Block 6

The Wall was erected by the GDR from 13 August 1961 to stop the mass exodus to the West. By then some 2.7 million people had left East Germany. It fell on 9 November 1989.

National Socialist rule lasted from Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933 until the unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945: twelve years.

On 8 May 1945 the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht took effect: the end of the Second World War in Europe. The day is now marked in Germany as the day of liberation. Hitler had already died on 30 April 1945.

The Second World War ended in 1945: in Europe on 8 May with the German surrender, and in Asia in September with Japan's. The two German states were founded in 1949, and the Wall was built in 1961.

The National Socialists were in power from 1933 to 1945. From 1888 to 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm II reigned, and from 1949 to 1963 Konrad Adenauer was Federal Chancellor.

Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. A few weeks later the Enabling Act of 24 March 1933 sidelined parliament: the transition to dictatorship.

In 1933 the National Socialists established a dictatorship: parties and trade unions were banned, fundamental rights suspended, the press brought into line, and political opponents persecuted. There were no free elections after that.

The "Third Reich" (1933–1945) was a dictatorship with a single permitted party, no separation of powers, no free press, and no independent courts.

There were no free elections under National Socialism: from July 1933 the NSDAP was the only permitted party. Press censorship, arbitrary arrests, and the persecution and murder of Jews were, by contrast, defining features of the regime.

The Second World War lasted from 1939 to 1945. It began with the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. The First World War ran from 1914 to 1918.

The Nazi state practised state racism: the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 turned racial ideology into binding law and led through disenfranchisement and persecution to the Holocaust. Freedom of expression and of religion had been abolished.

Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg carried out the assassination attempt on Hitler at the "Wolf's Lair" on 20 July 1944. The coup failed and Stauffenberg was shot the same night. He is regarded as a symbol of the military resistance.

On the night of 9–10 November 1938, National Socialists and their supporters destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses across the Reich. These November pogroms marked the shift from exclusion to open violence.

On 9 November 1938 the November pogroms began: synagogues burned, Jewish shops and homes were ransacked, and around 30,000 Jewish men were deported to concentration camps. The Second World War did not begin until 1 September 1939.

Konrad Adenauer (CDU) was the first Federal Chancellor, from 1949 to 1963. His term stands for integration with the West, NATO membership, and economic reconstruction. Brandt, Kiesinger, and Schmidt came later.

"Wir sind das Volk" ("We are the people") was the chant of the Monday demonstrations in autumn 1989, which began in Leipzig and spread across the GDR. This peaceful protest led to the fall of the Wall on 9 November 1989.

The four Allied occupying powers were the USA, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France. From 1945 they divided Germany into four occupation zones and Berlin into four sectors.

Japan was not an occupying power but itself an enemy of the Allies, and was occupied by the USA after its own surrender in 1945. The four occupying powers in Germany were the USA, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France.

The Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949: the Basic Law came into force on 23 May 1949. A few months later, on 7 October 1949, the GDR was created in the Soviet zone.

Under National Socialism all parties except the NSDAP were banned: from July 1933 a law prohibited forming new parties. Personal freedoms, press freedom, and protection of human dignity did not exist; they arrived only with the Basic Law in 1949.

In a social market economy, supply and demand set prices in principle, but the state intervenes to correct outcomes: through social insurance, dismissal protection, a minimum wage, competition law, and taxation. It combines market freedom with social balance.

The GDR was founded on 7 October 1949 in the Soviet occupation zone. The Federal Republic had emerged a few months earlier from the three western zones (American, British, and French).

The Federal Republic is one of the six founding states of European integration: the Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and the Treaties of Rome in 1957 (EEC), from which today's EU grew. Germany joined NATO only in 1955 and the UN in 1973; the Warsaw Pact was the Eastern bloc alliance.

The GDR was founded on 7 October 1949, about four months after the Federal Republic. This completed the division of Germany into two states, which lasted until reunification in 1990.

After World War II, Germany was divided in 1945 into four occupation zones: American (south), British (northwest), French (southwest), and Soviet (east). In 1949 the three western zones became the Federal Republic (FRG) and the Soviet zone became the GDR (East Germany).

The division followed geography: Britain occupied the north-west, the USA the south, France the south-west along its own border, and the Soviet Union the entire east. Which later became the GDR.

Berlin was divided into four sectors in 1945 (American, British, French, and Soviet), even though the city lay in the middle of the Soviet occupation zone. That island position is exactly what made West Berlin so vulnerable in the Cold War.

From June 1948 the Soviet Union blockaded all land and water routes into West Berlin to force the Western powers out of the city. They responded with the airlift: for almost a year, "raisin bombers" supplied two million people from the air.

The war in Europe ended officially with the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht, signed on 7 May in Reims and on 8 May 1945 in Berlin-Karlshorst. Hitler's suicide on 30 April had not yet ended the war.

Konrad Adenauer was the first Federal Chancellor, from 1949 to 1963. Ludwig Erhard succeeded him in 1963, Willy Brandt became chancellor in 1969, and Gerhard Schröder in 1998.