The Creation of Two Germanies: The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

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The Creation of Two Germanies: The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR)

For a number of years Britain, Russia and the United States had discussions among themselves in an attempt to agree on the principles according to which a defeated Germany was to be treated. It had been relatively easy to establish a consensus on certain "negative" aims. Thus there was no question that Germany must be demilitarized and her war industries destroyed. Those primarily responsible for unleashing the Second World War and for perpetrating war crimes were to be brought to justice. All other Germans were to be de-Nazified. The Allies also agreed that Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia were to be reconstituted as sovereign states.

I. Allied Plans and Policies

It had been more difficult at the various wartime conferences between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin to formulate conclusive plans concerning the future of Germany. One of the main bones of contention was whether the Reich should be dismembered or treated as a unit. As no consensus had been reached on this issue, the Allies fell back on the accord of the Yalta Conference of February 1945, which had finalized the division of the country into zones of occupation.

The question of a Peace Treaty and the future territorial shape was to be decided at a later date. In the end France was to take charge of the south-west and Palatinate; the United States of Bavaria, Württemberg-Baden and Hesse; Britain of northern Germany and the Rhineland, except for an American enclave around Bremen and Bremerhaven; and the Soviet Union of the eastern provinces of the Reich between the rivers Elbe and Werra in the west and the rivers Oder and Neisse in the east.

Special Treatment for Berlin

Berlin became divided into sectors and was administered jointly by an Inter-Allied authority chaired by the Allied military commanders there. As an Allied Declaration of 5 June 1945 reiterated, the four powers assumed supreme government authority in Germany, though without intending to annex German territory. The supreme military commanders of the four Allied contingents were to administer their respective zones in accordance with the instructions received from their governments. They were to deal jointly with all matters relating to the country as a whole. It was for this purpose that an Inter-Allied Control Council was set up, supported by an administrative infrastructure, to look after military matters, transport, finance, economic affairs, reparations, justice, prisoners of war, communications, law and order, as well as political affairs.

Detailed provisions were also published for the arrest of leading Nazis (the most prominent of whom would soon be tried and sentenced by a Tribunal at Nuremberg), the disarmament of the Wehrmacht and the internment of German soldiers. For the moment, there was no hope of the population being able to survive economically without outside help. With the agricultural East lost and the Russians unable (or unwilling) to help, the importation of foodstuffs became unavoidable. However, it was clear that millions of people could not be maintained like this for any length of time. When confronted with the practical realities of the postwar situation in Central Europe, the British and American military authorities quickly began to build up a zonal machinery for economic administration to encourage the reopening of the factories for the provision of consumer goods.

It also turned out that the extent of the damage done to industry by bombing was deceptive. Repairs could be carried out relatively quickly and many entrepreneurs, especially the smaller ones, found it easy to switch back from military to civilian production. The upward trend of the Bizonal industrial economy had set in already before the financial aid of the famous American Marshall Plan began to pour into the Western Zones of Occupation and before the Currency Reform of June 1948 had been enacted. Both these policies created the conditions of further and more rapid growth from a fairly high plateau, already reached by the beginning of 1948.

The leaders of the new superpower across the Atlantic self-confidently aspired to a world order which would be based on the principles of a competitive American-style capitalism. The Russians, on the other hand, wanted to consolidate the gains made as a result of the Second World War and may for a while even have hoped to extend their own system beyond the sphere of influence which the defeat of Germany had put under their control. The "One World" both Americans and Soviets talked about a great deal became a "half-world" organized as blocs within which East and West began to revamp the existing socio-economic and political structures and harmonize them with their own institutional arrangements. The division of Europe along the line established at the end of the war slowly took shape.

de-Nazification

At this point a fundamental contradiction between the realities of de-Nazification and the broader aims of the Western Allies opened up. A de-Nazification policy which would have taken to task those individuals who made a major contribution to sustaining the Hitler regime would have touched the social and economic power structures of the Western zones much more radically than the Allies were prepared to permit. Neither the kind of economic system nor the society which they were hoping to reconstruct could could exist without the expertise of the administrative, managerial and technical elites which had collaborated with Hitler. The beginning of the Cold War caused this contradiction to come to the surface, and once it had been recognized that it was impossible to do both, it was only logical for the tribunals to be wound up. For the developing confrontation with Russia meant "that the conservative fear of Communism gradually replace the liberal fear of fascism" (E. N. Peterson).
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II. Creation of political parties

Nor did de-Nazification and "collective guilt" assumption square too well with the policy of permitting some people to found parties and other political organizations. On the other hand, from the point of view of integration it made sense to hold elections, first at local and later at regional level, to encourage political activity and to allow the constitution of Länder governments on the basis of parliamentary majorities. The first steps were usually taken at the local level. But like-minded people soon established contact with each other beyond the locality. Their parties became ...

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