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In 1955, the military occupation of West Germany ends. In 1955, NATO, which was formed in 1949, allows West Germany to join. In 1957, France returns the Saarland to West Germany. In 1957, West Germany is one of the founding nations of the European Economic Community. In 1973, West Germany joins the United Nations (formed in 1945).
Shortly afterwards, on 7 May 1945, General Alfred Jodl signed the German military surrender, and on 23 May Speer was arrested on the orders of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, together with the rest of the provisional German government led by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Hitler's successor as head of state.
West Germany joins NATO: Walter Hallstein (left) and Konrad Adenauer (centre) at the NATO Conference in Paris in 1954. West German rearmament (German: Wiederbewaffnung) began in the decades after World War II. Fears of another rise of German militarism caused the new military to operate within an alliance framework, under NATO command. [1]
[107] [108] Hitler went on to write that given the magnitude of the coming struggle that the concerns expressed by members of the "free market" faction like Schacht and Goerdeler that the current level of military spending was bankrupting Germany were irrelevant. Hitler wrote that: "However well balanced the general pattern of a nation's life ...
The 30 January 1934, session of the Reichstag, on the first anniversary of Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor, began with a long speech by Hitler. The proposed law was then introduced, advanced through three readings in under five minutes by Reichstag President Hermann Göring and adopted without any debate or dissenting votes.
[citation needed] As Hitler defied the status quo established in the Peace of Versailles by abolishing the restrictions on German military expansion and the cordon sanitaire system (especially the Franco-Polish alliance), Germany's military power grew with the influx of conquered ethnic Germans and the economic exploitation of its neighbours.
Through successive Reichsstatthalter decrees, Germany's states were effectively replaced by Nazi provinces called Gaue. After June 1941 as World War II progressed, Hitler became preoccupied with military matters and spent most of his time at his military headquarters on the eastern front. This led Hitler to rely more and more on Bormann to ...
The intention of Blomberg and Reichenau in having the military swear an oath to Hitler was to create a personal special bond between Hitler and the military, which was intended to tie Hitler more tightly towards the military and away from the NSDAP. [39] The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote about the oath to Hitler: