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How was Germany Divided after ww2?

User Libor
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Answer:

A temporary solution to organize Germany into four occupation zones led to a divided nation under the Cold War.

Step-by-step explanation:

When the Allies celebrated Victory in Europe (VE) Day on May 8, 1945, the British military commander Bernard Law Montgomery cautioned his troops, “We have won the German war. Let us now win the peace.”

Months before Germany’s unconditional surrender in World War II, the “Big Three” Allied powers—the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union—met at the Yalta Conference to discuss Germany’s future. They all wanted to avoid a repeat of what had happened after World War I, when a postwar economic collapse in Germany fueled nationalist resentment and the rise of the Nazi Party.

The situation in Germany after World War II was dire. Millions of Germans were homeless from Allied bombing campaigns that razed entire cities. And millions more Germans living in Poland and East Prussia became refugees when the Soviet Union expelled them. With the German economy and government in shambles, the Allies concluded that Germany needed to be occupied after the war to assure a peaceful transition to a post-Nazi state.

What the Allies never intended, though, was that their temporary solution to organize Germany into four occupation zones, each administered by a different Allied army, would ultimately lead to a divided Germany.

“Only over time, as the Cold War eroded trust between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies, did these occupation zones coalesce into two different German nations,” says Thomas Boghardt, a senior historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History.

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User Quoc Nguyen
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After World War II, Germany was divided into four occupied zones: Great Britain in the northwest, France in the southwest, the United States in the south and the Soviet Union in the east . Berlin, the capital city situated in Soviet territory, was also divided into four occupied zones .

The division of Germany was intended to be a temporary solution to organize Germany into four occupation zones, each administered by a different Allied army . However, over time, as the Cold War eroded trust between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies, these occupation zones coalesced into two different German nations . The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was established on 23 May 1949 and was a parliamentary democracy with an ordoliberal economic system and free churches and labor unions . The German Democratic Republic (East Germany), established on 7 October 1949, was a Marxist–Leninist socialist republic with its leadership dominated by the Soviet-aligned Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED)

User Ryan Tenney
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