What was the impact of War on Germany?  

The Four Zones

“As far as the Western Allies were concerned, the joke ran around that the Americans had been given the scenery, the French the vines, and the British the ruins.” G. MacDonough, p.1 (Left) Map of post War Germany showing the 4 zones of Allied occupation.  The pale yellow areas show former German territories allocated to Poland and the Soviet Union. The Saar region in the South West was administered as a French Protectorate until 1957. Berlin, entirely within the Soviet zone was itself divided into 4 sectors. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map-Germany-1945.svg

How did Germany become divided into separate states?

When the Allies met again at Potsdam in July-August 1945 they set out their immediate objectives regarding Germany, including denazification, demilitarisation and democratisation. They also agreed that although political power in Germany would be decentralised, it would be treated as a single economic unit. However, in 1949, West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany – FRG) and East Germany (the German Democratic Republic – GDR) were established as separate states.

The process of denazification aimed to identify and punish Nazis, to re-educate German people, and by removing the ideology of Nazism, establish a basis for democracy. The most prominent aspect of this process were the Nuremberg Trials of those leading Nazis who had been captured at the end of the War. The Trials resulted in several death sentences; others received life imprisonment. The Trials produced a thorough documentation of Nazi crimes, they established a principle of individual responsibility even when the accused claimed to be following orders, and they set before the German people the nature of the crimes committed in their name. Even so, the Trials were criticised as an example of ‘victors’ justice’ carried out for the purpose of revenge. The presence among the prosecutors of officials from the Soviet Union, a country responsible for comparable crimes, further undermined the process.

The Allies each attempted to identify and punish Nazis in their zones. However, this process ran into practical difficulties largely due to the scale of the task. There were approximately 8 million Nazi Party members by the end of the War so it would not be possible to punish Germans simply for being Nazis. However, attempts to distinguish degrees of guilt among such a large group would be a difficult, time-consuming task.  As attention turned to the problems of reconstruction it became necessary to engage competent administrators among the population. After 12 years of Nazism it was inevitable that people with the required experience were often ex-Nazis and so zealous denazification was replaced by turning a pragmatic blind eye.

In the Soviet analysis, Nazism was a result of “capitalist self-interest in a moment of crisis. Accordingly, the Soviet authorities paid little attention to the distinctively racist side of Nazism, and its genocidal outcome, and instead focused their arrests...on businessmen, tainted officials, teachers and others responsible for advancing the interests of the social class purportedly standing behind Hitler.” (T. Judt, Post War, p.59) This dismantling of capitalism set the Soviet zone on a different path from the western zones where Britain, America and France would nurture the reconstruction of a market economy. 

The Allies originally planned to maintain a united Germany, but mutual suspicion, in particular Soviet anxiety at facing a permanent 3:1 majority of Western Powers, led to the decision to give supreme authority in each zone to its military commander rather than to any joint governmental organisation. France also opposed moves to re-establish a unified German state and so vetoed the creation of centralised German administrative departments. All the Allies were united in their determination to prevent a return to Nazism. Political organisation was decentralised in a Federal system that allocated greater power to the individual German states (Länder). However, political renewal in Germany was hampered by the Allies differing interpretations of ‘democracy’. To the British and Americans, it was preferable to offer Germans the prospect of improvement through their own democratic political engagement rather than risk alienating Germans by prolonging military rule. Non-Nazi parties were encouraged to re-form and participate in elections. In the East, the Soviet Union’s authority rested on the exercise of power and less on the development of consent. Emerging political parties were soon abolished and power consolidated in the hands of the Communists. Stalin’s heavy handed approach in the East had the beneficial effect for the Western Allies of undermining support for Communist politicians in the West.

The Allies had agreed to treat Germany as a single economic unit. However, each would be allowed to extract reparations from their zone. In recognition of the greater damage suffered by the Soviet Union, 10% of reparations from the western zones would be given to the Soviets. Despite the agreements, therefore, each zone was in fact being treated as a separate economic entity. The Soviets set about dismantling factories and removing machinery, initiating the enduring economic disparity between East and West Germany. For the Americans and British the issue of extracting reparations was of less concern than the economic burden of supporting their zones.  In 1946, food shortages were so acute in Britain that bread rationing was introduced, a measure that had not been necessary during the War itself. Meanwhile, the UK tax payer was subsidising food imports to the British Zone in Germany.  In these circumstances, British and American attention turned to plans for making their zones economically self-sufficient.

In January 1947, the British and Americans united their areas of occupation into “Bizonia”. Over the following two years Bizonia accrued further symbols of statehood, such as a central bank, a supreme court, its own currency, and the French zone was also amalgamated. The replacement of the inflated old currency with the new Deutsche Mark and the lifting of price controls introduced incentives to the economy, encouraging greater production and halted the inefficiencies of what had become a barter system. The economic divergence of the two Germanys was accelerated by the provision of massive financial aid from the US for Western Europe under the Marshall Plan. The Soviet Union, suspicious of American motives, rejected this aid and Stalin ordered his satellite states in Eastern Europe to do the same. As capitalism was eradicated in the East, economic recovery was boosted in a West Germany restored to the international economy.

Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967) Adenauer began his political career representing the Catholic Centre Party and was elected Mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933. He was dismissed from office and twice imprisoned by the Nazis. After the War, he established a new movement, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), as a party that would appeal to Protestants as well as Catholics.  Adenauer steered the CDU to the centre-right of German politics in competition with the more radically left wing Socialist Party (SPD). He formed an alliance with the Christian Social Union (CSU), a centre right Bavarian party.He achieved further prominence as Chairman of the parliamentary council which drew up the Basic Law of the new state on 23rd May 1949 and thereby established the Federal Republic of Germany.  In September 1949, at the age of 73, Konrad Adenauer was elected as the first Chancellor of West Germany.

As the stand off in Berlin continued, plans for a West German state were drawn up. Representatives of each of the West German Länder produced the Basic Law of the new state on 23^rd May 1949. The Basic Law aimed to prevent any return to Nazism; checks and balances ensured that power was shared between branches of government and between the federal Länder. It committed West Germany to the protection of human rights and the right to ban anti-democratic political parties.  It was envisaged as a provisional document in anticipation of the future reunification of Germany at which point a permanent constitution could be created. The provisional nature of the legal framework reflects the politicians’ reluctance to be seen as collaborators in their country’s permanent partition and was further symbolised by the unlikely choice of the relatively small city of Bonn as the capital.

The Soviet response was to proclaim the establishment of the German Democratic Republic in their zone on the 7^th October 1949. Germany was now divided into two states each claiming to represent the entire German people. Hitler had often claimed that his Germany was defending Western civilization and fighting a ‘crusade against communism’. The West German state indeed became the West’s front line against communism, facing an East German neighbour integrated into the Soviet Empire. Hitler’s defeat had removed the common cause which bound the Allies together and the Cold War saw a return to older suspicions between two hostile ideologies. The disagreements over Germany underlined the incompatibility of these two systems and the impossibility of maintaining a unified state. Neither side could accept the other’s domination of Germany and so partition became the most acceptable option.

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