ÿþ<html> <head> <title> WHKMLA : Historical Dictionaries : Post-War Years, 1945-1949 </title> <!-- copyright Alexander Ganse, 2005 --> </head> <body bgcolor="lightblue" text="black" link="blue" vlink="red" alink="brown"> <style> <!-- A{ font-weight: bold; font-size: 10pt; font-face: arial; } --> </style> <DIV align ="center"> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD align = "center" valign = "center"> <A HREF = "../../index.html"> <img src = "../../whkmla2.jpg" border = "0"></a></TD></TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width = "150" height = "36" align = "center" valign = "center"> <font size = "2" face = "arial"><B> Timeline </b></font></TD> <TD width = "36" height = "36" align = "center" valign = "center"> <A HREF = "../../timelines/nhb/tlpostwar.html"> <img src = "../../region/arrowleft.gif" width = "36" height = "36" border = "0"> </a></TD> <TD align = "center" valign = "center"> <A HREF = "../../timelines/nhb.html"> <img src = "../banhistdic.jpg" border = "0"> </TD> <TD width = "36" height = "36" align = "center" valign = "center"> <img src = "../../region/arrowright.gif" width = "36" height = "36" border = "0"> </a></TD> <TD width = "100" height = "36" align = "center" valign = "center"> <font size = "2" face = "arial"><B> </b></font></TD></TR></TABLE> <font size = "3" face = "arial"><B><i>First posted on May 3rd 2005 </i></b></font><BR><BR><BR><BR> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD align = "center" valign = "center" width = "900"> <font face = "Times Roman" size = "5"><B> Historical Dictionaries : Post-War Years, 1945-1949 </B></font> <BR> <font face = "Times Roman" size = "2"><i> http://www.zum.de/whkmla/histdic/nhb/hdpostwar.html </i></font> </B></font></TD></TR></TABLE> <BR><BR> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Abdication</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (criticized for her interference in politics during WW II) abdicated in 1948; King Leopold III. (he had chosen to stay in Belgium during the occupation) abdicated in 1951. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Berlin</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> German capital. In 1945 divided in four sectors, allocated to the four allies (U.S., Britain, France, USSR). The city was treated by an administrative unit, to be governed by German officials who had to request allied approval for actions taken. The Soviets and the western Allies soon were no longer on speaking terms, and Berlin de facto split in two, East and West. West Berlin was surrounded by the Soviet Zone, a political island. Click <A HREF = "../../region/germany/ger4549berlin.html">here</A> for more information </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <A NAME = "bairlift"><B>Berlin Airlift</B></A> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> A campaign to supply the population of West Berlin (c. 2,000,000) through the air, from June 1948 to May 1949. Then Stalin ordered the Berlin Blockade to be lifted. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <A NAME = "bblockade"><B>Berlin Blockade</B></A> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> The currency reform had been implemented in West Germany and in the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948, without the Soviet authorities having been consulted. This was a violation of the Potsdam Conference Agreements; Stalin responded by ordering the roads, canals and railroad lines connecting West Berlin with West Germany blocked. He offered to supply West Berlin with fuel and food, an offer which was rejected by West Berlin's mayor Ernst Reuter. Berlin Airlift. The blockade was lifted in May 1948 </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Black Market</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> During the war, most European countries (even neutral Switzerland) had rationed consumer goods, and black markets emerged. While most western European countries managed to stabilize their currency and abolish ratoning by 1946, Germany until 1948 (East Germany until 1950) maintained ration coupons; the currency was worthless, hyperinflation rampant. On the German black market, American cigarettes were used as replacement currency. Hungary suffered from hyperinflation </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Care Parcels</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Germany in 1945 and 1946 suffered a greater food shortage than during the war. The Red Cross provided American citizens of German descent with addresses of their German relatives, asking them to send parcels containing essentials. Many German families received such parcels. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Collaborators</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Countries liberated from German occupation had the problem of dealing with collaborators. Major collaborators (Quisling in Norway, Laval in France) were sentenced to death and executed; minor figures often merely publicly humiliated. In post-war society they were ostracized. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Currency Reform</B> (Germany) </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Post-war Germany was treated as one political entity, but two economic and political systems emerged. The German currency suffered hyperinflation; the shops were empty, the black market flourished. The U.S. administration encouraged West German authorities to create a fait accompli by implementing a currency reform (limited to the three western zones) of which it pretended to know nothing about. Technically, no such reform could be implemented without the approval of all four Allies, including the USSR. The currency reform was successful; the black market disappeared overnight. It also provoked Stalin to impose the Berlin Blockade. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Denazification</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> When the Allies, in Germany and Austria, tried to reestablish an administration, to get factories, schools etc. operate again, they wanted to make sure that Nazis were excluded from politically sensitive functions. For anyone applying for a sensitive position he had to testify about his actions during the years of Nazi rule. Denazification caused a delay in getting important positions filled and slowed down economic recovery. The USSR was more serious in the implementation of Denazification; in the western zones, from 1947 on, a more lax approach was taken in order to promote economic recovery. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Deportation</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> In the USSR which during the war temporarily had been occupied by the Germans, persons, famlies, entire ethnic groups suspected of having collaborated were subject to deportation, for instance the Crimean Tatars. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Displaced Persons</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Persons which, for whatever reason, at the time of liberation / the end of the war were found far away from their home. Ex forced labour, sldiersw held in German P.O.W. camps or cncentration camps, foreigners who used to be employed in German service, evacuees etc. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Food Rationing</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> During the war, food was rationed almost everywhere in Europe. Transition to a peacetime economy without ration coupons was gradual; in countries with a strong agricultural sector faster than in countries with a strong industrial base. