Allied-occupied Germany


The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II, from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Unlike occupied Japan, Nazi Germany was stripped of its sovereignty and its government was entirely dissolved. After Germany formally surrendered on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, the four countries representing the Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty through the Allied Control Council.
Germany after the war was a devastated country – roughly 80 percent of its infrastructure was in need of repair or reconstruction – which helped the idea that Germany was entering a new phase of history. At first, Allied-occupied Germany was defined as all territories of Germany before the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria. The Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945 defined the new eastern German border by giving Poland and the Soviet Union all regions of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line and divided the remaining "Germany as a whole" into four occupation zones, each administered by one of the Allies.
All territories annexed by Germany before the war from Austria and Czechoslovakia were returned to these countries. The Memel Territory, annexed by Germany from Lithuania before the war, was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945 and transferred to the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. All territories annexed by Germany during the war from Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland and Yugoslavia were returned to their respective countries. Deviating from the occupation zones planned according to the London Protocol in 1944, at Potsdam, the United States, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union approved the detachment from Germany of the territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, with the exact line of the boundary to be determined in a final German peace treaty. This treaty was expected to confirm the shifting westward of Poland's borders, as the United Kingdom and United States committed themselves to support the permanent incorporation of eastern Germany into Poland and the Soviet Union. From March 1945 to July 1945, these former eastern territories of Germany had been administered under Soviet military occupation authorities, but following the Potsdam Agreement they were handed over to Soviet and Polish civilian administrations and ceased to constitute part of Allied-occupied Germany.
In the closing weeks of fighting in Europe, United States forces had pushed beyond the agreed boundaries for the future zones of occupation, in some places by as much as. The so-called line of contact between Soviet and U.S. forces at the end of hostilities, mostly lying eastward of the July 1945-established inner German border, was temporary. After two months during which they held areas that had been assigned to the Soviet zone, U.S. forces withdrew in the first days of July 1945. Some have concluded that this was a crucial move which persuaded the Soviet Union to allow American, British and French forces into their designated sectors in Berlin, which occurred at roughly the same time; the need for intelligence gathering may also have been a factor. After the Soviet withdrawal from the Allied Control Council on 20 March 1948, the split had led to the 1949 establishment of two new German states, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic.

Occupation zones

American zone

The American zone in Southern Germany consisted of Bavaria and Hesse with a new capital in Wiesbaden, and of northern parts of Württemberg and Baden. Those formed Württemberg-Baden and became northern portions of the present-day German state of Baden-Württemberg founded in 1952.
The ports of Bremen and Bremerhaven were also placed under U.S. control because of the U.S. request to have certain toeholds in Northern Germany.
The headquarters of the American military government was the former IG Farben Building in Frankfurt am Main.

British zone

By May 1945 the British and Canadian Armies had liberated the Netherlands and had conquered Northern Germany. The Canadian forces went home following the German surrender, leaving Northern Germany to be occupied by the British.
The British Army of the Rhine was formed on 25 August 1945 from the British Liberation Army.
In July the British withdrew from Mecklenburg's capital Schwerin which they had taken over from the Americans a few weeks before, as it had previously been agreed to be occupied by the Soviet Army. The Control Commission for Germany ceded more slices of its area of occupation to the Soviet Union – specifically the Amt Neuhaus of Hanover and some exclaves and fringes of Brunswick, for example the County of Blankenburg, and exchanged some villages between British Holstein and Soviet Mecklenburg under the Barber-Lyashchenko Agreement.
Within the British zone of occupation, the CCG/BE re-established the city of Hamburg as a German state, but with borders that had been drawn by the Nazi government in 1937. The British also created the new German states of:
Also in 1947, the American zone of occupation being inland had no port facilities – thus the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and Bremerhaven became exclaves within the British zone.
The British headquarters were originally based in Bad Oeynhausen from 1946, but in 1954 it was moved to Mönchengladbach where it was known as JHQ Rheindahlen.
Another special feature of the British zone was the enclave of Bonn. It was created in July 1949 and was not under British or any other allied control. Instead it was under the control of the Allied High Commission. In June 1950, Ivone Kirkpatrick became the British High Commissioner for Germany. Kirkpatrick carried immense responsibility particularly with respect to the negotiation of the Bonn–Paris conventions during 1951–1952, which terminated the occupation and prepared the way for the rearmament of West Germany.

