— Ch. 1 · Post-War Division And Emergence —
Berlin Wall.
~9 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
The Potsdam Agreement of 1945 divided Germany into four occupation zones controlled by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union. Berlin itself sat deep inside the Soviet zone yet was split into four sectors for its own administration. Political tensions between the Soviets and Western allies grew rapidly within two years of the war's end. The Soviets refused to agree to reconstruction plans that would make post-war Germany self-sufficient or provide detailed accounting of industrial plants. France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Benelux countries later combined their non-Soviet zones for reconstruction. They approved the extension of the Marshall Plan to aid economic recovery in these western areas. In response, the Soviets instituted the Berlin Blockade in 1948 to prevent food and supplies from reaching West Berlin by land routes. A massive airlift involving the United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others supplied the city with necessities. Communist parties attempted to disrupt elections in 1948 but suffered large losses. Three hundred thousand Berliners demonstrated publicly to support the continuation of the international airlift. Stalin lifted the blockade in May 1949 allowing Western shipments to resume. On the 7th of October 1949, the German Democratic Republic officially declared its existence as a separate state. The Soviet Union ended its military government over the occupation zone on that same day. Legal power transferred to the Provisorische Volkskammer under the new constitution. Despite this legal sovereignty restoration in 1955, the Soviet Union maintained considerable influence through its embassy and implicit threats of force. East Germany developed a centrally planned socialist economy with nationalized means of production. Repressive secret police institutions operated under the party dictatorship of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. This system mirrored the party dictatorship found within the Soviet Union itself.