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The Potsdam conference, where the victorious Allies drew up plans for the future of Germany, noted in article XIII of the Potsdam Agreement on 1 August 1945 that "the transfer to Germany of German populations...in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary will have to be undertaken"; "wild expulsion" was already going on.
In 1942 Roosevelt proposed becoming, with China, the Four Policemen of world peace. Although the 'Four Powers' were reflected in the wording of the Declaration by United Nations, Roosevelt's proposal was not initially supported by Churchill or Stalin. In 1943, the Declaration was signed by Iraq, Iran, Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia. A Tripartite Treaty of Alliance with Britain and the USSR formalised Iran's assistance to the Allies. [33] In Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian dictator Getúlio Vargas was considered near to fascist ideas, but realistically joined the United Nations after their evident successes. [ citation needed]
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This difference of an hour can, of course, be explained by the difference between Central European time and British time, but it does not alter the curious fact that “officially” the war ended for Germany at 11 pm on Tuesday, May 8, and for us at one minute after midnight on the morning of Wednesday, May 9. If this were all, the matter would be simple enough. It has, however, been further complicated by the Russian insistence on a second ceremony in Berlin. The reason for this is plain. There was nothing wrong with the surrender at Rheims, but the Russians felt that it would impress their defeat more strongly on the German people if the ceremony took place in Berlin, their capital, and if the document were signed by Field Marshal Keitel himself, the Chief of the German High Command and the best known of the Nazi generals. There was also the fact that, surrender or not, the Germans were still resisting the Red Army in Czechoslovakia. The battlefield of the Great War widens every day. Allied fleets, preparing a route to Constantinople have successfully started the bombardment of the strong interiors of the Dardanelles. Assisted by hydroplanes on reconnaissance, the Anglo-French fleet destroyed the first and second group of forts defending the Strait. They blew up the gunpowder store of Neohari and the lighthouse Kavaphonie. Meanwhile, fishing boats manned by sailors of the fleet methodically removed Turkish torpedoes. Document 500: Communiqué Issued at the End of the Conference". Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Malta and Yalta 1945. U.S. Department of State. 12 February 1945. Archived from the original on 6 August 2023. The Soviet Union recognised the Republic of China but urged reconciliation with the Chinese Communist Party and inclusion of Communists in the government. [64] The Soviet Union also urged military and cooperation between Nationalist China and Communist China during the war. [64]
During the early part of 1945, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela, Uruguay, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria (these latter two French colonies had been declared independent states by British occupation troops, despite protests by Pétain and later De Gaulle) and Ecuador became signatories. Ukraine and Belarus, which were not independent states but parts of the Soviet Union, were accepted as members of the United Nations as a way to provide greater influence to Stalin, who had only Yugoslavia as a communist partner in the alliance. Asia and Oceania The fall of Damascus to the Allies, late June 1941. A car carrying Free French commanders General Georges Catroux and General Paul Louis Le Gentilhomme enters the city, escorted by French Circassian cavalry ( Gardes Tcherkess). Main articles: Former eastern territories of Germany and Saar Protectorate Cover of the 1947 Saar constitution The Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the ensuing Great Depression, led to political unrest across Europe, especially in Germany, where revanchist nationalists blamed the severity of the economic crisis on the Treaty of Versailles. The far-right Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler, which had formed shortly after the peace treaty, exploited growing popular resentment and desperation to become the dominant political movement in Germany. By 1933, they gained power and rapidly established a totalitarian regime known as Nazi Germany. The Nazi regime demanded the immediate cancellation of the Treaty of Versailles and made claims over German-populated Austria and the German-populated territories of Czechoslovakia. The likelihood of war was high, but none of the major powers had the appetite for another conflict; many governments sought to ease tensions through nonmilitary strategies such as appeasement. The American zone in Southern Germany consisted of Bavaria (without the Rhine Palatinate Region and the Lindau District, both part of the French zone) and Hesse (without Rhenish Hesse and Montabaur Region, both part of the French zone) with a new capital in Wiesbaden, and of northern parts of Württemberg and Baden. Those formed Württemberg-Baden and became northern portions of the present-day German state of Baden-Württemberg founded in 1952.
