Question about Soviet Historiography

[grumbler]

Didn't the Dutch annex a small part of Germany and then sell it back?  IIRC they wanted to annex a bigger chunk than what they got. 

Seems very un-Dutchlike.

The Dutch government was run by utter bastards after the war.  Anti-Nazi German refugees who fled to the Netherlands before the war (many of them Jewish) were deported just so the Dutch government could look ruthless to its people (note:  they didn't deport all German nationals, because they didn't give a shit about German nationals, except as a means of doing something despicable). 

The Dutch government wanted vast reparations, but the Allies wouldn't let them claim reparations in the immediate aftermath of the war (the Germans simply couldn't pay them), so the Dutch essentially took hostages.  They released the hostages when the ransom was paid.  To be fair to them, they took the hostages before they knew that the post-war German government would be willing to pay reparations (or that the Marshall Plan was forthcoming), and the Dutch certainly needed the money; the Nazis fucked up the Netherlands good and proper, and the Dutch wanted to be able to fight the colonial independence movements.

[derspiess]

Didn't the Dutch annex a small part of Germany and then sell it back?  IIRC they wanted to annex a bigger chunk than what they got. 

Seems very un-Dutchlike.

Which part? The annexation, the sale or the ludicrous annexation plans?

Annexation and the ambitious plans.  I mean, it wasn't worse than what other countries were doing.  The annexation of Silesia, Pommerania & East Prussia were far worse.  It's just that it seems out of character for the relatively meek and polite Dutch.

[Martim Silva]

I leared about that in College

Valmy, the statements of the other forumnites show that many (especially Americans) really don't have a clue on what happened between 1945 and 1948, or at best partial knowledge. One has to actively search to know it.

For that matter you yourself speak of the hunger winter. You may want to add an 's' to that last word. The Allies were unable to provide proper food to Germans for three years, during which the country suffered appalling famine.

This is the report given to President Truman on February 1947 (the second winter of hunger). It detalis the conditions of food in Germany (best calory intake was about 1,550 a day, half the normal for peacetime) and warns of serious starvation levels on German children:

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/marshall/large/documents/index.php?pagenumber=7&documentdate=1947-02-26&documentid=5166

Didn't the Dutch annex a small part of Germany and then sell it back?  IIRC they wanted to annex a bigger chunk than what they got. 

No small part. It was called the Bakker-Schut Plan (google it), and it intended to annex German land all the way to (including), Köln, Aachen, Münster and Osnabrück, expelling millions of Germans from the area in the process, except those that spoke a dialect similar to Dutch. Queen Wilhelmina was quite intent on it.

Their ideas were eventually quashed in 1947, when the US basically told them to stuff it. That said, they had more plans of annexation (ever less ambitious and always refused), and eventually settled on a small readjustment of the borders that had them gain 69km2 (27 sq, miles) of ground from Germany.

In 1963, the West German government bought the territory back from the Netherlands by paying then 280 million marks (a few billion euros at today's rate).


The Saarland was far more complex. You can look more about the Saar Protectorate on the internet.

Basically, the French wanted to add it to their sphere for future annexation, so they did their best to keep it away from Germany, denying refugees the right to settle there (and even making the region send its own team to the 1952 olympics). After a time with its own saar currency, by 1954 only the French Franc circulated there. Any party that defended integration with Germany was banned.

(Also goggle for 'Mouvement pour le rattachement de la Sarre a la France' - Movement for the rejoining of the Saar to France).

Also in '54, Paris allowed for a referendum on the independence of the territory, which was soundly defeated. Eventually in 1956 the French allowed the Saar to join West Germany if it wanted, but only after reserving for itself vast economic advantages, like low freight costs on the Moselle river and the coal rights until 1981. And despite the Saar being united with Germany in 1957, the Franc was legal tender there until 1959, year which is known in Germany as the 'Kleine Wiedervereinigung '(Small Reunification).


Of course, one also has to consider many other things that happened in the Allied zones. I don't have time now for it all (and it would also create an horrid wall of text).


For now, let's start with the 'not-so-bad' things, like the looting. While I admit that the Union troops did a lot of it, the Allied soldiers were also keen on stealing what they could.

I'll give the word to an US captain, called John F. Kennedy, which visited Germany at the time. Heard he had an unfortunate political career after the war, too:

http://books.google.pt/books?id=YZG-xmo4ZUkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:0895264595&hl=en&sa=X&ei=owDHU-TGBqrD0QXolIHQDw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

The British had gone into Bremen ahead of us -- and everyone was unanimous in their description of British looting and destruction, which had been very heavy. They had taken everything which at all related to the sea -- ships, small boats, lubricants, machinery, etc.

He also notes of the US troops:

Americans looted the town heavily on arrival (...) the Germans' diet is about 1,200 calories -- ours being 4,000.

Of course, another of the favourite hobbies of the GIs was to force at gunpoint the German civilians to go to their banks, open their private vaults with their savings, and take everything for them (I think even the History Channel did an episode on this).

http://wih.sagepub.com/content/21/1/33.abstract

[derspiess]

Doesn't sound quite as rapey as the Bolshevist hordes' behavior.

[Razgovory]

How many Germans died of famine in the Western allied zones of occupation to starvation in 1947?  How many died of starvation in the Soviet sphere of influence that year?

[DGuller]

  Are we sure that Martim is not Lucianus?

[Valmy]

Doesn't sound quite as rapey as the Bolshevist hordes' behavior.

Well our men were not openly encouraged to do it.

There was a lot of looting God knows.  This was World War II everybody was pretty brutalized and out of their skulls by 1945.

Valmy, the statements of the other forumnites show that many (especially Americans) really don't have a clue on what happened between 1945 and 1948, or at best partial knowledge. One has to actively search to know it.

Of course somebody has to search for it to get the details.  I mean I have seen the looting and the hardships of the Germans under occupation been mentioned on openly on History Channel Documentaries and it is in history books dealing with the aftermath.  It is not like the details of Reconstruction are common knowledge either even though it gets covered.  Complicated messy bits of history do not sink in well.

[Admiral Yi]

If anyone is looking for a book that covers this period, I recommend "Candy Bombers," about the occupation in general and the Berlin airlift in particular.

[Eddie Teach]

Are we sure that Martim is not Lucianus?

I thought it was commonly accepted that he was.

[CountDeMoney]

Doesn't sound quite as rapey as the Bolshevist hordes' behavior.

Payback's a motherfucker.

[Maladict]

Didn't the Dutch annex a small part of Germany and then sell it back?  IIRC they wanted to annex a bigger chunk than what they got. 

Seems very un-Dutchlike.

Which part? The annexation, the sale or the ludicrous annexation plans?

Annexation and the ambitious plans.  I mean, it wasn't worse than what other countries were doing.  The annexation of Silesia, Pommerania & East Prussia were far worse.  It's just that it seems out of character for the relatively meek and polite Dutch.

It's out of character in that the western allies generally refrained from making territorial demands.
There was no justification for these claims other than revenge, the queen pretty much badgered the government into it.

The Dutch seem to have collectively lost their mind between 1945 and 1950.