Lecture 2: Post World War

You will have to watch the video in one go! Very vague lecture, all in
bits and pieces, nothing very solid/concrete.

Some information random, not connected.

The Germans had annexed half of Poland and Russia the other half, hence
Germany and Russia technically did share a border. The Danzig corridor had been
Hitlers main source of motivation, he wanted to seize the Danzig corridor.

Post World War 2, every place which had been dominated by Germany was now
to be liberated. This liberation was done by Russia hence it was just namesake
because Russia was 100 times harsher and pathetic for people. You would choose
Nazi Journey over it any day.

Even before World War 2 ended, tensions were mounting about what would
happen in the aftermath, the long run. A conference took place at Yalta which
marks the beginning of the cold war. This conference took place before the end
of the world war and it was where The Russian Premier Stalin, Britains Winston
Churchill and USA premier - Roosevelt met. The big 3 met.

VIDEO

Germany was able to push back Americans to a certain extent. American General
Field Marshal Arthur McAuliffe and his entire battalion was wounded and were
expecting defeat. Their air-force could not be involved because the weather was
really bad. 15000 of them found themselves defeated by the Germans. Hitler
decided to take them prisoner instead of murdering them. They offer Arthur
terms of peace on the condition of absolute surrender. Arthur responds just the
second time BALLS.

Everybody started laughing, injured or half dead. The skies cleared before
Germany could advance. Germany at this point did not have any air force. Then
came the final assault The Battle of the Bulge.

VIDEO

At the conference, Russians decide when they liberate or rather capture Berlin,
they will take Hitler prisoner, or at least take a lot of Nazis prisoner. Stalin
already has 50,000 Nazis prisoner. In conversation with the other two premiers
he suggests lining them up and shooting them. Roosevelt asks for a war trial, but
Stalin disagrees. 50,000 is a big number. Churchill jokes and says just shoot
49,000. Staling doesnt laugh he feels it is justified to kill 49,000 people.

An episode with Churchill getting drunk on this conference has gone down in
history. A journalist tells Churchill who is drunk Winston, youre drunk, it is
disgusting. He says maam Youre ugly, but tomorrow morning, Ill be sober. He
was the best out of the three, Roosevelt would be shortly dead and Stalin was
Staling, what could one expect from such a trio?
Churchill was also were derogatory towards India. He said the Indians deserved
the racism and discrimination. At this point of time, nobody in western Europe
was setting any great benchmarks for morality.

VIDEO

The bomb Napam has petroleum that has been made semi solid which blasts
when the bomb explodes. This sticky petroleum enters your skin and it keeps
burning from inside and your skin starts peeling off. This was used in the Tokyo
Bombing and it killed 80,000 people. This took a week.

VIDEO

The Russians give people an option to surrender. The SS and the Nazis and
civilians decided to not surrender because then they would be considered to be
traitors. But after seeing the Katyusha rocket launchers people start surrendering
one after the other.

VIDEO

Germans, even civilians were held guilty for having supported the Nazis in one
way or the other. They were taken to camps and shown what happened here.

VIDEO

General Zhukov was a tank commander and he was a living legend, the man who
saved Moscow and Stalingrad. He was intelligent, and was disliked by Stalin.
When he was called to save Moscow, he was already in Siberia on a life
sentence. He was sent back to Siberia. People kept hoping that there would be
some reward and some liberation and the Russian Civilians become the biggest
fools because things become worse and Staling gets more paranoid.

VIDEO

The Japanese have a technique of stabbing themselves in their own stomach

when they feel they have been defeated and there is no way to fight back
Sepukku/ Boshido the code of honour.

VIDEO

Stalingrad was Russias worst hit as was Leningrad. Today, these are new cities
built up from scratch. Clement Atlee of the labour party became important at this
point. Churchills ways began to backfire. Having called Nazis unfair, Britain had
to now pull out of places where they were dominating unfairly. Voices of Indian
freedom fighters became very poignant. Churchill felt he would be re-elected
after world war 2, lost elections to Clement Attlee. He however was not a very
convincing leader.

The labour party also found damaging evidence against Churchill. Germans when
were at their peak their intelligence could not be understood because they
wired all their intelligence via coding enigma. The British had found a way to
crack this code, hence were able to find out everything starting 1941. A
transcript which came across was Germany was going to bomb a city called
Coventry. Churchill took a controversial decision to not evacuate the same
because if they would evacuate an untouched place the Germans would
understand that British intelligence had cracked their code. He let Coventry be
bombed. This went against Churchill Can you sacrifice 1000s of your own
people like this?

