RISE OF NAZISM IN GERMANY : A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

(Project Report on International Relations)

Submitted to
Dr. Avinash Samal
Assistant Professor (Pol. Science)

By

Harsh Mawar
B. A. LL. B. (Hons.) Student
Semester – V, Section – A, Roll No. 61

Hidayatullah National Law University

Uparwara Post, Abhanpur, New Raipur – 493661 (C.G.)

[1]
 Certificate of Declaration

I hereby declare that the project work entitled “RISE OF NAZISM IN GERMANY: A
CRITICAL ANALYSIS ” submitted to HNLU, Raipur, is record of an original work done by
me under the able guidance of Dr Avinash Samal ,Assistant Professor (Pol. Science), HNLU,
Raipur.

Harsh Mawar
Semester: V, A
Roll No: 61

[2]
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and thank my teacher, Dr Avinash Samal, Sir, for
having faith in me and giving me this opportunity to work on the project, “RISE OF NAZISM
IN GERMANY ; A CRITICAL ANALYSIS”. I would also like to thank my family and friends
for their continuing support and help when required. My gratitude also goes out to the staff and
administration of HNLU for the infrastructure in the form of our library and IT Lab that was a
source of great help for the completion of this project.

Harsh Mawar

Semester: V, A

Roll No: 61

[3]
 Table of content

INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 5
OBJECTIVES ................................................................................................................................6
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................6
CHAPTERISATION .....................................................................................................................6
LIMITATION OF THE STUDY..................................................................................................7
CHAPTER 1 ...................................................................................................................................8
POLITICAL CONDITION OF EUROPE POST WORLD WAR I ........................................ 8
CHAPTER-2 ................................................................................................................................ 10
Hitler’s Rise to Power ................................................................................................................. 11
CHAPTER-3 ................................................................................................................................ 11
NAZISM AND CONTEMPORARY WORLD ........................................................................ 13
CHAPTER-4 ................................................................................................................................ 16
Aftermath of World War II ....................................................................................................... 17
Immediate effects after world war-ii ......................................................................................... 16
Economic aftermath ................................................................................................................ 17
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 20
BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 22

[4]
 INTRODUCTION

Germany, a powerful empire in the early years of the twentieth century, fought the First World
War (1914-1918) alongside the Austrian empire and against the Allies (England, France and
Russia.) All joined the war enthusiastically hoping to gain from a quick victory. Little did they
realise that the war would stretch on, eventually draining Europe of all its resources. Germany
made initial gains by occupying France and Belgium. However the Allies, strengthened by the
US entry in 1917, won , defeating Germany and the Central Powers in November 1918. The
defeat of Imperial Germany and the abdication of the emperor gave an opportunity to
parliamentary parties to recast German polity. A National Assembly met at Weimar and
established a democratic constitution with a federal structure. Deputies were now elected to the
German Parliament or Reichstag, on the basis of equal and universal votes cast by all adults
including women. This republic, however, was not received well by its own people largely
because of the terms it was forced to accept after Germany’s defeat at the end of the First World
War. The peace treaty at Versailles with the Allies was a harsh and humiliating peace. Germany
lost its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population, 13 per cent of its territories, 75 per cent of its
iron and 26 per cent of its coal to France, Poland, Denmark and Lithuania. The Allied Powers
demilitarised Germany to weaken its power. The War Guilt Clause held Germany responsible for
the war and damages the Allied countries suffered. Germany was forced to pay compensation
amounting to £6 billion. The Allied armies also occupied the resource-rich Rhineland for much
of the 1920s. Many Germans held the new Weimar Republic responsible for not only the defeat
in the war but the disgrace at Versailles.

The war had a devastating impact on the entire continent both psychologically and financially.
From a continent of creditors, Europe turned into one of debtors. Unfortunately, the infant
Weimar Republic was being made to pay for the sins of the old empire. The republic carried the
burden of war guilt and national humiliation and was financially crippled by being forced to pay
compensation. Those who supported the Weimar Republic, mainly Socialists, Catholics and
Democrats, became easy targets of attack in the conservative nationalist circles. They were
mockingly called the ‘November criminals’. This mindset had a major impact on the political
developments of the early 1930s.

