Zones of occupation[edit]

Further information: Allied-occupied Germany

In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation
and administration of Germany via the Allied Control Council (ACC), a four-power (US, UK, USSR,
France) military government effective until the restoration of German sovereignty. In eastern
Germany, the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ – Sowjetische Besatzungszone) comprised the five
states (Länder) of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt,
and Thuringia[citation needed]. Disagreements over the policies to be followed in the occupied zones quickly
led to a breakdown in cooperation between the four powers, and the Soviets administered their zone
without regard to the policies implemented in the other zones. The Soviets withdrew from the ACC in
1948; subsequently, as the other three zones were increasingly unified and granted self-
government, the Soviet administration instituted a separate socialist government in its zone. [citation needed].

West Germany (blue) comprised the Western Allies' zones, excluding the Saarland (purple); the Soviet zone,
East Germany (red) surrounded West Berlin (yellow).

Seven years after the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Agreement on common German policies, the USSR via
the Stalin Note (10 March 1952) proposed German reunification and superpower
disengagement from Central Europe, which the three Western Allies (the United States, France,
the United Kingdom) rejected. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, a Communist proponent of reunification,
died in early March 1953. Similarly, Lavrenty Beria, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR,
pursued German reunification, but he was removed from power that same year before he could act
on the matter. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rejected reunification as equivalent to returning
East Germany for annexation to the West; hence reunification went unconsidered until 1989. [citation needed]

West and East Berlin with the Berlin Wall

East Germany regarded East Berlin as its capital, and the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern
Bloc diplomatically recognized East Berlin as the capital. However, the Western Allies disputed this
recognition, considering the entire city of Berlin to be occupied territory governed by the Allied
Control Council. According to Margarete Feinstein, East Berlin's status as the capital was largely
unrecognized by the West and by most Third World countries. [42] In practice, the ACC's authority was
rendered moot by the Cold War, and East Berlin's status as occupied territory largely became a legal
fiction, the Soviet sector of Berlin became fully integrated into the GDR.[citation needed]
The deepening Cold War conflict between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union over the
unresolved status of West Berlin led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949). The
Soviet army initiated the blockade by halting all Allied rail, road, and water traffic to and from West
Berlin. The Allies countered the Soviets with the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) of food, fuel, and supplies to
West Berlin.[43]

Partition[edit]
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On 21 April 1946 the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands – KPD)

and the part of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands –
SPD) in the Soviet zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED – Sozialistische
Einheitspartei Deutschlands), which then won the elections of October 1946. The SED
government nationalised infrastructure and industrial plants.

GDR leaders: President Wilhelm Pieck and Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl, 1949

In March 1948 the German Economic Commission (Deutsche Wirtschaftskomission—DWK) under

its chairman Heinrich Rau assumed administrative authority in the Soviet occupation zone, thus
becoming the predecessor of an East German government. [44][45]
On 7 October 1949 the SED established the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German
Democratic Republic – GDR), based on a socialist political constitution establishing its control of
the Anti-Fascist National Front of the German Democratic Republic (NF, Nationale Front der
Deutschen Demokratischen Republik), an omnibus alliance of every party and mass organisation in
East Germany. The NF was established to stand for election to the Volkskammer (People's
Chamber), the East German parliament. The first and only president of the German Democratic
Republic was Wilhelm Pieck. However, after 1950, political power in East Germany was held by the
First Secretary of the SED, Walter Ulbricht.[46]
SED First Secretary, Walter Ulbricht, 1960

On 16 June 1953, workers constructing the new Stalinallee boulevard in East Berlin according to the

