Germany Political and Economic Reunion Section 3 pg.315 Geography 7th Grade

Germany’s Dark History After losing WWI in 1918, the German government had to pay billions of dollars as punishment for attacking other countries. During this time, the German economy collapsed and prices increased. Germans everywhere felt desperate.

Hitler and World War II Adolf Hitler was upset and bitter in 1918 when he learned that Germany had lost the war. He promised himself that his country would never suffer such a defeat again. He became deeply involved in politics, and in all his speeches he promised to make Germany great again. – In 1933 he becomes dictator of Germany. Hitler blamed the economic problems on the Jews. He spread hateful theories about Jews, gypsies, and other ethnic groups in Germany (he thought they were inferior or not as good as Germans). He is responsible for the start of WWII in 1939.

Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States joined other nations to stop Hitler and the Germans. By the end of the war, Europe was in ruins. It wasn’t until towards the end of the war that the allies discovered the death camps and what Germans were doing to the Jews, gypsies and other groups. – This horrible mass murder of six million Jews is called the Holocaust – The deliberate murder of a racial, political, or ethnic group is called genocide.

At the end of the war, the Americans, the British, the French, and the Soviets divided Germany. The American, British, and French sections were joined into a democratic country called West Germany. The Soviet Union created communist East Germany Berlin was in the Soviet part of Germany, but the western half of it, called West Berlin, became part of democratic West Germany. The Berlin Wall divided the two halves of the city, but it divied more tha Berlin. It was a symbol of a divided world. The Cold War

Conrad Schumann – a soldier of East Germany whose responsibility was to prevent other citizens from escaping into West Berlin.

The Communists Weaken -East German economy was falling further behind the West German economy. *West Germans had a better life than East Germans. So, to keep East Germans happy, the government allowed some of them to VISIT West Germany. -In the late 1980’s, changes in the Soviet Union helped to cause the collapse of East Germany. -The soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that he would not use force to protect communism in Eastern Europe.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall On November 9, 1989, crowds of Germans began climbing over the wall. Some people raced to see friends and relatives, others just wanted to enjoy a different life. People helped each other over the wall and crowds tore at the wall and took it apart block by block. Less than a year later, the governments of East and West Germany united. Germany had become a single country again.