[5]
 OBJECTIVES

 To get an idea about the political condition of Europe after World War 1.

 To study the factors contributed to rise of Nazism in power.

 To understand the contemporary political developments.

 To understand the effect of Nazi ideology on international relations

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Collection of data: Secondary sources have been used to collect data. These include textbooks,
articles and data from the internet.

Scope: The paper revolves around the ‘rise of Nazism and its impact on whole world’ and the
contemporary development during the Nazi era and its effects.

Research method: Given a study of this kind, a descriptive analytical method has been followed
to carry out the study. The matter has been divided into sub-topics followed by a detailed
description along with one’s own interpretations in certain portions.

CHAPTERISATION

In this project the emphasis is given towards the rise of Nazism in Germany and its impact on
international relations. the paper is divided on the basis of the incidents effecting the
international relations due to rise of Nazism in Germany and the Hitler coming to the
power , therefore, first of all an Introduction is given about the historical background of the rise
of Nazism, then Chapter 1 talks about the political condition of Europe after world war 1, then
Chapter 2 deals with the rise of Nazism and Hitler coming to the power, Chapter 3talks about
the contemporary development which has direct or indirect impact upon the rise of Nazism in
Germany, Chapter 4, deals with the consequences to these contemporary development which we
dealt in chapter 3.

[6]
 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

As this topic is very vast in nature I have tried to narrow it down and due to paucity of time I was
only able to cover about the rise of Nazism in Germany and its impact in Europe, Soviet Union
and United States of America.

[7]
 CHAPTER 1

POLITICAL CONDITION OF EUROPE POST WORLD WAR I

The war had a devastating impact on the entire continent both psychologically and financially.
From a continent of creditors, Europe turned into one of debtors. Unfortunately, the infant
Weimar Republic was being made to pay for the sins of the old empire. The republic carried the
burden of war guilt and national humiliation and was financially crippled by being forced to pay
compensation. Those who supported the Weimar Republic, mainly Socialists, Catholics and
Democrats, became easy targets of attack in the conservative nationalist circles. They were
mockingly called the ‘November criminals’. This mindset had a major impact on the political
developments of the early 1930s, as we will soon see.

The First World War left a deep imprint on European society and polity. Soldiers came to be
placed above civilians. Politicians and publicists laid great stress on the need for men to be
aggressive, strong and masculine. The media glorified trench life. The truth, however, was that
soldiers lived miserable lives in these trenches, trapped with rats feeding on corpses. They faced
poisonous gas and enemy shelling, and witnessed their ranks reduce rapidly. Aggressive war
propaganda and national honour occupied centre stage in the public sphere, while popular
support grew for conservative dictatorships that had recently come into being. Democracy was
indeed a young and fragile idea, which could not survive the instabilities of interwar Europe.

Ending the First World War: the Paris Peace Conference

Exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand1—the event that tipped
Europe into world war—the Treaty of Versailles2 was signed in Paris on June 28, 1919. The
armistice signed on November 11, 1918 officially ended the hostilities, but the negotiations
between the Allied victors at the Paris Peace Conference lasted six months and involved
diplomatic delegations from over thirty-two countries.US President Woodrow Wilson had
delivered a speech in January 1918, in which he laid out his vision for the postwar world.
The Fourteen Pointselaborated Wilson’s plan for the comprehensive overhaul of international
relations. He called for an immediate end to the war, the establishment of an international

1
https://www.biography.com › political-figure › franz-ferdinand
2
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/treaty-of-versailles-1

[8]
peacekeeping organization, international disarmament, open diplomacy, the explicit disavowal of
war, and independence for formerly colonial territories. Wilson’s Fourteen Points3 were hugely
influential in shaping the contours of the postwar world and in spreading the language of peace
and democracy around the world.

