Why Did Germany Emerge Zoned, & Then Partitioned, Following Wwii?
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As the Second World War in Europe came to a close, the three Allied Powers of Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States made arrangements for what would happen to the collapsing state of Germany. The Red Army was in sight of Berlin, and it was clear that the war was finally coming to an end. The moment that the Nazi Party, and effectively the country of Germany itself, surrendered, in May of 1945, the Allies took control. They administered their previously arranged agreements, made at the Yalta conference, on the division of Germany. As the Ðwinners of the Second World War, the Allies would each get a zone, with Stalin and the Soviet Union occupying the eastern half, while Great Britain and the United States took control of the western half. France was also granted a zone there, as a sort of reparation as a result of Germanys repeated aggression against France (and possibly an unspoken vendetta).
One of the key principles as to why the occupation of Germany was deemed necessary was stated in Article 3 of the Potsdam Agreement; “[The purpose of the occupation of Germany by which the Control Council shall be guided is] to convince the German people that they have suffered a total military defeat and that they cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought upon themselves, since their own ruthless warfare and the fanatical Nazi resistance have destroyed German economy and made chaos and suffering inevitable.” The purpose of the effect of occupation can be somewhat associated with the War-Guilt Clause of Article 231b after the First World War, in the means of making the German population Ðpunish themselves in a more emotional and personal way.
There were a number of settlements made dealing with the interaction of the zones. At Yalta, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that their zones would be just zones of a greater Germany, and not a stepping stone to separate states or nations. Economic trade was established in order to keep the zones in touch with each other, as there were plans to keep Germany as a single economic unit, and the Allied Control Council was the respective political connection. The western zones were to supply the USSR with machinery, in return for food and raw materials from the Soviet zone. However, Stalin didnt always supply the others with the food quota, whatever his initiatives. Soon in early 1946, General Lucius D. Clay, the head of the American zone, halted the transport of machinery out of the USAs area, followed by Britain not long after. This was just the start of the disagreements between the East and West in Germany.
In the late Ð40s, the UK and the US zones combined to create what was known as the Bizone. Soon, France joined them to create the Trizone. The western zones also had a plan for a new currency. To Stalin, this was another step closer to forming a separate state, a new nation that could be potentially threatening to him and the Soviet Union, but Stalins official reason was that it was violating the agreements made at Potsdam. Before long, in 1948, the USSR