vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
History of Germany (1945–90)
A series of people 's congresses were called in 1948 and early 1949 by the SED . Under Soviet direction , a constitution was drafted on 30 May 1949 , and adopted on 7 October , the day when East Germany was formally proclaimed . The People 's Chamber ( Volkskammer ) -- the lower house of the East German parliament -- and an upper house -- the States Chamber ( Länderkammer ) -- were created . ( The Länderkammer was abolished again in 1958 . ) On 11 October 1949 , the two houses elected Wilhelm Pieck as President , and an SED government was set up . The Soviet Union and its East European allies immediately recognized East Germany , although it remained largely unrecognized by noncommunist countries until 1972 -- 73 . East Germany established the structures of a single - party , centralized , communist state . On 23 July 1952 , the traditional Länder were abolished and , in their place , 14 Bezirke ( districts ) were established . Even though other parties formally existed , effectively , all government control was in the hands of the SED , and almost all important government positions were held by SED members .
Cold War
Britain , France , the United States , Canada and other eight western European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949 , establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ) . That August , the first Soviet atomic device was detonated in Semipalatinsk , Kazakh SSR . Following Soviet refusals to participate in a German rebuilding effort set forth by western European countries in 1948 , the US , Britain and France spearheaded the establishment of West Germany from the three Western zones of occupation in April 1949 . The Soviet Union proclaimed its zone of occupation in Germany the German Democratic Republic that October .
Allies of World War II
Romania had initially been a member of the Axis powers but switched allegiance upon facing invasion by the Soviet Union . In a radio broadcast to the Romanian people and army on the night of 23 August 1944 King Michael issued a cease - fire , proclaimed Romania 's loyalty to the Allies , announced the acceptance of an armistice ( to be signed on 12 September ) offered by Great Britain , the United States , and the USSR , and declared war on Germany . The coup accelerated the Red Army 's advance into Romania , but did not avert a rapid Soviet occupation and capture of about 130,000 Romanian soldiers , who were transported to the Soviet Union where many perished in prison camps . The armistice was signed three weeks later on 12 September 1944 , on terms virtually dictated by the Soviet Union . Under the terms of the armistice , Romania announced its unconditional surrender to the USSR and was placed under occupation of the Allied forces with the Soviet Union as their representative , in control of media , communication , post , and civil administration behind the front . Tannu
History of the United Kingdom
Peace was agreed to at the end of 1814 , but Andrew Jackson , unaware of this , won a great victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 ( news took several weeks to cross the Atlantic before the advent of steam ships ) . Ratification of the Treaty of Ghent ended the war in February 1815 . The major result was the permanent defeat of the Indian allies the British had counted upon . The US - Canada border was demilitarised by both countries , and peaceful trade resumed , although worries of an American conquest of Canada persisted into the 1860s .
Civil–military relations
By the summer of 1950 , the armed forces of the United States had fewer than 1.5 million personnel on active duty , down from a high of 12 million in 1945 . By the next year , however , in response to North Korea 's invasion of South Korea , the size of the U.S. military was again on the rise , doubling to more than 3.2 million personnel . Reaching a high of 3.6 million in 1953 , the total number of personnel on active duty in the U.S. military never again dropped below two million during the 40 - plus years of the Cold War . After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union , the size of the active - duty force had , by 1999 , dropped to just under 1.4 million personnel . As of February 28 , 2009 , a total of 1,398,378 men and women remain on active duty in the U.S. armed forces .
Military history of the United States during World War II
Following the Allied victory in Sicily , Italian public sentiment swung against the war and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini . He was deposed in a coup , and the Allies struck quickly , hoping resistance would be slight . The first Allied troops landed on the Italian peninsula on 3 September 1943 and Italy surrendered on 8 September , however the Italian Social Republic was established soon afterwards . The first American troops landed at Salerno on 9 September 1943 , by U.S. 5th Army , however German troops in Italy were prepared and after the Allied troops at Salerno had consolidated their beachhead , The Germans launched fierce counterattacks . However they failed to destroy the beachhead and retreated on 16 September and in October 1943 began preparing a series of defensive lines across central Italy . The US 5th Army and other Allied armies broke through the first two lines ( Volturno and the Barbara Line ) in October and November 1943 . As winter approached , the Allies made slow progress due to the weather and the difficult terrain against the heavily defended German Winter Line , they did however manage to breakthrough the Bernhardt Line in January 1944 . By early 1944 the Allied attention had turned to the western front and the Allies were taking heavy losses trying to breakthrough the Winter line at Monte Cassino . The Allies Landed at Anzio on 22 January 1944 with the aim of outflanking the Gustav line and pulling Axis forces out of it so other allied armies could breakthrough . After slow progress , the Germans counterattacked in February but failed to stamp out the Allies , after months of stalemate , the Allies broke out in May 1944 and Rome fell to the Allies on 4 June 1944 . Following the Normandy invasion in on 6 June 1944 , the Equivalent of seven US and French divisions were pulled out of Italy to Participate in Operation Dragoon : the allied landings in southern France , despite this the remaining US forces in Italy with other Allied forces pushed up to the Gothic line in northern Italy , the last major defensive line . From August 1944 to March 1945 the Allies managed to breach the formidable defenses but they narrowly failed to break out into the Lombardy Plains before the winter weather closed in and made further progress impossible . In April 1945 the Allies broke through the remaining Axis positions in Operation Grapeshot ending the Italian Campaign on 2 May 1945 , US forces in mainland Italy suffered between 114,000 and over 119,000 casualties .