In addition to negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, the Paris Peace Conference established
the League of Nations, an international peacekeeping organization tasked with resolving
international disputes without resorting to military force.

Terms of the Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles established a blueprint for the postwar world. One of the most
controversial terms of the treaty was the War Guilt clause4, which explicitly and directly blamed
Germany for the outbreak of hostilities. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, to make territorial
concessions, and to pay reparations to the Allied powers in the staggering amount of $5 billion.
Although US President Woodrow Wilson was opposed to such harsh terms, he was
outmaneuvered by French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. France was the only Allied
power to share a border with Germany, and therefore suffered the bulk of the devastation and
casualties from the German war machine. The French aimed to weaken Germany to the greatest
extent possible.

Consequences of the Treaty of Versailles

Although President Wilson was heavily involved in negotiating the treaty, which reflected his
vision for the postwar world, isolationists in the US Congress proved a major stumbling block to
ratification. The so-called “Irreconcilables,” mostly Republicans but also some Democrats,
opposed the treaty, particularly Article X, which committed member-states of the League of
Nations to go to war on each other’s behalf in the event of an unprovoked act of aggression. The
Irreconcilables saw this as a violation of US sovereignty and some believed that it would commit
the United States to an alliance system that could lead to another war. Due to the opposition of
the Irreconcilables, the Treaty of Versailles was never ratified by Congress, and the United

3
http://www.american-historama.org/1913-1928-ww1-prohibition-era/fourteen-points.htm
4
https://www.facinghistory.org/weimar-republic-fragility-democracy/politics/treaty-versailles-text-article-231-
war-guilt-clause-politics

[9]
Statesnever became a member of the League of Nations.5 When Adolf Hitler came to power in
Germany in 1934, his government began to violate many of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
Not only did Hitler announce a moratorium on all debt payments and cease making reparations,
but he began to build up the German armed forces in earnest. start superscript, end
superscript Some historians believe that the onerous terms of the treaty laid the psychological
and economic groundwork for the rise of the Nazi party, which capitalized on German
resentment of the burdens imposed by the Allied powers after the First World War.

Failure of Weimar republic and great depression

The years between 1924 and 1928 saw some stability. Yet this was built on sand. German
investments and industrial recovery were totally dependent on short-term loans, largely from the
USA. This support was withdrawn when the Wall Street Exchange crashed in 1929. Fearing a
fall in prices, people made frantic efforts to sell their shares. On one single day, 24 October, 13
million shares were sold. This was the start of the Great Economic Depression. Over the next
three years, between 1929 and 1932, the national income of the USA fell by half. Factories shut
down, exports fell, farmers were badly hit and speculators withdrew their money from the
market. The effects of this recession in the US economy were felt worldwide.The German
economy was the worst hit by the economic crisis. By 1932, industrial production was reduced to
40 per cent of the 1929 level. Workers lost their jobs or were paid reduced wages. The number of
unemployed touched an unprecedented 6 million. On the streets of Germany you could see men
with placards around their necks saying, ‘Willing to do any work’. Unemployed youths played
cards or simply sat at street corners, or desperately queued up at the local employment exchange.
As jobs disappeared, the youth took to criminal activities and total despair became
commonplace.The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people. The middle
classes, especially salaried employees and pensioners, saw their savings diminish when the
currency lost its value. Small businessmen, the self-employed and retailers suffered as their
businesses got ruined. These sections of society were filled with the fear of proletarianisation, an
anxiety of being reduced to the ranks of the working class, or worse still, the unemployed. Only
organised workers could manage to keep their heads above water, but unemployment weakened
their bargaining power. Big business was in crisis.

5
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/league

[10]
 CHAPTER-2

HITLER’S RISE TO POWER

This crisis in the economy, polity and society formed the background to Hitler’s rise to power.
Born in 1889 in Austria, Hitler spent his youth in poverty. When the First World War broke out,
he enrolled for the army, acted as a messenger in the front, became a corporal, and earned medals
for bravery. The German defeat horrified him and the Versailles Treaty made him furious. In
1919, he joined a small group called the German Workers’ Party. He subsequently took over the
organisation and renamed it the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. This party came to
be known as the Nazi Party.

