mysterious environment, created by the yearning to camouflage into the greyness of ones surroundings. Intense control limits a human’s capacity to think, without ownership over your thoughts - determining a future and making sense of a tainted and oppressive environment can become paralysing. Therefore, throughout East Germany a truth did not exist as fear had given people the inability to formulate opinions to their full extent. Everyone had an idea as to what had occurred as their minds continued to play the scenarios on repeat - if a recognisable lifestyle disappears it is possible that you will recreate the only life you knew due to the sense of uncertainty present towards existence in an unfamiliar environment. An

Poland was partitioned following this plan: The areas east of Pisa, Narev, Vistula and San rivers going to the Soviet Union, whilst the Germans would occupy the west. On the 17th of September German troops cross the Bug river and besiege Brest, despite

According to Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, “The Russian-dominated Polish government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of million Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place.” The Russian controlled Polish government has illegally kicked out millions of Germans without a reasonable reason. The USSR wanted to expand their territory as well as their military by kicking the Germans out of the country. The USSR may say that they did this because they wanted to improve their country and wanted to be more protective by increasing their military protection. According to Stalin’s comments on his policies in Eastern Europe, “How can anyone who has not taken leave of his senses describe these peaceful aspiration of the Soviet Union as expansionist tendencies on the part of our state?” This quote states that the Soviets only want a military and territorial expansion and they didn’t wanted to cause a war. However, if they want to take someone else’s land or territory, doesn’t that mean that they are going to fight for it or give up something in return to it? The Soviets didn’t give up anything in return to it, which means they eventually chose the other choice. Stalin’s desire to expand its military was a selfish idea and he didn’t care about other countries when planning the

Prior to the onset of WWII, conditions throughout occupied Poland & Belarus varied greatly. In some areas, especially in eastern Poland, which the Soviet Union invaded in 1939, and subsequently "formally" annexed, the situation was particularly volatile.1

If a country were to attack Germany in East Prussia, the Germans would have to invade the Polish Corridor to get to East Prussia, creating an even larger conflict. The loss of the Polish Corridor also affects the citizens of Germany by making it very difficult to visit family that could possibly live in East Prussia, but citizens were not just affected by the loss of the Polish Corridor. If a German citizen happened to live in any of the territories that Germany lost because of the Treaty of Versailles, they would unwillingly have to move to a different part of Germany. The citizens of Germany who had no say in the war were now being punished. In Adolf Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, he states that, “Only childish and naive minds can lull themselves in the idea that they can bring about a correction of Versailles by wheedling and begging… No nation can remove the hand from his throat except by the sword” (Doc.

“What happens to Berlin happens to Germany; what happens to Germany, happens to Europe.” These were the words of Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet Foreign Minister from 1939 through 1949. The Soviet Blockade of Berlin was a direct challenge to Western attempts to combine their zones of occupation, and it threatened to unleash World War III. The Western Allies’ response to this blockade was a massive airlift, supplying over two million people in West Berlin with food, water, medicine, and other supplies. The Berlin Airlift was an important historical event which occurred just three years after the conclusion of World War II in Europe, and it had many complex causes and far-reaching consequences.

At this point in the war, the Soviet Union was taken over by Germany and was

Once Germany started to lose conquered land to the east, they were put into a bad

After the war, Germany had several of its territories stripped from its sovereignty (Document A). It would lose what was the Polish Corridor in order to create the now country of Poland, (Document A). The Polish Corridor was very important, as Danzig was a port city that allowed the Baltic Sea to be open to the Germans for various trading routes, but also the Corridor was home to rich coals deposits that crucial to Germany’s economy at the time. Germany also lost territories to the west in which was called the “Demilitarized zone.” (Document A). This area of land included the Rhine River Valley, a historic and very industrial area that was also very critical in Germany’s economic decline, as it being lost would strip Germany of two industrialized areas that would produce goods for them to use and sell. However, the depression that would hit Germany did not end there as the Treaty of Versailles not only took key land from them but also forced them to pay the war debt or Reparations (Document C). According to The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Germany had to pay 367 billion US dollars over the course of 30 years starting in 1921, (Document B). They were furious of this, sparking the malice that would later form as a result of this document. They steadily paid this until 1933

British, American, and Russian governments officialized the controversial decision to expel between 12-15 million Germans from both their homeland and surrounding countries at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. The allied nations of

To refresh your memory, at the end of World War II, the Allied powers divided Germany into four different zones. Decided at the Potsdam Conference, each separate zone was controlled by The United States, Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain. (Rosenburg) But as the relationships between The Soviet Union and the rest of The Allied Powers quickly evaporated, aggression and power became the main focus. The United States, France, and Great Britain combined their zones, creating “West Germany”, and The Soviet controlled zoned turned into “East Germany” (Rosenburg). Being controlled by democratic nations, West Germany’s living conditions and economy were flourishing. Almost Miraculously. On the other

The Soviets felt their request justified as they knew that the conference had dealt with issues concerning the whole of Germany, although they were unaware of the specifics; nevertheless, the Potsdam agreement stated that such issues had to be dealt with by all four nations occupying Germany. The Western Allies refused to disclose what occurred, which the Russians saw as a clear breach of four-power control as agreed to at Potsdam. In protest the Soviet delegation walked out, never to return, marking the end of the cooperation of the four-power control of Germany (Marshal 37).

On May 8th, 1945, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel surrendered the German armed forces to the allies in Berlin, thus ending the war for Germany. The German people were then confronted by a situation never before experienced. All of Germany was occupied by foreign armies, their cities and infrastructure lay in ruins, and millions were homeless and starving. Following the unilateral surrender by Germany, the country was divided into four zones, governed by each of the allied powers: Britain, France, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. As diplomacy between the West and the Soviet Union began to deteriorate, each zone became more self-sufficient and independent of the others. Tensions between the West and the Soviet Union also began to rise as it became apparent that the two super powers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would vie for dominance throughout the world, each seeking to spread its ideology and stop the spread of the other’s. The first real exacerbation of this conflict came when the Soviet Union blockaded the divided city of Berlin, which lay in is zone of control. The U.S.S.R. wanted to test the Western resolve to hold Berlin and maintain control. The response the U.S. chose was to keep Berlin supplied by air, through constant resupply by aircraft, a feat never before accomplished. The airlift lasted for nearly eleven months and kept the Western controlled sectors of Berlin adequately supplied, and showed the Soviet Union the U.S.’s resolve to hold out against the spread of

(Kettenacker L) Further, the West has given his consent to have consequences withdrawal of Germans from Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The brutal expulsion in time to about millions Germans were in stark contrast to Western reservations about the "humane" the implementation of this step. So they paid for the guilt of the Germans, and for the transfer of Poland's western border as a result of the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and Konigsberg (Kettenacker L,1997) Decision was taken only about saving four occupation zones in the form of economic and political units. Meanwhile, each occupying power had to meet the requirements at the beginning of the reparations due to their occupation zone.