The division of Germany

The division of Germany

1990

1945

Consectetuer adipiscing elit I

Timeline

Yalta and Potsdam conferences

FRG and GDR

peaceful revolution

blockade of Berlin

the wall

Yalta

• denazification and demilitarization of Germany
• territorial copensation to Poland
• 4 occupation zones

Potsdam

• Germany as a whole --> allies
• former German Reich--> ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union
• All expansion from '38 to '45 is invalid

+info

The blockade

By 1946, tensions escalated further as Soviet military forces helped to establish Communist regimes in Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania. In a famous speech, Winston Churchill, the former British Prime Minister, described the threat of Soviet Communism as an “iron curtain” descending across the European continent

When the western Allies tried to circulate the new Deutsche mark in Berlin the Stalin ordered a total blockade of Berlin, denying railway, road and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Americans, British and French responded with the Berlin Airlift, a months-long air campaign to drop food and fuel into West Berlin that ultimately broke the Soviet blockade in 1949.

Federal Republic of Germany

German Democratic Republic

With the continuation and aggravation of the Cold War the western sectors were united on 23 May 1949 to form the Federal Republic of Germany; on 7 October 1949, the Soviet Zone became the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

FDJ Organisation Parade

The Volkswagen Beetle – for many years the most successful car in the world – on the assembly line in Wolfsburg factory, 1973

+info

Berlin Wall

Consectetuer adipiscing elit I

After a decade of relative calm, tensions flared again in 1958. For the next three years, the Soviets–emboldened by the successful launch of the Sputnik satellite the year before during the “Space Race” and embarrassed by the seemingly endless flow of refugees from east to west (nearly 3 million since the end of the blockade, many of them young skilled workers such as doctors, teachers and engineers

On the night of August 12th, 1961, Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall–the Berlin Wall–that divided one side of the city from the other.

Reunification

The final barrier to reunification fell in July 1990 when Kohl prevailed upon Gorbachev to drop his objections to a unified Germany within the NATO alliance in return for sizable financial aid to the Soviet Union. A unification treaty was ratified in September and went into effect on October 3, 1990. The German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic as five additional Länder, and the two parts of divided Berlin became one Land.

The East German government dominated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) (a communist party) started to falter on 2 May 1989, when the removal of Hungary's border fence with Austria opened a hole in the Iron Curtain.

Thanks!

Bibliography: https://www.history.com/news/germany-divided-world-war-ii https://www.cvce.eu/en/education/unit-content/-/unit/55c09dcc-a9f2-45e9-b240-eaef64452cae/2d612dca-8360-46a1-9ea8-c5a0c191b8be https://history.state.gov/countries/german-democratic-republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germany#History https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/11/09/the-day-wall-came-down-how-post-covered-berlin-walls-fall-years-ago/