ARD - Living with the Enemy (2008) Part 4 A New Beginning
1945 to 1949 proved to be a decisive period for both Germany and the occupying forces - this is the story of the years between the end of WWII and the founding of the two German states. It was a period of reciprocal impressions and experience for both occupiers and occupied, and a period that still fundamentally shapes personal fates, families, the economy, the arts and geopolitics. Combining carefully selected eyewitness accounts from occupiers and occupied alike, Living with the Enemy creates a new, exciting and differentiated view of the time and shows that these years not only helped shape present-day Germany, but also had a profound effect on the rest of the world. This period was the beginning of the Cold War. It would influence global politics for decades to come. A new generation of historians with new findings, archives only now accessible, and the willingness of those involved to engage in an open dialogue make a new and remarkable in-depth view of these historical events.
Part 4: A New Beginning Three years after the end of the World War II, Germany still lay in ruins but there were signs of a new beginning. POWs were coming home from years in camps, and learning to adjust to new lives. On the political level, however, there was little or no harmony. In 1948 the three Western zones introduced a new common currency and the Soviet Union responded with a blockade of Berlin.
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