After Germany’s surrender in WWII, the country was occupied and partitioned by the victorious Allies. The scale of death and destruction was immense and there was no government to speak of following the collapse of the Nazi government. Out of this came two different versions of postwar Germany: the communist East and the democratic West. Disagreements over the future of Germany were among the causes of the Cold War, and the division between East and West continues to impact Germany to this day.
Germany Surrenders, 1945
After the brutal siege of Berlin and Adolf Hitler’s suicide, Germany’s remaining government officials finally surrendered to the Allies early on the morning of May 7th, 1945. The German surrender was unconditional, placing the country’s fate in the hands of the Allies. Allies took control of all of Germany’s governing infrastructure, its military, and had the responsibility of ensuring law and order. This was to be a tall order for the Allies because they did not share a common vision of what would actually happen to the country after the war. The division of postwar Germany resulted from the disagreements between the Allies on how to proceed.
One thing that was agreed on between the Western Allies and the USSR was the need for Denazification. All public symbols of Nazi rule were destroyed and the Reich’s most infamous laws, the Nuremberg Laws, were repealed. This went hand-in-hand with the abolition of all German armed forces and the mass demobilization of remaining personnel. While both the Western Allies and Soviets employed some former Nazis in different capacities, the Soviets were more ruthless, deporting hundreds of thousands of POWs and German officials to Siberia. The collapse of the Nazi government also meant that justice was to be served to people accused of war crimes. Hundreds of people were convicted during the Nuremberg trials, of whom twelve were hanged.
After the German Surrender
The German people were in a sense of absolute shock about the invasion and occupation of their country. A decade before, they were convinced that they had overcome the worst of the Great Depression and that their country was becoming a major power. Hitler’s death shocked even Germans who didn’t support him. The deaths of millions for no gain, the rapes of German women by Soviet soldiers, and the mass displacement of Germans from around its empire caused enormous trauma.
The defeat of the Axis and the subsequent changes to Germany’s borders led to one of the largest population movements in history. The Allies agreed that the Volksdeutsche, Germans living outside of Germany and Austria, needed to be “humanely relocated” within sovereign borders. This led to some 12 million Germans leaving their native countries. Germany, already struggling to help the people within its own borders, now faced a humanitarian crisis that few people in Europe had any sympathy for. It took years for these people to be fully reintegrated into German society. The expulsions of the Volksdeutsche are estimated to have led to two million deaths.
Military personnel returned to homes that had been destroyed and anger from the civilian population who had suffered. German POWs captured by the Soviets remained in camps in the USSR until the 1950s. The loss of so many young men caused serious problems for the economy in postwar Germany. It was especially problematic for East Germany, where the Soviets had seized much of the industry after the surrender. Despite considerable financial support, the Germans struggled to rebuild their infrastructure, and the country’s postwar reconstruction took decades.
Redrawing Germany’s Borders
The 1945 Potsdam Conference led to the formal creation of four zones of occupation: the French, American, British, and Soviet sectors. The Soviets took parts of Pomerania and Silesia and gave them to Poland. Both governments of East and West Germany opposed this land transfer and only accepted it decades later. Germany had always sought to control as much of Central Europe as possible, and the loss of areas considered an integral part of the German homeland rankled deeply. Much of Prussia, the driving force behind Germany’s unification in the 19th century, remained outside Germany’s new borders. The historic Prussian city of Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad and became part of the Soviet Union, and remains a Russian exclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland.
West of the Rhine, France sought to extend control over areas it long believed were part of its territory. The West German government became very concerned that Paris would annex the Saar and Rhineland regions for their natural resources. While this did not happen thanks to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, Germany lost Alsace to France, a bitter blow in the decades-long struggle between Paris and Berlin over the region.
These border changes were deeply humiliating to the German people, and even anti-Nazi Germans were distraught to see their homeland being carved up by the Allies. However, the loss of territories was not too extreme and people began to focus on reconstructing their lives to create some semblance of normal.