Belgian, Polish and Norwegian zones

Army units from other countries were stationed within the British occupation zone.
  • The Belgians were allocated a territory which was garrisoned by their troops. The zone formed a strip from the Belgian-German border at the south of the British zone, and included the important cities of Cologne and Aachen. The Belgian army of occupation in Germany became autonomous in 1946 under the command, initially, of Jean-Baptiste Piron. Belgian soldiers remained in Germany until 31 December 2005.
  • Polish units mainly from 1st Armoured Division were stationed in the northern area of the district of Emsland as well as in the areas of Oldenburg and Leer. This region bordered the Netherlands and covered an area of 6,500 km2, and was originally intended to serve as a collection and dispersal territory for the millions of Polish displaced persons in Germany and Western Europe after the war. Early British proposals for this to form the basis of a formal Polish zone of occupation, were however, soon abandoned due to Soviet opposition. The zone had a large camp constructed largely for displaced persons and was administered by the Polish government in exile. The administrative centre of the Polish occupation zone was the city of Haren the German population of which was temporarily removed. The city was renamed Maczków from 1945 to 1947. Once the British recognised the pro-Soviet government in Poland, and withdrew recognition from the London-based Polish government in exile, the Emsland zone became more of an embarrassment. Polish units within the British Army were demobilised in June 1947. The expelled German populations were allowed to return and the last Polish residents left in 1948.
  • In 1946, the Norwegian Brigade Group in Germany had 4,000 soldiers in Hanover; amongst whom was future Chancellor Willy Brandt as press attaché.
  • In 1947, a Danish Brigade in Germany of 4,000 men, under British command, occupied Oldenburg, after an agreement, signed at Copenhagen in April 1947, between Denmark and United Kingdom. A Danish Occupation Force was formally established on 7 October 1949. The headquarters was in the town of Jever, in East Friesland. However, it was decided to move the brigade to Itzehoe in October 1949, naming itself as Tysklandsbrigaden. It remained stationed at Itzehoe, under the name of The Danish Command in Germany, until 1958.
  • The London conference of 23 April 1949, during the Six-Power Conference, gave to the Netherlands some less far-reaching border modifications, after the failure of the Bakker-Schut Plan. So, at 12 noon that day, Dutch troops moved to occupy an area of 69 km2, whose most relevant parts were Elten and Selfkant. Many other small border corrections were made, mostly in the vicinity of Arnhem and Dinxperlo, which also were part of this small Dutch sub-zone of occupation.

    French zone

The French Republic was at first not granted an occupation zone in Germany, but the British and American governments later agreed to cede some western parts of their zones of occupation to the French Army. In April and May 1945, the French 1st Army had captured Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, and conquered a territory extending to Hitler's Eagle's Nest and the westernmost part of Austria. In July, the French relinquished Stuttgart to the Americans, and in exchange were given control over cities west of the Rhine such as Mainz and Koblenz. All this resulted in two barely contiguous areas of Germany along the French border which met at just a single point along the River Rhine. Three German states were established: Rheinland Pfalz in the north and west and on the other hand Württemberg-Hohenzollern and South Baden, who later formed Baden-Württemberg together with Württemberg-Baden of the American zone.
The French zone of occupation included the Saargebiet, which was disentangled from it on 16 February 1946. By 18 December 1946 customs controls were established between the Saar area and Allied-occupied Germany. The French zone ceded further areas adjacent to the Saar. Included in the French zone was the town of Büsingen am Hochrhein, a German exclave separated from the rest of the country by a narrow strip of neutral Swiss territory. The Swiss government agreed to allow limited numbers of French troops to pass through its territory in order to maintain law and order in Büsingen.