GDR's officially promulgated Sixteen Principles of Urban Design, rioted against a 10% production-
quota increase. Initially a labour protest, the action soon included the general populace, and on 17
June similar protests occurred throughout the GDR, with more than a million people striking in some
700 cities and towns. Fearing anti-communist counter-revolution, on 18 June 1953 the government
of the GDR enlisted the Soviet Occupation Forces to aid the police in ending the riot; some fifty
people were killed and 10,000 were jailed.[clarification needed][47][48] (See Uprising of 1953 in East Germany.)
The German war reparations owed to the Soviets impoverished the Soviet Zone of Occupation and
severely weakened the East German economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and
transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the industrial plant and by the early 1950s had
extracted some US$10 billion in reparations in agricultural and industrial products. [49] The poverty of
East Germany, induced or deepened by reparations, provoked the Republikflucht ("desertion from
the republic") to West Germany, further weakening the GDR's economy. Western economic
opportunities induced a brain drain. In response, the GDR closed the inner German border, and on
the night of 12 August 1961, East German soldiers began erecting the Berlin Wall.[50]

Erich Honecker, head of state (1971–1989)

In 1971, Ulbricht was removed from leadership after Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev supported his
ouster;[51] Erich Honecker replaced him. While the Ulbricht government had experimented with liberal
reforms, the Honecker government reversed them. The new government introduced a new East
German Constitution which defined the German Democratic Republic as a "republic of workers and
peasants".[52]
Initially, East Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, a claim supported by most
of the Communist bloc. It claimed that West Germany was an illegally-constituted puppet state of
NATO. However, from the 1960s onward, East Germany began recognizing itself as a separate
country from West Germany and shared the legacy of the united German state of 1871–1945. This
was formalized in 1974 when the reunification clause was removed from the revised East German
constitution. West Germany, in contrast, maintained that it was the only legitimate government of
Germany. From 1949 to the early 1970s, West Germany maintained that East Germany was an
illegally constituted state. It argued that the GDR was a Soviet puppet-state, and frequently referred
to it as the "Soviet occupation zone". West Germany's allies shared this position until 1973. East
Germany was recognized primarily by socialist countries and by the Arab bloc, along with some
"scattered sympathizers".[53] According to the Hallstein Doctrine (1955), West Germany did not
establish (formal) diplomatic ties with any country—except the Soviets—that recognized East
German sovereignty.

Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) Helmut Schmidt, Chairman of the State
Council of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) Erich Honecker, U.S. president Gerald Ford and
Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky signing the Helsinki Act

In the early 1970s, the Ostpolitik ("Eastern Policy") of "Change Through Rapprochement" of the

pragmatic government of FRG Chancellor Willy Brandt, established normal diplomatic relations with
the East Bloc states. This policy saw the Treaty of Moscow (August 1970), the Treaty of
Warsaw (December 1970), the Four Power Agreement on Berlin (September 1971), the Transit
Agreement (May 1972), and the Basic Treaty (December 1972), which relinquished any separate
claims to an exclusive mandate over Germany as a whole and established normal relations between
the two Germanies. Both countries were admitted into the United Nations on 18 September 1973.
This also increased the number of countries recognizing East Germany to 55, including the US, UK
and France, though these three still refused to recognize East Berlin as the capital, and insisted on a
specific provision in the UN resolution accepting the two Germanies into the UN to that effect.
[53]
 Following the Ostpolitik, the West German view was that East Germany was a de
facto government within a single German nation and a de jure state organisation of parts of
Germany outside the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic continued to maintain that it could not
within its own structures recognize the GDR de jure as a sovereign state under international law; but
it fully acknowledged that, within the structures of international law, the GDR was an independent
sovereign state. By distinction, West Germany then viewed itself as being within its own boundaries,
not only the de facto and de jure government, but also the sole de jure legitimate representative of a
dormant "Germany as whole".[54] The two Germanies each relinquished any claim to represent the
other internationally; which they acknowledged as necessarily implying a mutual recognition of each
other as both capable of representing their own populations de jure in participating in international
bodies and agreements, such as the United Nations and the Helsinki Final Act.
This assessment of the Basic Treaty was confirmed in a decision of the Federal Constitutional
Court in 1973;[55]
the German Democratic Republic is in the international-law sense a State and as such a subject of
international law. This finding is independent of recognition in international law of the German
Democratic Republic by the Federal Republic of Germany. Such recognition has not only never been
formally pronounced by the Federal Republic of Germany but on the contrary repeatedly explicitly
rejected. If the conduct of the Federal Republic of Germany towards the German Democratic
Republic is assessed in the light of its détente policy, in particular, the conclusion of the Treaty as de
facto recognition, then it can only be understood as de facto recognition of a special kind. The
special feature of this Treaty is that while it is a bilateral Treaty between two States, to which the
rules of international law apply and which like any other international treaty possesses validity, it is
between two States that are parts of a still existing, albeit incapable of action as not being
reorganized, comprehensive State of the Whole of Germany with a single body politic. [56]
Travel between the GDR and Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became visa-free from 1972. [57]