In 1923, Hitler planned to seize control of Bavaria, march to Berlin and capture power. He failed,
was arrested, tried for treason, and later released. The Nazis could not effectively mobilise
popular support till the early 1930s. It was during the Great Depression that Nazism 6 became a
mass movement. As we have seen, after 1929, banks collapsed and businesses shut down,
workers lost their jobs and the middle classes were threatened with destitution. In such a
situation Nazi propaganda stirred hopes of a better future. In 1928, the Nazi Party got no more
than 2. 6 per cent votes in the Reichstag – the German parliament. By 1932, it had become the
largest party with 37 per cent votes.Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and his words
moved people. He promised to build a strong nation, undo the injustice of the Versailles Treaty
and restore the dignity of the German people. He promised employment for those looking for
work, and a secure future for the youth. He promised to weed out all foreign influences and resist
all foreign ‘conspiracies’ against Germany. Hitler devised a new style of politics. He understood
the significance of rituals and spectacle in mass mobilisation. Nazis held massive ralliesand
public meetings to demonstrate the support for Hitler and instil a sense of unity among the
people. The Red banners with the Swastika, the Nazi salute, and the ritualised rounds of applause
after the speeches were all part of this spectacle of power.Nazi propaganda skilfully projected
Hitler as a messiah, a saviour, as someone who had arrived to deliver people from their distress.
It is an image that captured the imagination of a people whose sense of dignity and pride had
been shattered, and who were living in a time of acute economic and political crises.

6
https://brainly.in/question/748095

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The Destruction of Democracy
On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg offered the Chancellorship, the highest position in
the cabinet of ministers, to Hitler. By now the Nazis had managed to rally the conservatives to
their cause. Having acquired power, Hitler set out to dismantle the structures of democratic rule.
A mysterious fire that broke out in the German Parliament building in February facilitated his
move. The Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 indefinitely suspended civic rights like freedom of
speech, press and assembly that had been guaranteed by the Weimar constitution. Then he turned
on his archenemies, the Communists, most of whom were hurriedly packed off to the newly
established concentration camps. The repression of the Communists was severe. Out of the
surviving 6,808 arrest files of Duesseldorf, a small city of half a million population, 1,440 were
those of Communists alone. They were, however, only one among the 52 types of victims
persecuted by the Nazis across the country.

On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act established dictatorship in
Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to sideline Parliament and rule by decree. All political parties
and trade unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its affiliates. The state established
complete control over the economy, media, army and judiciary..

Reconstruction
Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic recovery to the economist Hjalmar Schacht who
aimed at full production and full employment through a state-funded work-creation programme.
This project produced the famous German superhighways and the people’s car, the Volkswagen.

In foreign policy also Hitler acquired quick successes. He pulled out of the League of Nations in
1933, reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the
slogan, One people, One empire, and One leader. He then went on to wrest Germanspeaking
Sudentenland from Czechoslovakia, and gobbled up the entire country. In all of this he had the
unspoken support of England, which had considered the Versailles verdict too harsh. These
quick successes at home and abroad seemed to reverse the destiny of the country. Hitler did not
stop here. Schacht had advised Hitler against investing hugely in rearmament as the state still ran
on deficit financing. Cautious people, however, had no place in Nazi Germany. Schacht had to

[12]
leave. Hitler chose war as the way out of the approachingeconomic crisis. Resources were to be
accumulated through expansion of territory. In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This
started a war with France and England. In September 1940, a Tripartite Pact was signed between
Germany, Italy and Japan, strengthening Hitler’s claim to international power. Puppet regimes,
supportive of Nazi Germany, were installed in a large part of Europe. By the end of 1940, Hitler
was at the pinnacle of his power.

