Unit One
The Allied bombing of Berlin, particularly during the last year of the war, as well as the Soviet assault from the East destroyed some 40% of the capital, reducing many parts of the city to a heap of rubble. The city that had made itself into the power center of Europe at the expense of tens of millions of lives was now occupied by foreign powers. After Germany’s unconditional surrender, which put an end to World War II, few people at the time could have determined the political environment that would shape German, European, and world history for the next 40 years.
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During the war, the Allies disagreed over the future of postwar Germany. At the Yalta Conference, held from February 4-11, 1945, the “Big Three” (British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union) came to several agreements. First, they decided that Germany would be carved into four occupied zones to oversee demilitarization and denazification of the country, with France’s zone being taken from the Americans and British. Second, Stalin agreed to participate in the United Nations, with the understanding that each of the 16 Soviet Socialist Republics under Russian control would also be granted membership. Finally, Stalin made several concessions regarding Soviet-occupied Poland, including that a more “democratic” government would be installed in the country through “free” elections.
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The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference
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Stalin and Truman at Potsdam
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However, many things changed between February and the start of the Potsdam Conference (July 17-August 2, 1945). President Roosevelt died on April 12, nearly a month before the Nazis surrendered on May 8, and Vice President Harry S. Truman replaced him. Truman felt that Roosevelt was being too soft on the Soviets and mistrusted Stalin’s intentions in Eastern Europe. Further complicating matters, during the conference, Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister.
Although Stalin had agreed with Roosevelt that he would declare war with Japan 90 days after the surrender of Germany, the time never came. At Potsdam, Truman had hinted to Stalin of a new weapon—the atomic bomb, which was to strain the relations between the two countries even further. |
After witnessing the power of the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, respectively, Stalin tightened his grip on Eastern Europe. He annexed several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics and brought others in as Soviet satellites, including: Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, and East Germany. These countries formed a buffer between the capitalist West and the Communist East and would come to be known as the “Eastern Bloc.”
In early 1946, the future conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States was already apparent to Churchill. In March, he delivered a speech at Westminster College in Missouri entitled “The Sinews of Peace:”
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From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow. [1] This emerging Cold War was to play out on many fronts, but Germany, and especially Berlin, became a poignant symbol of the ensuing fight.
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Political Structure in Occupied Germany
The Allied Control Council for occupied Germany gave governing authority of these zones to a Kommandantur, the council of military commandants from each zone. The zones of occupation for the United States, the USSR, Great Britain, and, later, France would mark the line that was to become the East-West division of Europe. Each of these zones would be under the sphere of influence of its occupying country. Berlin, though lying wholly in the Soviet Zone, was also divided into four sectors and put under a similar four-power agreement.
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Each of the four Allied occupation forces sought to implement policies that would punish Germany for its aggression while also preventing a resurgence of German militarism. From the beginning, however, these occupation arrangements were fraught with difficulty. In the Soviet zone, the Soviet Military Administration quickly sought to take control of all key positions in Berlin’s administration. The British and Americans set up a local management system that would promote the creation of democratic institutions of government in their respective areas of influence. In short, each nation sought to reshape its zone in Germany in its own image. But it was becoming clear that the Soviets and the Western Allies, who together were supposed to make policy for Germany by unanimous agreement, would not be able to agree on economic measures to help German recovery. As a result, the United States, together with the British, combined their zones to establish a political structure uniting the three western zones. The bizone (comprised of the US and British zones) and eventually the trizone (including the French) comprised a new West German political and economic unit, to be known as the Federal Republic of Germany or Bundesrepublik.
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Economic Reform In Occupied Germany
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To facilitate the economic recovery of Western Europe, the United States introduced the European Recovery Program -- better known as the Marshall Plan. This program represented a major shift in Western policy. Besides guaranteeing America an overseas market for her goods, the Marshall Plan was designed to help fortify Western Europe as a bulwark against the expansion of Communism in central Europe. This spelled a decisive shift in priorities away from anti-Nazism and towards anti-Communism. This economic aid helped Western nations reach prewar economic levels and even surpass them, making the years 1948-1952 some of the most prosperous in European history.
In fact, the Marshall Plan aid was also offered to Eastern European countries, including the Soviet Union. However, the non-negotiable terms of receiving aid, including the implementation of a market economy, were the antithesis of the planned economy in the USSR, which Stalin hoped to introduce to the Eastern Bloc countries. Fearing a weakening of the Soviet sphere of influence in the East, Stalin immediately rejected the plan, forcing the Eastern countries to do the same. Instead, Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov devised an alternative form of aid for the East from the USSR. The Molotov Plan, a precursor to COMECON, or the Council for Mutual Economic Assitance, was a system of bilateral trade agreements, meant to strengthen the economic alliance and interdependence in the East. COMECON was characterized by central planning, which meant that although prices would be competitive in capitalist states, member states would have price stability. The centralized Soviet government subsidized this uniformity. |
Marshall Plan Propaganda
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[1] http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/churchill-iron.asp