GDR identity[edit]

Karl Marx monument in Chemnitz (renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt from 1953 to 1990)

From the beginning, the newly formed GDR tried to establish its own separate identity. [58] Because of
the imperial and military legacy of Prussia, the SED repudiated continuity between Prussia and the
GDR. The SED destroyed a number of symbolic relics of the former Prussian
aristocracy: Junker manor-houses were torn down, the Berliner Stadtschloß was razed, and
the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was removed from East Berlin. Instead, the SED
focused on the progressive heritage of German history, including Thomas Müntzer's role in
the German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 and the role played by the heroes of the class struggle
during Prussia's industrialization.
Especially after the Ninth Party Congress in 1976, East Germany upheld historical reformers such
as Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757–1831), Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822), Wilhelm von
Humboldt (1767–1835), and Gerhard von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) as examples and role models.[59]
East Germany was elected as a member of the UN Security Council 1980-81.
In the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, in spite of the U.S.-led boycott, East Germany won over a
total of 126 Olympic medals, finishing second place behind the Soviet Union.

Die Wende (German reunification)[edit]

Main articles: Die Wende and German reunification
Demonstration on Alexanderplatz in East Berlin on 4 November 1989

In May 1989, following widespread public anger over the faking of results of local government
elections, many GDR citizens applied for exit visas or left the country contrary to GDR laws. The
impetus for this exodus of East Germans was the removal of the electrified fence along Hungary's
border with Austria on 2 May 1989. Although formally the Hungarian frontier was still closed, many
East Germans took the opportunity to enter Hungary via Czechoslovakia, and then make the illegal
crossing from Hungary to Austria and to West Germany beyond. [60] By July, 25,000 East Germans
had crossed into Hungary;[61] most of them did not attempt the risky crossing into Austria but
remained instead in Hungary or claimed asylum in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest.
The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19
August 1989 then set in motion a chain reaction leading to the end of the GDR and disintegration of
the Eastern Bloc. It was the largest mass escape from East Germany since the building of the Berlin
Wall in 1961. The idea of opening the border at a ceremony came from Otto von Habsburg, who
proposed it to Miklós Németh, then Hungarian Prime Minister, who promoted the idea. [62] The patrons
of the picnic, Habsburg and Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, who did not attend the event,
saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the
border on the Iron Curtain. In particular, it tested whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops
stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was
made by the Paneuropean Union through posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in
Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von
Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting GDR citizens to a picnic near the border at
Sopron (near Hungary's border with Austria).[63][64][65] The local Sopron organizers knew nothing of
possible GDR refugees, but envisaged a local party with Austrian and Hungarian participation. [66] But
with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist
Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the
barrier of the Eastern Bloc was broken. The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror"
of 19 August 1989 was too late and showed the present loss of power: "Habsburg distributed leaflets
far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came
to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come
to the West."[citation needed] Tens of thousands of East Germans, alerted by the media, made their way to
Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or force its border troops
to open fire on escapees. The GDR leadership in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock down
their own country's borders.[63][65][67][68]
The next major turning point in the exodus came on 10 September 1989, when Hungarian Foreign
Minister Gyula Horn announced that his country would no longer restrict movement from Hungary
