Defeat and occupation, 1945-1949

Week 15, February 3

German destruction of Murmansk, 1943 (Yevgeny Khaldei)

Germans losing the war

• Battle of Kursk, summer 1943, last German offensive in the East Jews and other victims locked in the continent killing went on until May 1945

• D-Day, Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944• Warsaw uprising, August 1944• Operation Market Garden, Sep 1944: “a bridge too far”• Seelower Höhen/Battle of Seelow Heights, April 45• Torgau: Americans meet Soviets at the Elbe• May 8: German capitulation

Torgau, April 25, 1945

Soviet flag over the Reichstag(Yevgeny Khaldei)

Destruction of Berlin

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/288915/Foreign-Affair-A-Movie-Clip-One-Thing-At-A-Time.html

(A Foreign Affair, dir. Billy Wilder, 1948)

Sexual assaults of Allied soldiers

Four zones of occupied Germany

Four zones in Berlin

Nuremberg trials

(New) political parties

• CDU/CSU – social conservative Christian party• FDP -- liberals• SED (merged SPD and KPD in the East

Germany)• SPD in West Germany• System of large parties, unlike Weimar

Trümmerfrauen (rubble women)

Iron Curtain

Berlin blockade: Raising bomber

New lands