Meanwhile, the USA had resisted involvement in the war. It was unwilling to once again face all
the economic problems that the First World War had caused. But it could not stay out of the war
for long. Japan was expanding its power in the east. It had occupied French Indo-China and was
planning attacks on US naval bases in the Pacific. When Japan extended its support to Hitler and
bombed the US base at Pearl Harbor, the US entered the Second World War. The war ended in
May 1945 with Hitler’s defeat and the US dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.

German Militarization
Germany had been admitted to the League of Nations some hme after its formation but soon after
Hitler came to power, she quit the League and undertook a massiVe programme of mthtarizatwn.
According to the Treaty of Versailles, severe rcslnctlons had been imposed on the military
strength of Germany. The begmnmg of German re-mthtanzabon in v1ola.tion of the Treaty
created a sense of msecurity in many countries, particularly France. It was m tlus situation that
the Soviet Union became a member of the League in 1934. However, nothing was done to stop'
the German re-militarization. According to the Treaty of Versailles, the German area bordering
France called the Rhineland had been demilitarized to make a German attack on France d1fficult.
In 1936, Hitler's troops entered the Homeland in violation of the Treaty. Though this step
alarmed France, nothing was done to stop Germany. By then Germany had built an army of
800,000 men while the Treaty of Versailles, you may remember, had imposed a limit of 100,000
men Shehad also started building a strong navy.

[13]
 CHAPTER-3

NAZISM AND CONTEMPORARY WORLD

The crimes that Nazis committed were linked to a system of belief and a set of practices.Nazi
ideology was synonymous with Hitler’s worldview. According to this there was no equality
between people, but only a racial hierarchy. In this view blond, blue-eyed, Nordic German
Aryans7 were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung. They came to be regarded as
an anti-race, the arch-enemies of the Aryans. All other coloured people were placed in between
depending upon their external features. Hitler’s racism borrowed from thinkers like Charles
Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Darwin was a natural scientist who tried to explain the creation of
plants and animals through the concept of evolution and natural selection. Herbert Spencer later
added the idea of survival of the fittest. According to this idea, only those species survived on
earth that could adapt themselves to changing climatic conditions. We should bear in mind that
Darwin never advocated human intervention in what he thought was a purely natural process of
selection. However, his ideas were used by racist thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule
over conquered peoples. The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would survive and
the weak ones would perish. The Aryan race was the finest. It had to retain its purity, become
stronger and dominate the world. The other aspect of Hitler’s ideology related to the geopolitical
concept of Lebensraum, or living space. He believed that new territories had to be acquired for
settlement. This would enhance the area of the mother country, while enabling the settlers on
new lands to retain an intimate link with the place of their origin. It would also enhance the
material resources and power of the German nation.

Hitler intended to extend German boundaries by moving eastwards, to concentrate all Germans
geographically in one place. Poland became the laboratory for this experimentation.

7
https://www.ancient.eu/Aryan/

[14]
Munich Agreement
Munich Agreement,8 (September 30, 1938), settlement reached by Germany, Great Britain,
France, and Italy that permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland, in western
Czechoslovakia. After his success in absorbing Austria into Germany proper in March 1938,
Adolf Hitler looked covetously at Czechoslovakia, where about three million people in the
Sudeten area were of German origin. It became known in May 1938 that Hitler and his generals
were drawing up a plan for the occupation of Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovaks were relying
on military assistance from France, with which they had an alliance. The Soviet Union also had a
treaty with Czechoslovakia, and it indicated willingness to cooperate with France and Great
Britain if they decided to come to Czechoslovakia’s defense, but the Soviet Union and its
potential services were ignored throughout the crisis.

