Allied-occupied Germany
The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Like occupied Japan, Germany was stripped of its sovereignty and former state: after Nazi Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, four countries representing the Allies (the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and France) asserted joint authority and sovereignty through the Allied Control Council (ACC). At first, Allied-occupied Germany was defined as all territories of Germany before the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria; the Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945 defined the new eastern German border by giving Poland and the Soviet Union all regions of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line (eastern parts of Pomerania, Neumark, Posen-West Prussia, East-Prussia and most of Silesia) and divided the remaining "Germany as a whole" into four occupation zones, each administered by one of the Allies.[1]
For the occupation of Western Germany after World War I, see Occupation of the Rhineland and Occupation of the Ruhr.
GermanyDeutschland (German)
- Berlin (de jure)
- Frankfurt (American zone)
- Bad Oeynhausen (British zone)
- Baden-Baden (French zone)
- East Berlin (Soviet zone)
52°31′N 13°23′E / 52.517°N 13.383°E Saar Protectorate (de facto
not a part of Germany)
French occupation zone
British occupation zone[a]
American occupation zone
Soviet occupation zone[b]
8 May 1945
5 June 1945
17 December 1947
23 May 1949
7 October 1949
15 March 1991
64,260,000
68,080,000
- Reichsmark and Rentenmark (1945–1948)
West zones (except Saarland): - Deutsche Mark (from 1948)d
Soviet zone: - Mark (from 1948)e
All territories annexed by Germany before the war from Austria and Czechoslovakia were returned to these countries. The Memel Territory, annexed by Germany from Lithuania before the war, was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945 and transferred to the Lithuanian SSR. All territories annexed by Germany during the war from Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland and Yugoslavia were returned to their respective countries.
Deviating from the occupation zones planned according to the London Protocol in 1944, at Potsdam, the United States, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union approved the detachment from Germany of the territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, with the exact line of the boundary to be determined in a final German peace treaty. This treaty was expected to confirm the shifting westward of Poland's borders, as the United Kingdom and United States committed themselves to support the permanent incorporation of eastern Germany into Poland and the Soviet Union. From March 1945 to July 1945, these former eastern territories of Germany had been administered under Soviet military occupation authorities, but following the Potsdam Agreement they were handed over to Soviet and Polish civilian administrations and ceased to constitute part of Allied-occupied Germany.
In the closing weeks of fighting in Europe, United States forces had pushed beyond the agreed boundaries for the future zones of occupation, in some places by as much as 320 km (200 miles). The so-called line of contact between Soviet and U.S. forces at the end of hostilities, mostly lying eastward of the July 1945-established inner German border, was temporary. After two months in which they had held areas that had been assigned to the Soviet zone, U.S. forces withdrew in the first days of July 1945.[2] Some have concluded that this was a crucial move that persuaded the Soviet Union to allow American, British and French forces into their designated sectors in Berlin, which occurred at roughly the same time, although the need for intelligence gathering (Operation Paperclip) may also have been a factor.[3] On 20 March 1948, the Soviets withdrew from the Allied Control Council. The split led to the establishment in 1949 of two new German states, West Germany and East Germany.
While located wholly within the Soviet zone, because of its symbolic importance as the nation's capital and seat of the former Nazi government, the city of Berlin was jointly occupied by the Allied powers and subdivided into four sectors. All four occupying powers were entitled to privileges throughout Berlin that were not extended to the rest of Germany – this included the Soviet sector of Berlin, which was legally separate from the rest of the Soviet zone.
At the end of October 1946, Berlin had a population of:
Insurgency[edit]
The last Allied war advances into Germany and Allied occupation plans were affected by rumors of the Nazi Werwolf plan for insurgency, and successful Nazi deception about plans to withdraw forces to the Alpenfestung redoubt. Perry Biddiscombe estimates the total death toll as a direct result of Werewolf actions and the resulting reprisals as 3,000–5,000.[28][29]