Germany is No More: Defeat, Occupation, and the Postwar Order

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Southern States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article focuses on a completely back lashed Germany after the Second World War. More people died in the Second World War than in any other conflict before or since. Particularly between the Elbe and the Volga, the Nazi war of extermination left a wasteland of death. This article traces the gradual transformations that came over Germany post 1945. After the ‘unconditional surrender’ of 8 May, 1945 — the formulation was initially coined for the defeated Southern states in the American Civil War — German territories came under the control of the four Allied Powers, creating an ambiguous legal status unprecedented in the history of modern international law. Divided into four major territories, each under the control of the allied forces, Germany was no longer a sovereign state. This article further traces the effects of the post-war era followed by the gradual embracing of democracy. The Cold War and the final descending of peace in the German territory winds up this article.

Public international law in the context of post-German cultural property held within Poland’s borders. A complicated situation or simply a resolution?

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 953-968
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Sierzputowski
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cultural Property ◽  
World War ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Post War ◽  
Polish Government ◽  
Second World ◽  
Complicated Situation

AbstractThe article discusses the complicated situation of post-German cultural property held within Poland’s borders after the Second World War. On 2 August 1945, ‘the Big Three’ decided a new layout of power within Europe. They reached an agreement that Silesia, Pomerania, the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk), and part of East Prussia (Regained Territories) along with all the property which had been left on site, should be a part of Poland. One of the post-war priorities of the Polish Government was to regulate the legal status of post-German cultural property left within these newly-delineated borders. Although the Second World War ended in 1945, there was still a threat that the majority of post-German property could be devastated, destroyed, or even looted. There are some documented cases where such cultural property was seized inter alia by the Red Army and then transported to Russia. Since 1945, Russian museums have exhibited many of these pieces of art. This article addresses the question concerning the legal status of post-German cultural property in light of public international law. Furthermore, the article responds to the question, whether Poland is entitled to restitution of post-German cultural property looted from the Regained Territories.

I

1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 896-901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Lachs
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
Second World ◽  
Shed Light

To write of Philip Jessup means to survey the history of the teaching of international law in the United States throughout the last half century; to cover all important events concerning the birth of international organizations on the morrow of the Second World War; to visit the halls of the General Assembly and the Security Council; to attend meetings of the American Society of International Law and the Institute of International Law, where he so frequently took the floor to shed light on their debates; to attend sittings of the International Court of Justice in the years 1960-1969. I could hardly undertake this task; there are others much more qualified to do so. What I wish to do is to recall him as a great jurist I knew and a delightful human being; in short, a judge and a great friend whom I learned to admire.

scholarly journals The Women’s Question among the Masons of Russian Paris

Literary Fact ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 314-332
Author(s):  
Michela Venditti
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
National Library ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The North ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The article is a introduction to the publication of the minutes of the meetings of the Russian lodge "Northern Star" in Paris, concerning the discussion on the admission of women to freemasonry. The proposed archival materials, deposited in the National Library of France in Paris, date back to 1945 and 1948. The women's issue became more relevant after the Second World War due to the fact that Masonic lodges had to recover and recruit new adherents. The article offers a brief overview of the women's issue in the history of Freemasonry in general, and in the Russian emigrant environment in particular. One of the founders of the North Star lodge, M. Osorgin, spoke out in the 1930s against the admission of women. In the discussions of the 1940s, the Masonic brothers repeat his opinion almost literally. Women's participation in Freemasonry is rejected using either gender or social arguments. Russian Freemasons mostly cite gender reasons: women have no place in Freemasonry because they are not men. Freemasonry, according to Osorgin, is a cult of the male creative principle, which is not peculiar to women. Discussions about the women's issue among Russian emigrant Freemasons are also an important source for studying their literary work; in particular, the post-war literary works of Gaito Gazdanov are closely connected with the Masonic ideology.

scholarly journals Prace konserwatorskie i badania architektoniczne klauzury dawnego opactwa cysterskiego w Krzeszowie po drugiej wojnie światowej

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 341-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Łużyniecka ◽  
Monika Dąbkowska
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

This article is about conservational and study works on the enclosure of an old cystercian abbey in Krzeszów, that were made after the Second World War. Post-war history of conservation of this monument exhibits two periods. The first one covers 50 post-war years, where only routine maintenance was done. The latter period began at the beginning of the XXI century. Since then fragments of the building were renovated piece by piece. Current cultural and touristic needs were taken into consideration.Revalorization of Krzeszów Abbey in years 2007-2008 and since 2014 revealed the basements and relicts of the groundfloor of the south and west wings of the complex. At the same time the architectural studies were made, resulting in new conclusions of transformations of this building.

Colossus, Codebreaking, and the Digital Age

Colossus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Budiansky
Keyword(s):  
Digital Age ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The paths that took men and women from their ordinary lives and deposited them on the doorstep of the odd profession of cryptanalysis were always tortuous, accidental, and unpredictable. The full story of the Colossus, the pioneering electronic device developed by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) to break German teleprinter ciphers in the Second World War, is fundamentally a story of several of these accidental paths converging at a remarkable moment in the history of electronics—and of the wartime urgency that set these men and women on these odd paths. Were it not for the wartime necessity of codebreaking, and were it not for particular statistical and logical properties of the teleprinter ciphers that were so eminently suited to electronic analysis, the history of computing might have taken a very different course. The fact that Britain’s codebreakers cracked the high-level teleprinter ciphers of the German Army and Luftwaffe high command during the Second World War has been public knowledge since the 1970s. But the recent declassification of new documents about Colossus and the teleprinter ciphers, and the willingness of key participants to discuss their roles more fully, has laid bare as never before the technical challenges they faced—not to mention the intense pressures, the false steps, and the extraordinary risks and leaps of faith along the way. It has also clarified the true role that the Colossus machines played in the advent of the digital age. Though they were neither general-purpose nor stored-program computers themselves, the Colossi sparked the imaginations of many scientists, among them Alan Turing and Max Newman, who would go on to help launch the post-war revolution that ushered in the age of the digital, general-purpose, stored-program electronic computer. Yet the story of Colossus really begins not with electronics at all, but with codebreaking; and to understand how and why the Colossi were developed and to properly place their capabilities in historical context, it is necessary to understand the problem they were built to solve, and the people who were given the job of solving it.