As Hitler continued to make inflammatory speeches demanding that Germans in Czechoslovakia

be reunited with their homeland, war seemed imminent. Neither France nor Britain felt prepared
to defend Czechoslovakia, however, and both were anxious to avoid a military confrontation
with Germany at almost any cost. In mid-September Neville Chamberlain, the British prime
minister, offered to go to Hitler’s retreat at Berchtesgaden to discuss the situation personally with
the Führer. Hitler agreed to take no military action without further discussion, and Chamberlain
agreed to try to persuade his cabinet and the French to accept the results of a plebiscite in the
Sudetenland. The French premier, Édouard Daladier, and his foreign minister, Georges-Étienne
Bonnet, then went to London, where a joint proposal was prepared stipulating that all areas with
a population that was more than 50 percent Sudeten German be turned over to Germany. The
Czechoslovaks were not consulted. The Czechoslovak government initially rejected the proposal
but was forced to accept it on September 21.

On September 22 Chamberlain again flew to Germany and met Hitler at Godesberg, where he
was dismayed to learn that Hitler had stiffened his demands: he now wanted the Sudetenland
occupied by the German army and the Czechoslovaks evacuated from the area by September 28.
Chamberlain agreed to submit the new proposal to the Czechoslovaks, who rejected it, as did the
British cabinet and the French. On the 24th the French ordered a partial mobilization; the
Czechoslovaks had ordered a general mobilization one day earlier.In a last-minute effort to avoid

8
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-munich-pact

[15]
war, Chamberlain then proposed that a four-power conference be convened immediately to settle
the dispute. Hitler agreed, and on September 29, Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier, and Italian
dictator Benito Mussolini met in Munich, where Mussolini introduced a written plan that was
accepted by all as the Munich Agreement. (Many years later it was discovered that the so-called
Italian plan had been prepared in the German Foreign Office.) It was almost identical to the
Godesberg proposal: the German army was to complete the occupation of the Sudetenland by
October 10, and an international commission would decide the future of other disputed areas.
Czechoslovakia was informed by Britain and France that it could either resist Germany alone or
submit to the prescribed annexations. The Czechoslovak government chose to submit.Before
leaving Munich, Chamberlain and Hitler signed a paper declaring their mutual desire to resolve
differences through consultation to assure peace. Both Daladier and Chamberlain returned home
to jubilant welcoming crowds relieved that the threat of war had passed, and Chamberlain told
the British public that he had achieved “peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.”
His words were immediately challenged by his greatest critic, Winston Churchill, who declared,
“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have
war.” Indeed, Chamberlain’s policies were discredited the following year, when Hitler annexed
the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March and then precipitated World War II by invading
Poland in September. The Munich Agreement became a byword for the futility of appeasing
expansionist totalitarian states, although it did buy time for the Allies to increase their military
preparedness.

[16]
 CHAPTER-4

AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II

The Aftermath of World War II9 was the beginning of a new era, defined by the decline of all
European colonial empires and simultaneous rise of two superpowers: the Soviet Union (USSR)
and the United States (USA). Allies during World War II, the US and the USSR became
competitors on the world stage and engaged in the Cold War, so called because it never resulted
in overt, declared hot war between the two powers but was instead characterized by espionage,
political subversion and proxy wars. Western Europe and Japan were rebuilt through the
American Marshall Plan whereas Central and Eastern Europe fell under the Soviet sphere of
influence and eventually behind an "Iron Curtain". Europe was divided into a US-led Western
Bloc and a Soviet-led Eastern Bloc. Internationally, alliances with the two blocs gradually
shifted, with some nations trying to stay out of the Cold War through the Non-Aligned
Movement. The War also saw a nuclear arms race between the two superpowers; part of the
reason that the Cold War never became a "hot" war was that the Soviet Union and the United
States had nuclear deterrents against each other, leading to a mutually assured destruction
standoff.As a consequence of the war, the Allies created the United Nations, an organization for
international cooperation and diplomacy, similar to the League of Nations. Members of the
United Nations agreed to outlaw wars of aggression in an attempt to avoid a third world war. The
devastated great powers of Western Europe formed the European Coal and Steel Community,
which later evolved into the European Economic Community and ultimately into the current
European Union. This effort primarily began as an attempt to avoid another war between
Germany and France by economic cooperation and integration, and a common market for
important natural resources.

