Essay

Germany on WW2 and Cold War

No one wanted war. Yet, when Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, other European countries felt they had to act. The result was six long years of World War II. Everything started because of a one man’s twisted mind “Adolf Hitler”.

As previously introduced, Adolf Hitler, wanted more land especially in the east, to expand Germany according to the Nazi policy of lebensraum. Hitler used the harsh limitations that were set against Germany in the Versailles Treaty as a pretext for Germany's right to acquire land where German-speaking people lived. Germany successfully used this reasoning to envelop two entire countries without starting a war at first.

Hitler’s first aggressive move was taking control over Austria, this action was known as the Anschluss. After this continence, there was a conference where the French and the British gave Germany a large portion of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland. Hitler then took the rest of Czechoslovakia by March 1939. One of the reasons of why Germany was allowed to take over both Austria and Czechoslovakia without a fight was because Great Britain and France did not want to repeat the bloodshed of World War I. They believed, wrongly as it turned out, they could avoid another world war by appeasing Hitler with a few concessions (such as Austria and Czechoslovakia). At this time, Great Britain and France did not understand that Hitler's goal of land acquisition was much, much larger than any country. Hitler was expanding territory and at the same time was spreading his Nazi’s ideas, but on the other side, he was confident that he could again move east, this time acquiring Poland without having to fight Britain or France. This was to eliminate the possibility of a Soviet Union fight, if Poland was attacked. Because of this reason, Hitler made a pact with the Soviet Union known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

After all this movements, Hitler finally decides to attack Poland in September the 1^st of 1939. This invasion was really fast that got the name of the “Blitzkrieg” attack, in English meaning “lightning war”. Through this action, France and Great Britain Finally noticed that Hitler was reaching a very dark objective, and if he accomplished that goal, the world was going to be very hardly affected, so on September 3, with Germany's forces penetrating deeper into Poland, Great Britain and France both declared war on Germany.

After ending the World War II there were disagreements and that is what shaped the Cold War. Germany was weakened by USSR in order to promote communism while the west side allies (USA, UK, France) wanted to reassert democracy and rebuild the German industry as a fortification against communists ideologies. After 1947 Germany was divided into East and West sectors, the division was formalized when the Berlin Wall was made in 1961. Rapid militarization proceed on both sides of the East and West, Germany became the front line in the Cold War. East Germany was disintegrated and the reunification of East and West Germany took place in 1990.

Bibliography:

Spielvogel, Jackson. World History Modern Times. M.Ed. Dinah Zike. Glencoe/ McGraw-Gill, 2008

"Cold War." GCSE Modern World History. Web. 14 Apr. 2011. <http://www.johndclare.net/cold_war1_Germany.htm>.