There is an old Chinese saying: the initiator has no consequences?
As the culprit of World War II, the German Nazis were the head of the Axis powers and brought the most disasters to the people of the world.
In 1945, Hitler committed suicide under siege by the Soviet Red Army, and World War II ended with the unconditional surrender of Germany.
But for Germany, their nightmare is not over, but has just begun in another form.
Faced with the culprit who started the two world wars, how did the victorious powers of World War II deal with Germany?
Cut off territory
After World War II, Germany lost all the land east of the Nice-Oder-Szczecin Line and shrank its land area to 357,000 square kilometers.
Stalin proposed the "Curson Line" proposed in 1919 as the border between the Soviet Union and Poland, which was controlled by soviet forces and whose government could only swallow its teeth and swallow it.
After the operation of territorial loss, Poland lost 170,000 square kilometers of territory in the east, 110,000 square kilometers in Germany, and 60,000 square kilometers less.
One-third of the northern part of East Prussia (including Königsberg) was incorporated into the Soviet Union, becoming the Kaliningrad region of Russia and the Memel region of Lithuania, respectively, the remaining Silesia became Polish territory, and the territory of Germany after World War II directly shrank from 430,000 square kilometers to 357,000 square kilometers.
Demolition of industry
The country that suffered the most losses in World War II was the Soviet Union, and the country's industrial facilities were severely damaged by the war.
Stalin understood that after the war, Germany would also be doomed and would not be able to pay war reparations to the Soviet Union.
The Soviets had to start with German industrial equipment to make up for the losses suffered by the Soviet Union.
Therefore, the Soviet army fought hard along the way, at the cost of their lives, at a very high rate of death, to advance to Berlin, Germany, before the Allies; and attacked the German industrial area while the iron was hot.
It should be known that Germany's industrial areas are strategic locations for the German army, and they are heavily guarded.
After the Soviets occupied the eastern part of Berlin, they could not wait to start.
Soviet experts weren't there, and the soldiers didn't know what the equipment was for.
As long as it was an iron guy, they loaded the car and shipped it back to the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union dismantled almost all the industrial equipment in its own control areas, and even the bicycles of the residents were pulled back into the Soviet Union.
The Soviets plundered German equipment for a full 3 years.
Under the frenzied relocation of the Soviet Union, the production capacity of the Soviet-occupied areas of Germany in peacetime in 1946 fell by about 80% compared with 1944.
The Soviet Union officially recognized that there were 676 enterprises demolished by the Soviet army in the Soviet-occupied areas; Western scholars believe that this number is at least more than 2,000.
Expulsion of the people
As mentioned earlier, according to the Potsdam Agreement reached by the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain, the Soviet Union and Poland occupied more than 100,000 square kilometers of German land.
According to the tradition of the Russians, they are only interested in the land, and the indigenous people who live in the land are either physically eliminated or expelled.
After a portion of eastern Germany was ceded to the Soviet Union and Poland, both countries invariably began to expel the German population.
Since then, the rest of Europe has also scrambled to join the ranks of expelling German residents. According to incomplete statistics, in the year after the end of the war, more than five million Germans were expelled by Poland, nearly three million Germans were forced to leave Czechoslovakia, and nearly two million Germans were expelled from other Central European countries.
Forced labour
As a result of the war, young and middle-aged people in various countries suffered heavy casualties and a very short labor force, which seriously affected economic recovery and post-war reconstruction.
As a result, the Soviets forced millions of Germans, including prisoners of war, to mine and build railways and perform heavy manual labor.
The British also let the prisoners of war stranded in Germany help them build their homes.
At the 1948 London Olympics, a stadium was built, and 170,000 prisoners of war went to the fields to farm and produce rations for themselves.
Compete for talent
While countries are scrambling to expel Germans, one country does the opposite, poaching people from Germany into its own country.
The people they dug up were not ordinary Germans, but scientists. As a result of the defeat, all Germans became slaves to the country, and a large number of the German elite, including scientists, were deprived of freedom.
The U.S. government has set attractive conditions for German scientists, coercing them to come to the United States.
The famous German rocket expert Werner von Braun single-handedly planned the surrender of the entire Penemünde development team (including 500 senior scientists) to the Americans.
In the operation, a total of 126 rocket researchers from Penemünde were secretly sent to the U.S. mainland.
These German scientists made a significant contribution to the rise of the United States.
