Download Germany Political and Economic Reunion - 5thgrade

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.
The Cold War
•
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.
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.