Building a Case against the War Criminals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Aszkielowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Second World War ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
World War ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Long before the Second World War ended, the Allies were planning to prosecute Axis war criminals, including both those in positions of leadership and the perpetrators of individual crimes. There was no standing war crimes court at the end of the Second World War, however, and the post-war trials were a watershed in international law. For the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo, Allied planners drew on the development of international humanitarian law and international agreements signed by the combatants over the decades preceding the war. The vast majority of war criminals who were prosecuted did not face the court at Nuremberg or Tokyo: they appeared before national military tribunals which were conducted according to each prosecuting country’s war crimes law. The Australian War Crimes Act passed through the parliament in October 1945, shortly before trials began.

5. From the End of the War to the Schuman Plan (the late 1940s to the early 1950s)

2014 ◽  
pp. 85-102
Author(s):  
Ian Bache ◽  
Simon Bulmer ◽  
Stephen George ◽  
Owen Parker
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
European Unity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Schuman Plan ◽  
Second World

This chapter charts the long history of plans for European unity, from the end of the Second World War to the Hague Congress, the Cold War, the Schuman Plan, and the Treaty of Paris. It also considers European federalism and the practical reasons why some moves to European unity found favour with the new governments of the post-war period: the threat of communism and the emergence of the Cold War; the so-called German Problem; and the need to ensure adequate supplies of coal for the post-war economic reconstruction. As a solution to these intersecting problems, Jean Monnet, came up with a proposal that paved the way for the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community. The chapter examines Monnet’s proposal, national reactions to it, and the negotiations that led to the creation of the first of the European communities.

Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some Reflections on the 1945–8 Conjuncture

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Bethell ◽  
Ian Roxborough
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The importance of the years of political and social upheaval immediately following the end of the Second World War and coinciding with the beginnings of the Cold War, that is to say, the period from 1944 or 1945 to 1948 or 1949, for the history of Europe (East and West), the Near and Middle East, Asia (Japan, China, South and East Asia), even Africa (certainly South Africa) in the second half of the twentieth century has long been generally recognised. In recent years historians of the United States, which had not, of course, been a theatre of war and which alone among the major belligerents emerged from the Second World War stronger and more prosperous, have begun to focus attention on the political, social and ideological conflict there in the postwar period – and the long term significance for the United States of the basis on which it was resolved. In contrast, except for Argentina, where Perón's rise to power has always attracted the interest of historians, the immediate postwar years in Latin America, which had been relatively untouched by, and had played a relatively minor role in, the Second World War, remain to a large extent neglected. It is our view that these years constituted a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America just as they did for much of the rest of the world. In a forthcoming collection of case studies, which we are currently editing, the main features of the immediate postwar period in Latin America, and especially the role played by labour and the Left, will be explored in some detail, country by country.1In this article, somewhat speculative and intentionally polemical, we present the broad outlines of our thesis.

«Premature Resisters». Spanish Contribution to the French National Defence Campaignin 1939/1940

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Gaspar Celaya
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
Spanish History ◽  
Military Contractors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World ◽  
National Defence

«Premature Resisters». Spanish Contribution to the French National Defence Campaign in 1939/1940 Thousands of Spaniards actively contributed to the defence of France in 1939/1940, whether as military contractors, legionnaires or soldiers of the Regiment de Marche de Volontaires Étrangers (RMVE). This paper focuses on three elements of their contributions. First, it investigates the importance of French internment camps for Spanish refugees’ that became key recruitment grounds for soldiers and labourers. Secondly, it will analyse the importance of the French General Staff's decision to veto the creation of Spanish autonomous units within the regular French armed forces, and how this compared to the situation of Polish and Czechoslovakian volunteers. Thirdly, the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 will be highlighted as a crucial turning point for French attitudes towards the recruitment of Spanish contractors and soldiers. Despite those changes in attitude, the Spanish contribution to France's defence in 1939/1940 – and to the French resistance – was never recognised by politicians in the post-war era. This is a fourth aspect of the entangled Franco-Spanish history of the Second World War that will be analysed in this paper, thereby highlighting how the memory battles between French Gaullists and Communists, reinforced by the context of the Cold War, left little space for the commemorative inclusion of «outsiders».

An Unexpected Path to Modernisation: The Case of German Artisans during the Second World War

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Mckitrick
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

On 10 July 1950, at the celebrations marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Wiesbaden Chamber of Artisans (Handwerkskammer), its president Karl Schöppler announced: ‘Today industry is in no way the enemy of Handwerk. Handwerk is not the enemy of industry.…’ These words, which accurately reflected the predominant point of view of the post-war chamber membership, and certainly of its politically influential leadership, marked a new era in the social, economic and political history of German artisans and, it is not too much to say, in the history of class relations in (West) Germany in general. Schöppler's immediate frame of reference was the long-standing and extremely consequential antipathy on the part of artisans towards industrial capitalism, an antipathy of which his listeners were well aware.

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