In 1969, the first manned spacecraft, Apollo 11, landed on the moon, thanks to Weiner von Braun.
Not to be left behind when the Soviets learned of the U.S. poaching operation, the Soviets orchestrated Operation Osavagen to rob German scientists.
By October 1946, the Soviet Union had recruited more than 2,000 German scientists and technicians.
In order to prevent complications, the Ministry of internal affairs even bypassed the Soviet garrison in Germany and directly used 92 trains to transport these German experts and their families.
Persecution of civilians
The greatest retaliation of European countries against Germany was the violation of German civilians and women.
Realistically speaking, not all Germans are fascist fanatics.
Under dictators, the broad masses of civilians have no freedom of choice.
However, after Germany's defeat in the war, the Soviet Union and other countries did not spare German civilians.
Massacres of German civilians occurred from time to time, and aggression against German women was everywhere.
In 2008, the famous German director Max Faberbück made a film called "The Woman of Berlin", which truly recreated that unforgettable history.
According to incomplete statistics, in the three years between the fall of Berlin by the Soviet army to the Berlin crisis, about 2 million German women were persecuted by the Soviet army.
In Berlin alone, 180,000 German women were violently abused by the Soviet army, and nearly 9,000 of them committed suicide because they could not bear the humiliation.
The youngest of them is only 12 years old, and the oldest is even 71 years old.
A German victim named Leoni recalled that in August 1945, she was raped by 17 Soviet troops.
Atrocities occurred to varying degrees, both in the Soviet Union and in other countries.
In baden-Württemberg, near France, thousands of German women were herded into the subway by French soldiers and tortured for days and nights.
The rape of German civilians by French soldiers was frequent. In the southern German border city of Konstanz alone, there have been 385 rapes.
In a german county called Freudenstadt, there have been more than 200 rapes.
The French general defended this by saying that these inferior fellows were not native French, but algerians in their colonies.
Although they were dressed in French military uniforms, they were still African in nature, which was very different from the Gentlemanly Style of France.
The bestiality of raping civilians has also occurred in the US military.
A priest named Wayne Gonde recalled:
"The following sad things happened in the course of the American march. They raped a married woman, an unmarried woman and a pure and flawless sixteen-and-a-half-year-old girl. ”
The head of the U.S. occupation forces defended this by a group of drunken American soldiers.
All in all, Berlin at that time had become a hell on earth.
The German Nazis inflicted great harm on the peoples of Europe, and many people believed that blood debts were paid in blood, and there was no need to worry about any international conventions.
Thus, after the war, retribution began against the German officers and soldiers who laid down their arms and the unarmed German people.
In the german village of Nemosdorf, which was first occupied by the Soviet Union, none of the villagers survived, and men, women and children died under the butcher's knife of the Soviet army.
This is the treatment of civilians, and the treatment of prisoners of war is even more ruthless.
According to statistics, more than 3 million German prisoners were held in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps at that time, and these prisoners were severely punished by the Soviet government while working as coolies.
Many German prisoners of war were considered heinous and were executed without trial.
The Soviets did not see anything wrong with this, after all, the Execution of Soviet prisoners of war by germany was not at all trialable, and their collective hanging of German prisoners of war was carried out at least in broad daylight.
German prisoners of war, who were considered to be mischievous, were tied in their hands and transported in dozens of trucks to the scene of the execution, surrounded by angry Soviet civilians.
At that time, in order to facilitate the viewing of the masses, the gallows were set up more than three meters high.
The Soviets had the ingenuity to lay wooden planks on the truck carriages and drive the German captives to the truck boards.
Then, at the order of the executioners, the truck slowly started, and a series of heart-rending screams sounded on the execution ground.
The lessons of World War II for future generations are profound, and many things are worth reflecting on.
The first thing to say is that any inhumane act that goes beyond international conventions is illegal and highly reprehensible.
If you think that German fascism has brought untold suffering to other peoples, this kind of revenge is justified; then what is the difference between you and the Nazis?
Second, the victims of war are always the people, and to advocate war is to cocoon oneself.
War is a stone, war is cruel and merciless, it will destroy all good, including the homes that people have worked so hard to build.
No one can influence the direction of the war, the ending is often unexpected, and the initiator of the war is not necessarily the victor.
Therefore, those who advocate war will not take guns to the battlefield, and it is ordinary people who suffer.
No matter when and where, we must cherish peace and be careful about war.
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