History of Germany (1945–90)
In the Soviet occupation zone , the Social Democratic Party was forced to merge with the Communist Party in April 1946 to form a new party , the Socialist Unity Party ( Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands or SED ) . The October 1946 elections resulted in coalition governments in the five Land ( state ) parliaments with the SED as the undisputed leader .
History of Germany (1945–90)
East Germany was at first occupied by and later ( May 1955 ) allied with the Soviet Union .
History of Germany (1945–90)
The 1952 Stalin Note proposed German reunification and superpower disengagement from Central Europe but Britain , France , and the United States rejected the offer as insincere . Also , West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer preferred `` Westintegration '' , rejecting `` experiments '' .
History of Germany (1945–90)
With the formation of a separate East German communist state in October 1949 , the Socialist Unity Party faced a huge range of problems . Not only were the cities in ruins , much of the productive machinery and equipment had been seized by the Soviet occupation force and transported to The Soviet Union in order to make some kind of reconstruction possible . While West Germany received loans and other financial assistance from the United States , the GDR was in the role of an exporter of goods to the USSR -- a role that its people could ill afford but which they could not avoid .
History of Germany (1945–90)
In January 1987 , the Kohl - Genscher government was returned to office , but the FDP and the Greens gained at the expense of the larger parties . Kohl 's CDU and its Bavarian sister party , the CSU , slipped from 48.8 % of the vote in 1983 to 44.3 % . The SPD fell to 37 % ; long - time SPD chairman Brandt subsequently resigned in April 1987 and was succeeded by Hans - Jochen Vogel . The FDP 's share rose from 7 % to 9.1 % , its best showing since 1980 . The Greens ' share rose to 8.3 % from their 1983 share of 5.6 % . Later in 1987 , Kohl had a summit with the East German leader Erich Honecker . Unknown to Kohl , the meeting room had been bugged by the Stasi , and the Stasi tapes of the summit had Kohl saying to Honecker that he did not see any realistic chance of reunification in the foreseeable future .
History of Germany (1945–90)
On 17 June 1953 strikes and demonstrations occurred in 250 towns and cities in the GDR . Between 300,000 and 400,000 workers took part in the strikes , which were specifically directed towards the rescinding of the production quotas and were not an attempt to overthrow the government . The strikers were for the most part convinced that the transformation of the GDR into a socialist state was the proper course to take but that the S.E.D. had taken a wrong turn . The S.E.D. responded with all of the force at its command and also with the help of the Soviet Occupation force . Thousands were arrested , sentenced to jail and many hundreds were forced to leave for West Germany . The S.E.D. later moderated its course but the damage had been done . The real face of the East German regime was revealed . The S.E.D. claimed that the strikes had been instigated by West German agents , but there is no evidence for this . Over 250 strikers were killed , around 100 policemen and some 18 Soviet soldiers died in the uprising ; 17 June was declared a national day of remembrance in West Germany .
Cold War
In the early 1950s , the US worked for the rearmament of West Germany and , in 1955 , secured its full membership of NATO . In May 1953 , Beria , by then in a government post , had made an unsuccessful proposal to allow the reunification of a neutral Germany to prevent West Germany 's incorporation into NATO .
History of Germany (1945–90)
In 1947 , the Saar Protectorate had been established under French control , in the area corresponding to the current German state of Saarland . It was not allowed to join its fellow German neighbors until a plebiscite in 1955 rejected the proposed autonomy . This paved the way for the accession of the Saarland to the Federal Republic of Germany as its 12th state , which went into effect on 1 January 1957 .