The end of the war also increased the rate of decolonization from the great powers with
independence being granted to India (from the United Kingdom), Indonesia (from the
Netherlands), the Philippines (from the US) and a number of Arab nations, primarily from
specific rights which had been granted to great powers from League of Nations Mandates in the

9
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/10/world-war-ii-after-the-war/100180/

[17]
post world War I-era but often having existed de facto well before this time. Independence for
the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa came more slowly. The aftermath of World War II also saw
the rise of communist influence in Southeast Asia, with the People's Republic of China, as the
Chinese Communist Party emerged victorious from the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

IMMEDIATE EFFECTS AFTER WORLD WAR-II

At the end of the war, millions of people were dead and millions more homeless, the European
economy had collapsed, and much of the European industrial infrastructure had been destroyed.
The Soviet Union, too, had been heavily affected. In response, in 1947, U.S. Secretary of State
George Marshall devised the "European Recovery Program", which became known as the
Marshall Plan. Under the plan, during 1948–1952 the United States government allocated US$13
billion (US$146 billion in 2018 dollars) for the reconstruction of Western Europe.

In the west, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. In the east, the Sudetenland reverted to
Czechoslovakia following the European Advisory Commission's decision to delimit German
territory to be the territory it held on 31 December 1937. Close to one-quarter of pre-war (1937)
Germany was de facto annexed by the Allies; roughly 10 million Germans were either expelled
from this territory or not permitted to return to it if they had fled during the war. The remainder
of Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, coordinated by the Allied Control
Council. The Saar was detached and put in economic union with France in 1947. In 1949, the
Federal Republic of Germany was created out of the Western zones. The Soviet zone became the
German Democratic Republic.

Germany paid reparations to the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, mainly in the
form of dismantled factories, forced labour, and coal. The German standard of living was to be
reduced to its 1932 level. Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for
the next two years, the US and Britain pursued an "intellectual reparations" programme to
harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. The value of
these amounted to around US$10 billion (US$128 billion in 2018 dollars). In accordance with
the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, reparations were also assessed from the countries of Italy,

[18]
Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland. The hunger-winter of 1947.10 Thousands protest
against the disastrous food situation (31 March 1947).

Economic aftermath
By the end of the war, the European economy had collapsed with some 70% of its industrial
infrastructure destroyed. The property damage in the Soviet Union consisted of complete or
partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, and 31,850 industrial
establishments. The strength of the economic recovery following the war varied throughout the
world, though in general, it was quite robust, particularly in the United States. In Europe, West
Germany, after having continued to decline economically during the first years of the Allied
occupation, later experienced a remarkable recovery, and had by the end of the 1950s doubled
production from its pre-war levels. Italy came out of the war in poor economic condition, but by
the 1950s, the Italian economy was marked by stability and high growth. France rebounded
quickly and enjoyed rapid economic growth and modernisation under the Monnet Plan.The UK,
by contrast, was in a state of economic ruin after the war and continued to experience relative
economic decline for decades to follow.

The Soviet Union also experienced a rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era.
Japan experienced rapid economic growth, becoming one of the most powerful economies in the
world by the 1980s. China, following the conclusion of its civil war, was essentially bankrupt.
By 1953, economic restoration seemed fairly successful as production had resumed pre-war
levels. This growth rate mostly persisted, though it was interrupted by economic experiments
during the disastrous Great Leap Forward.

10
https://postwargermany.com/2012/09/26/hunger-winter/

[19]
 CONCLUSION
It took the largest war in human history to bring about the downfall of Nazism. The invasion of
Poland in September 1939 was not intended to provoke a major war. In Hitler’s mind, it was
another act of expansion, much like the Anschluss with Austria and the Nazi incursion into
Czechoslovakia. Hitler believed the British were unwilling to initiate another war and that
London would instead seek a second agreement. But within a fortnight of the Polish invasion,
France, Britain and several British Empire countries had all declared war on Germany. Since
neither Germany or the Allies were prepared for a major conflict, the first months of World War
II produced little major fighting outside Poland. Instead, combatant nations prepared themselves
by recruiting and mobilising troops, ramping up military production and organising the home
front. This ‘phoney war’, as it became known, ended in April and May 1940, when the Nazis
launched a series of invasions across western Europe. More than a million Wehrmacht and SS
troops marched into Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The
military forces in these countries defended gallantly but were overrun by the Nazi blitzkrieg, or
‘lightning war’, a form of mechanised warfare that emphasised speed and penetration. By the end
of 1940, German forces controlled most of western Europe. They would occupy these countries
for four years, installing puppet governments, pillaging their economies, forcing populations to
labour, and arresting and deporting Jews and other racial targets.