Allied Occupation
Unlike the First World War, when the Allies only occupied a small part of Germany, the postwar period from 1949 to 1952 saw the total occupation of the country. Britain controlled much of northwest Germany, France controlled areas around the Saar and Rhineland, the US occupied the southwest, and the USSR controlled the whole eastern part of the country. Additionally, Berlin was divided into four occupation zones. This was designed to ensure none of the victors felt cheated, but it led to major ramifications for the Germans on the ground.
The occupation armies faced the major task of cleaning up the country, hunting war criminals, and ensuring order. The Americans and British focused on benevolent governance, aiming to create a reliable government in their occupation zones. The Soviets and French were more punitive, demanding immense reparations and openly seeking to annex more German territory. By 1946, the UK and US merged their occupation zones, the Marshall Plan aided West Germany’s reconstruction, and the Allies began to turn over leadership to local civilian authorities. France agreed to leave, although it remained very concerned about German revanchism.
In the east, the Soviets acted very harshly, seizing a large amount of resources and insisting that they would control the political future of their occupation zone. This deindustrialization policy ensured that the East would always be poorer than the West, a divide that continues to this day.
The Creation of East Germany
Throughout World War II, German communists found safe haven in Moscow thanks to Soviet help. After the surrender, they went from being pariahs in Germany to becoming the rulers of East Germany. The new German Democratic Republic was entirely a communist country, designed to reflect the wishes of Moscow more than its citizens. The Western Allies were totally opposed to its creation, with the US only recognizing it in 1955.
Initially, several political parties were allowed to have representation in the Volkshammer, a new parliament in East Germany. The dominant Socialist Unity party took total control in a matter of years and set about collectivizing East German society. There was little private business, no public religious institutions, and little personal freedom.
This state of affairs angered a lot of the population. Tens of thousands East Germans fled to West Germany or beyond, hoping to avoid living under communist rule. In 1952, massive strikes and demonstrations took place in response to the government’s collectivization program. The Soviets told the GDR to make cosmetic changes to avoid a total breakdown in society. While the uprising fizzled out, it was clear that communist rule was always under threat and repression would have to be the main tool of control in the GDR. The creation of the Stasi (the secret police) and the new GDR armed forces was primarily about controlling society.
The Creation of West Germany
In sharp contrast to the communist-dominated East Germany was the new Federal Republic of Germany in the west. The leader of the Christian Democratic Union party, Konrad Adenauer, served as its first chancellor. An opponent of the Nazis and a veteran German politician, Adenauer aimed to make the FRG a major international player. He created a large industrialized free-market economy, got Germany accepted as a member of the European Coal and Steel Community, and reconciled with France.
Throughout the Cold War, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats were the main two parties in the FRG. While many countries were concerned about a resurgence of Nazism, the United States and its allies saw the country as a major asset. In 1955, the Bundeswehr, the new West German army, was created. It would grow to become one of the most powerful militaries in Europe, although West Germany would never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. To ensure its close relationship with the US and UK, West Germany joined NATO in 1955.
The FRG’s membership in the Western alliance ensured its survival for the next several decades. Meanwhile, the East German army joined the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact. Right from the outset, the division of Germany foreshadowed the ideological struggle between communism and liberal democracy.
Germany and the Outbreak of the Cold War
While the Allied occupation zones were transforming into West and East Germany, Berlin also remained a divided city. Established in 1947 at the intersection of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse, Checkpoint Charlie became known as the final frontier of western European democracy. Little more than a decade later, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 served as a physical reminder of the metaphorical Iron Curtain that came down between Eastern and Western Europe.
In 1948, the Soviets and their allies decided to test the Western alliance by blockading West Berlin. They hoped to gain concessions or even force the West to abandon their enclave in the city. However, the Western Allies opted to keep West Berlin supplied through a massive airlift. From June 1948 to September 1949, the US Air Force dropped or flew in supplies that could feed the residents of West Berlin. After the Soviets ended the blockade, the division of Germany was effectively formalized. This was one of the first major salvos of the Cold War.
The postwar period of Germany was marked by a great division that never truly healed. Having seen their country destroyed, Germans embraced two different political futures: communism or democracy. The Western world often argues that their occupation of Germany was a perfect model for postwar reconstruction. This overlooks the story of East Germany, which suffered terribly and never recovered, even after the reunification of Germany in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