History of Germany (1945–90)
In 1969 , Chancellor Willy Brandt announced that West Germany would remain firmly rooted in the Atlantic alliance but would intensify efforts to improve relations with the Eastern Bloc , especially East Germany . West Germany commenced this Ostpolitik , initially under fierce opposition from the conservatives , by negotiating nonaggression treaties with the Soviet Union , Poland , Czechoslovakia , Bulgaria , and Hungary .
History of Germany (1945–90)
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History of Germany (1945–90)
West German authorities made great efforts to end the denazification process that had been started by the occupying powers and to liberate war criminals from prison , including those that had been convicted at the Nuremberg trials , while demarcating the sphere of legitimate political activity against blatant attempts at a political rehabilitation of the Nazi regime .
History of Germany (1945–90)
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History of Germany (1945–90)
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History of Germany (1945–90)
Political life in West Germany was remarkably stable and orderly . The Adenauer era ( 1949 -- 63 ) was followed by a brief period under Ludwig Erhard ( 1963 -- 66 ) who , in turn , was replaced by Kurt Georg Kiesinger ( 1966 -- 69 ) . All governments between 1949 and 1966 were formed by coalitions of the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU ) and Christian Social Union ( CSU ) , either alone or in coalition with the smaller Free Democratic Party ( FDP ) .
Cold War
In 1952 , Stalin repeatedly proposed a plan to unify East and West Germany under a single government chosen in elections supervised by the United Nations if the new Germany were to stay out of Western military alliances , but this proposal was turned down by the Western powers . Some sources dispute the sincerity of the proposal .
History of Germany (1945–90)
With the beginning of the Cold war , the Western policies changed as it became evident that a return to operation of the West German industry was needed not only for the restoration of the whole European economy but also for the rearmament of West Germany as an ally against the Soviet Union . On 6 September 1946 United States Secretary of State , James F. Byrnes made the famous speech Restatement of Policy on Germany , also known as the Stuttgart speech , where he amongst other things repudiated the Morgenthau plan - influenced policies and gave the West Germans hope for the future . Reports such as The President 's Economic Mission to Germany and Austria helped to show the U.S. public how bad the situation in Germany really was .
Modern history
Nine months later , on June 22 , 1941 , Germany launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union , which promptly joined the Allies . Germany was now engaged in fighting a war on two fronts . This proved to be a mistake by Germany -- Germany had not successfully carried out the invasion of Britain and the war turned against the Axis .
History of Germany (1945–90)
In the speech Restatement of Policy on Germany , held in Stuttgart on 6 September 1946 , the United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes stated the U.S. motive in detaching the Saar from Germany as `` The United States does not feel that it can deny to France , which has been invaded three times by Germany in 70 years , its claim to the Saar territory '' . The Saar came under French administration in 1947 as the Saar Protectorate , but did return to Germany in January 1957 ( following a referendum ) , with economic reintegration with Germany occurring a few years later .
Marshall Plan
While Germany struggled to recover from the destruction of the War , the recovery effort began in June 1948 , moving on from emergency relief . The currency reform in 1948 was headed by the military government and helped Germany to restore stability by encouraging production . The reform revalued old currency and deposits and introduced new currency . Taxes were also reduced and Germany prepared to remove economic barriers .
History of Germany (1945–90)
Under the Monnet Plan , France -- intent on ensuring that Germany would never again have the strength to threaten it -- began in 1945 to attempt to gain economic control of the remaining German industrial areas with large coal and mineral deposits ; the Rhineland , the Ruhr and the Saar ( Germany 's second largest center of mining and industry , Upper Silesia , had been handed over by the Allies to Poland at the Potsdam conference and the German population was being forcibly expelled ) The Ruhr Agreement had been imposed on the Germans as a condition for permitting them to establish the Federal Republic of Germany . ( see also the International Authority for the Ruhr ( IAR ) ) . French attempts to gain political control of or permanently internationalize the Ruhr were abandoned in 1951 with the West German agreement to pool its coal and steel resources in return for full political control over the Ruhr ( see European Coal and Steel Community ) . With French economic security guaranteed through access to Ruhr coal now permanently ensured France was satisfied . The French attempt to gain economic control over the Saar was temporarily even more successful .