into Austria. Within two days, 22,000 East Germans crossed into Austria; tens of thousands more did
so in the following weeks.[60]
Many other GDR citizens demonstrated against the ruling party, especially in the city of Leipzig. The
Leipzig demonstrations became a weekly occurrence, with a turnout of 10,000 people at the first
demonstration on 2 October, peaking at an estimated 300,000 by the end of the month. [69] The
protests were surpassed in East Berlin, where half a million demonstrators turned out against the
regime on 4 November.[69] Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led local
negotiations with the government and held town meetings in the concert hall. [70] The demonstrations
eventually led Erich Honecker to resign in October; he was replaced by a slightly more moderate
communist, Egon Krenz.[71]
The massive demonstration in East Berlin on 4 November coincided with Czechoslovakia formally
opening its border to West Germany.[72] With the West more accessible than ever before, 30,000
East Germans made the crossing via Czechoslovakia in the first two days alone. To try to stem the
outward flow of the population, the SED proposed a law loosening travel restrictions. When
the Volkskammer rejected it on 5 November, the Cabinet and Politburo of the GDR resigned.[72] This
left only one avenue open for Krenz and the SED: completely abolishing travel restrictions between
East and West.
On 9 November 1989, a few sections of the Berlin Wall were opened, resulting in thousands of East
Germans crossing freely into West Berlin and West Germany for the first time in nearly 30 years.
Krenz resigned a month later, and the SED opened negotiations with the leaders of the incipient
Democratic movement, Neues Forum, to schedule free elections and begin the process of
democratization. As part of this process, the SED eliminated the clause in the East German
constitution guaranteeing the Communists leadership of the state. The change was approved in
the Volkskammer on 1 December 1989 by a vote of 420 to 0.[73]
East Germany held its last election in March 1990. The winner was a coalition headed by the East
German branch of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union, which advocated speedy
reunification. Negotiations (2+4 Talks) were held involving the two German states and the
former Allies, which led to agreement on the conditions for German unification. By a two-thirds vote
in the Volkskammer on 23 August 1990, the German Democratic Republic declared its accession to
the Federal Republic of Germany. The five original East German states that had been abolished in
the 1952 redistricting were restored. [71] On 3 October 1990, the five states officially joined the Federal
Republic of Germany, while East and West Berlin united as a third city-state (in the same manner
as Bremen and Hamburg). On 1 July, a currency union preceded the political union: the "Ostmark"
was abolished, and the Western German "Deutsche Mark" became the common currency.
Although the Volkskammer's declaration of accession to the Federal Republic had initiated the
process of reunification; the act of reunification itself (with its many specific terms, conditions and
qualifications; some of which involved amendments to the West German Basic Law) was achieved
constitutionally by the subsequent Unification Treaty of 31 August 1990; that is, through a binding
agreement between the former Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic now recognising
each other as separate sovereign states in international law. [74] The treaty was then voted into effect
prior to the agreed date for Unification by both the Volkskammer and the Bundestag by the
constitutionally required two-thirds majorities; effecting on the one hand, the extinction of the GDR,
and on the other, the agreed amendments to the Basic Law of the Federal Republic.
The great economic and socio-political inequalities between the former Germanies required
government subsidies for the full integration of the German Democratic Republic into the Federal
Republic of Germany. Because of the resulting deindustrialization in the former East Germany, the
causes of the failure of this integration continue to be debated. Some western commentators claim
that the depressed eastern economy is a natural aftereffect of a demonstrably inefficient command
economy. But many East German critics contend that the shock-therapy style of privatization, the
artificially high rate of exchange offered for the Ostmark, and the speed with which the entire
process was implemented did not leave room for East German enterprises to adapt. [i]