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <A NAME = "ironcurtain"><B>Iron Curtain</B></A> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Envisioned by Joseph Goebbels in Feb. 1945, the term was coined by Winston Churchill in a speech held March 1946, describing a border facility designed to be impenetrable, separating the countries under Soviet control from the remainder of Europe. Was dismantled in 1989. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <A NAME = "marshallplan"><B>Marshall Plan</B></A> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Named after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall. The U.S. provided 20 billion US $, which were to kickstart economic growth in post-war Europe. Countries which accepted Marshall aid had to agree to certain conditions, joined OEEC. Credits were granted to businesmen over a period of 1 year, no interest charged. High salaries were paid, and a demand-driven economy emerged, as there was a shortage of everything. Launched in 1947, took effect in 1948. Offered also to the countries under Soviet control; rejected by the latter on Stalin's insistance; (communist) Yugoslavia accepted the offer. UK, France largest beneficiaries. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>National Front Coalition</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> In the situation immediately following liberation, the countries of Europe faced pressing organisatoric problems such as feeding the population, deal with collaborators and war profiteers, organize the transition from wartime to peacetime economy, provide sufficient housing, remove rubble etc. In this situation, all-party coalitions were formed, often called National Front. After a transitional period, in the west, elections were held; in the countries under Soviet control, the non-Communist parties were ousted or marginalized. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Nationalization</B> (F) </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> In France, coal mines, providers of electricity and gas, the airline industry and car maker Renault were nationalized. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Nationalization</B> (UK) </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> In Britain, the Bank of England, the coal mines, civil aviation, cable and wireless services, gas, electricity, railways, road transport and steel industry were nationalized. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> see under <A HREF = "hdgermany.html#nurembergwct">Germany</A> </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>OEEC</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Organisation for European Economic Cooperation, established in 1948. In 1961 renamed OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Click <A HREF = "../../region/europe/oeec.html">here</A> for more information </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Persilschein</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> German expression of a document certifying that a person was 'clean', i.e. that he/she was not disqualified from taking an important position by a Nazi past. Such documents were essential in post-war Germany. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Plebiscites on Monarchy</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Italy 1947, plebiscite voted for abolition of the monarchy. Belgium :1950 plebiscite permitted King Leopold III. to return from exile; he abdicated in 1951. King Umberto II. was regarded as not sufficiently having distanced himself from Fascism; King Leopold III. has chosen to stay in German-occupied Belgium. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>P.O.W.s</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> At the end of the war, the Allies held large numbers of German, Austrian P.O.W.s. The Americans, British released many of them within a month after the war had ended; the last P.O.W.s held by the Soviets returned in 1955. (Russian P.O.W.s had been treated badly by the Germans during the war). P.O.W.s in the west were given the opportunity to write to their families; German P.O.W.s in the USSR were given such opportunity only in exceptional cases. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Refugees, German</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> The ethnic German population from the areas east of the Oder-Neisse-Line, from the Sudetenland, from the Banat, Zips etc. were expelled; over 10 million ethnic Germans moved into West Germany, East Germany or Austria (1945-1946). A further stream of refugees fled from East Germany into West Germany, 200.000-250.000 annually. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Refugees, Polish</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Ethnic Polish inhabitants of Western Belarus, Western Ukraine was compelled to emigrate to Poland; most were settled in the areas Poland had annexed from Germany </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Repatriation</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> At Yalta and Potsdam the Allies had agreed to repatriate each other's nationals, wherever they were found. When Ukrainian soldiers who had fought on the side of the Germans surrendered to the British, the latter were obliged to hand them and their families over to Soviet authorities (which came equal to a death sentence). The repatriation of French, Danish etc. nationals who had been brought to Germany as forced labour was unproblematic. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Saarland</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> As in 1919, the Saar region again was separated from Germany and temporarily placed under French administration (a plebiscite was held in 1957). The French economy needed the Saar coal. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Vienna</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Capital of Austria. 1945-1955 divided in four sectors, administrated by the 4 Allies. Vienna was surrounded by the Soviet Occupation Zone. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>War Profiteers</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> Entrepreneurs who had benefitted from the war. In many liberated countries, before the economy could be adapted to peacetime needs and take off, the matter of war profiteers had to be addressed. Partly businesses which had profitted extraordinarily were nationalized (France : Renault), partly war profits were confiscatede by taxation. In 1945-1946 capitalism in general had a poor reputation throughout Europe, in east and west. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD width="200" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> <B>Werewolf</B> </font></TD> <TD width="480" valign="top" align="left"> <font size = "2"> German Nazi resistance organization; they mainly assassinated German nationals collaborating with the Allies; active 1945-1947. </font></TD> </TR></TABLE> <BR><BR> <TABLE border = "0" cellspace="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <TR> <TD align = "left" valign = "center" width = "700"> <font face = "Times Roman" size = "2"> PRINTED REFERENCE : <BR> </font></TD> </font></TD></TR></TABLE> <BR><BR> </DIV> </DIV> <DIV align="center"> <A href="mailto:aganse@hotmail.com"> <IMG src="../../email.gif" border="0"></a><BR> <BR><BR><BR><BR><BR> <!-- Start of CH Counter --> <script type="text/javascript"> //<!-- // chCounter v2.0.0 // settings: cstatus = "active"; visible = "0"; path_to_counterfile = "http://www.zum.de/whkmla/counter/counter.php"; urlhp = "http://www.zum.de"; //////////////// url = unescape(location.href); file = url.substring(url.lastIndexOf(urlhp) + urlhp.length, url.length); file = (file.charAt(0) != "/") ? 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