Clement Atlee came up with a new form of functioning. The Labour party now
needed to concentrate on not getting bankrupt because World War 2 had been
very expensive. Very soon, British could no longer afford to maintain their
presence in India morally or economically.

Sakhalin which was a Japanese city was a Russian intelligence base till 1980.This
was also a place where prisoners of war or political criminals were sent for
interrogation. The factory was called the finger nail factory. Peoples nails were
cut in a heinous manner. You would confess to anything and were then sent to
Siberia. It was a system of terror. You could be convicted for any random thing!

The Russian and Western ally invasion of Germany lead it to be divided in the
aftermath of the World War 2. The red Zone East was the Soviet Zone. And the
west was called the Zone of the western allies thereby being divided between
Britain France and USA and the former two handled most things inside Germany.
BERLIN itself was divided into 2 parts the same as above. Hence, the capital of
Hitlers empire would always have the presence of all countrys that defeated
him and this would also ensure that the relations between the Western Allies and
Soviet area would always have to remain good. If anything went wrong, the
Soviets may close the land routes via Berlin making its western half completely
cut off from everywhere. Only a couple of routes lead up to Berlin because Russia
did close quite a few. Life in Berlin hence could be totally liberal or totally
Stalinist. Even to move from one part of Berlin to another you had to pass a
series of checkpoint in the form of tunnels where a lot of people were murdered
with neither side taking any responsibility. You had to bribe your way through the
officials of the west or the east without any guarantee of coming back. The dollar
and the Rouble were equated. This further created more issues.

Stalin gave an iron curtain speech stating Russia no longer welcomes people of
Western Origin. People in the region of USSR believed that they would be as
much a part of USSR as Russia but Stalin simply called these the buffer states to
prevent any attack on Russia. This was second class treatment which worsened
conditions.

Japan meanwhile, has had horrific fallout due to nuclear waves. It has had
successive governments trying to say that telling the next generation that the
USA nuked us would be the worst thing possible because the next generation
would grow up only to hate USA further which would be stupid because USA was
obviously very strong. They were trying hence to demonize themselves so as to
say they were wrong and their ruler was a despot and he pushed USA to do
whatever it did.
Hence the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not really victims or survivors
and as a result of the above mentioned method have been ostracized. Genes
have gone for a complete 6, and these victims are suffering. In this sense it did
backfire.

In 1948 June, the Western Allies worst fears came true. Stalin dislikes the
comparison between east and West Germany and he blocks off contact from the
west. He blockades it and this comes to be called the Berlin Blockade. The west
cannot get to Berlin, hence the only choice is to join the soviet side, or stay
without any resources, food water coal etc. It was a siege like situation. The West
Berliners were going to crack anytime soon.

The western allies decide that they could not let this happen as it would only
boost Stalins position. From 1948 June to 1949 May allied planes were dropping
resources from the air to make the siege pointless. Planes from Australia and
New Zealand participated.

Stalin stopped the siege and this was seen as western victory. The US president
decides now was the time to take the Russians on, not just tactically. Nukes are
an obvious choice for US now. They begin planning absolute annihilation of the
Soviet Union. Completely build it from scratch, colonize and re-educate people.
Russia gets so paranoid about this potential blackmail that they start working on
their own Atom Bombs and this is what triggered off the arms race thereby
leading to the cold war.

The most infamous checkpoint across Berlin was checkpoint Charlie where you
were not just searched but also beaten up so that you would remain more
honest.

Most of western Europe + USA + Australia + New Zealand sign an alliance treaty
called the North Atlantic Treaty organisation and parallel to this was Soviet
Unions Warsaw pact. Natos goal became keep the Russians out, Germans
down and Americans in.

Aftermath:

1. Yalta Conference For decisions. 3 premiers

2. Britain
Change in governance Churchill to Atlee and why
Moving out of India and why

3. Germany
Regular division, Berlin Division, Checkpoints, Siege of western Germany,
even civilians considered guilty shown what happened in camps

4. USA Nato + ending berling siege

 5. Russia Stalin + people of Western origin not welcome + Zhukov sent
back to Siberia + namesake liberation + blocked routes to berlin

6. Japan after effects of nuclear blasts and the way they chose to go about
it

7. COLD WAR: Arms Race Paranoia, Nukes

Doubts: Fingernail factory, Japans self killing technique, Tokyo bombing napam,
Germany Russia boundary + Poland in the picture, battle of the bulge?