The Cyprus Regiment was formed by the British Government during the Second World War and made part of the British Army structure. It was mostly Greek Cypriot volunteers and Turkish Cypriot inhabitants of Cyprus but also included other Commonwealth nationalities. On a brief visit to Cyprus in 1943, Winston Churchill praised the "soldiers of the Cyprus Regiment who have served honourably on many fields from Libya to Dunkirk". About 30,000 Cypriots served in the Cyprus Regiment. The regiment was involved in action from the very start and served at Dunkirk, in the Greek Campaign (about 600 soldiers were captured in Kalamata in 1941), North Africa ( Operation Compass), France, the Middle East and Italy. Many soldiers were taken prisoner especially at the beginning of the war and were interned in various PoW camps ( Stalag) including Lamsdorf ( Stalag VIII-B), Stalag IVC at Wistritz bei Teplitz and Stalag 4b near Most in the Czech Republic. The soldiers captured in Kalamata were transported by train to prisoner of war camps. Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing colony, having received responsible government in 1923. It was not a sovereign dominion. It governed itself internally and controlled its own armed forces, but had no diplomatic autonomy, and, therefore, was officially at war as soon as Britain was at war. The Southern Rhodesian colonial government issued a symbolic declaration of war nevertheless on 3 September 1939, which made no difference diplomatically but preceded the declarations of war made by all other British dominions and colonies. [36] American colonies and dependencies British India included the areas and peoples covered by later India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and (until 1937) Burma/Myanmar, which later became a separate colony.
In 1946, the Norwegian Brigade Group in Germany had 4,000 soldiers in Hanover; amongst whom was future Chancellor Willy Brandt (then a Norwegian citizen) as press attaché. France was not invited to the Potsdam Conference. As a result, it chose to adopt some decisions of the Potsdam Agreements and to dismiss others. France maintained the position that it did not approve post-war expulsions and that therefore it was not responsible to accommodate and nourish the destitute expellees in its zone. While the few war-related refugees who had reached the area to become the French zone before July 1945 were taken care of, the French military government for Germany refused to absorb post-war expellees deported from the East into its zone. In December 1946, the French military government for Germany absorbed into its zone German refugees from Denmark, where 250,000 Germans had found a refuge from the Soviets by sea vessels between February and May 1945. [16] These clearly were war-related refugees from the eastern parts of Germany however, and not post-war expellees. Up until 1936, Mussolini had provided the Nationalists with Italian military air and naval missions to help the Nationalists fight against Japanese incursions and communist insurgents. [60] Italy also held strong commercial interests and a strong commercial position in China supported by the Italian concession in Tianjin. [60] However, after 1936 the relationship between the Nationalist Government and Italy changed due to a Japanese diplomatic proposal to recognize the Italian Empire that included occupied Ethiopia within it in exchange for Italian recognition of Manchukuo, Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano accepted this offer by Japan, and on 23 October 1936 Japan recognized the Italian Empire and Italy recognized Manchukuo, as well as discussing increasing commercial links between Italy and Japan. [61]The ports of Bremen (on the lower Weser River) and Bremerhaven (at the Weser estuary of the North Sea) were also placed under U.S. control because of the U.S. request to have certain toeholds in Northern Germany. The Soviet Union, which had been diplomatically and economically isolated by much of the world, had sought an alliance with the western powers, but Hitler preempted a potential war with Stalin by signing the Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact in August 1939. In addition to preventing a two-front war that had battered its forces in the last world war, the agreement secretly divided the independent states of Central and Eastern Europe between the two powers and assured adequate oil supplies for the German war machine. Bishop Butler of the Analogy would walk for hours in his garden at Bristol on the darkest nights pondering the narrow line which divides the rational from the insane. On one such occasion he stopped short and exclaimed to his companion
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