In mid-1941 Hitler initiated Operation Barbarossa and ordered the invasion of Soviet Russia, less
than two years after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. Hitler’s decision to
strike at Russia was no surprising: it was both the home of his ideological foe, Stalin, and the
critical prize in his quest for lebensraum. The timing of Barbarossa, however, proved disastrous.
A great number of German troops were still tied up in western Europe and as far afield as Greece
and northern Africa. The Soviet invasion not only committed more than a million troops to the
Eastern Front, as it became known, it also placed added strains on the German wartime economy.
Hitler’s generals had urged him not to order the Soviet invasion until 1943, or 1942 at the
earliest, but they were overruled.

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Despite these strains in the east, the Nazi war machine remained firmly entrenched in western
Europe. Local resistance and partisan groups carried out covert operations against the Nazis, but
could not displace them. Pushing the Germans out of western Europe was only achieved by a
massive British, French, American and Soviet counter-offensive, launched on June 6th 1944 (‘D-
Day’). After one of the largest military build-ups in history, Allied troops were ferried across the
English Channel, where they stormed the heavily-fortified beaches of Nazi-occupied France.
Despite heavy losses, the Allies breached the German defences and began to pour into Europe. In
the east, two years of Operation Barbarossa had proved an unmitigated disaster, costing
Germany more than a million men. By the end of 1944, German forces were depleted, divided
and in retreat across Europe. The defeat of Nazi Germany was not only inevitable, it was also
imminent.

Hitler shared the doomed fate of his war machine. His disastrous decision to invade Russia
before schedule made him deeply unpopular with many of his generals. In July 1944 a group of
Wehrmacht officers attempted to assassinate Hitler by planting a bomb at his feet during an army
briefing. Hitler was wounded but survived, however, he retreated from public view and was
rarely seen or heard thereafter. By the dawn of 1945, Hitler and his inner circle were cowering in
a fortified bunker beneath the Chancellery building in Berlin. As the Soviet Red Army advanced
towards the capital, the now-delusional Hitler issued futile battle plans to armies that were
incapable of carrying them out. He also handed down a ‘scorched earth’ command, ordering the
utter destruction of Germany so that nothing would be left to the Soviet invaders. Mercifully, this
order was never carried out.

On April 30th, as Russian troops entered the outskirts of Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide.
The leadership of Germany passed to Joseph Goebbels, but within 24 hours he too took his own
life. Elsewhere, other Nazi leaders were either in Allied custody or running like fugitives. The
German surrender came on May 7th, a week after Hitler’s death. Nazism, the proud and boastful
movement of the 1930s, was drawing its final breaths. The Nazis had promised the German
people dignity, respect and prosperity – and for a time seemed to deliver on these promises. But
their ultimate legacy was a war that had claimed the lives of more than 48 million people, a
racial genocide unlike any other in history, and a Germany that was devastated, occupied and
torn apart for more than 40 years.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS

 2 Arjun Dev, The Story of civilization

 1 India and contemporary world

WEBSITES

 https://www.biography.com › political-figure › franz-ferdinand

 https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/treaty-of-versailles-1
 https://www.ancient.eu/Aryan/
 https://www.icrc.org/en/who-we-are
 https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/spanish-civil-war-breaks-out
 https://postwargermany.com/2012/09/26/hunger-winter/
 https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2011/10/world-war-ii-after-the-war/100180/

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