Economic Developments in Eastern Europe under German Hegemony

Abstract

The shifts in the balance of political power in the region in the 1930s, as well as the economic problems generated by the great depression, presented Germany with the opportunity to expand her influence which, with the help of her Italian ally, she proceeded to do by a combination of military, political and economic measures. As a result, four countries lost their independence — Czechoslovakia, Albania and Poland in 1939, and Yugoslavia in 1941, while Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, having already been progressively absorbed into the German economic sphere in the last half of the 1930s, effectively became German satellites after the attack on the U.S.S.R. in June 1941, in which Hungary and Romania also joined. From the beginning of 1939, and more especially from mid-1941 until 1945, economic developments in Eastern Europe depended to an overwhelming degree on German policies and, in the final stages, on the effects of German military and political collapse.KeywordsHard CoalClearing AccountResettlement ProgrammeEuropean DevelopmentGerman PolicyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.