History of Germany (1945–90)
In 1949 the new provisional capital of the Federal Republic of Germany was established in Bonn , after Chancellor Konrad Adenauer intervened emphatically for Bonn ( which was only fifteen kilometers away from his hometown ) . Most of the members of the German constitutional assembly ( as well as the U.S. Supreme Command ) had favored Frankfurt am Main where the Hessian administration had already started the construction of a plenary assembly hall . The Parlamentarischer Rat ( interim parliament ) proposed a new location for the capital , as Berlin was then a special administrative region controlled directly by the allies and surrounded by the Soviet zone of occupation . The former Reichstag building in Berlin was occasionally used as a venue for sittings of the Bundestag and its committees and the Bundesversammlung , the body which elects the German Federal President . However , the Soviets disrupted the use of the Reichstag building by institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany by flying supersonic jets near the building . A number of cities were proposed to host the federal government , and Kassel ( among others ) was eliminated in the first round . Other politicians opposed the choice of Frankfurt out of concern that , as one of the largest German cities and a former centre of the Holy Roman Empire , it would be accepted as a `` permanent '' capital of Germany , thereby weakening the West German population 's support for reunification and the eventual return of the Government to Berlin .
History of Germany (1945–90)
The Soviet Union engaged in a massive industrial dismantling campaign in its occupation zone , much more intensive than that carried out by the Western powers . While the Soviet powers soon realized that their actions alienated the German workforce from the Communist cause , they decided that the desperate economic situation within the Soviet Union took priority over alliance building . The allied leaders had agreed on paper to economic and political cooperation but the issue of reparations dealt an early blow to the prospect of a united Germany in 1945 . The figure of $20 Billion had been floated by Stalin as an adequate recompense but as the United States refused to consider this a basis for negotiation The Soviet Union was left only with the opportunity of extracting its own reparations , at a heavy cost to the East Germans . This was the beginning of the formal split of Germany .
History of Germany (1945–90)
Federal Republic of Germany ( FRG ) , commonly known as West Germany , was a parliamentary democracy with a capitalist economic system and free churches and labour unions . German Democratic Republic ( GDR ) , commonly known as East Germany , was the smaller Marxist -- Leninist socialist republic with its leadership dominated by the Soviet - aligned Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( SED ) in order to retain it within the Soviet sphere of influence .
History of Germany (1945–90)
In October 1961 an initial agreement was signed with the Turkish government and the first Gastarbeiter began to arrive . By 1966 , some 1,300,000 foreign workers had been recruited mainly from Italy , Turkey , Spain , and Greece . By 1971 , the number had reached 2.6 million workers . The initial plan was that single workers would come to Germany , would work for a limited number of years and then return home . The significant differences between wages in their home countries and in Germany led many workers to bring their families and to settle -- at least until retirement -- in Germany . That the German authorities took little notice of the radical changes that these shifts of population structure meant was the cause of considerable debate in later years .
History of Germany (1945–90)
A key item in the occupiers ' agenda was denazification . The swastika and other outward symbols of the Nazi regime were banned , and a Provisional Civil Ensign was established as a temporary German flag . It remained the official flag of the country ( necessary for reasons of international law ) until East Germany and West Germany ( see below ) were independently established in 1949 .
History of Germany (1945–90)
As a consequence of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II , Germany was cut between the two global blocs in the East and West , a period known as the division of Germany . Germany was stripped of its war gains and lost territories in the east to Poland and the Soviet Union . At the end of the war , there were in Germany some eight million foreign displaced persons ; mainly forced laborers and prisoners ; including around 400,000 from the concentration camp system , survivors from a much larger number who had died from starvation , harsh conditions , murder , or being worked to death . Over 10 million German - speaking refugees arrived in Germany from other countries in Central and Eastern Europe . Some 9 million Germans were POWs , many of whom were kept as forced laborers for several years to provide restitution to the countries Germany had devastated in the war , and some industrial equipment was removed as reparations .
Munich Agreement
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany 's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country 's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers , for which a new territorial designation `` Sudetenland '' was coined . The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 ( but dated 29 September ) after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich , Germany , among the major powers of Europe , excluding the Soviet Union . Today , it is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Germany . The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of the Sudetenland in the face of ethnic demands made by Adolf Hitler . The agreement was signed by Germany , France , the United Kingdom and Italy . Sudetenland was of immense strategic importance to Czechoslovakia , as most of its border defenses , and banks were situated there , as well as heavy industrial districts . Part of the borderland was occupied and annexed by Poland .
History of Germany (1945–90)
West Germany was allied with the United States , the United Kingdom , and France . A western democratic country with a `` social market economy '' , the country would from the 1950s onwards come to enjoy prolonged economic growth ( Wirtschaftswunder ) following the Marshall Plan help from the Allies , the currency reform of June 1948 and helped by the fact that the Korean War ( 1950 -- 53 ) led to a worldwide increased demand for goods , where the resulting shortage helped overcome lingering resistance to the purchase of German products .