In May 1945, after the end of the Great Patriotic War, Germany ceased to be a single state. The countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition decided to divide the country into zones of occupation. Subsequently, on the territory inhabited by the Germans, two independent states were created - the FRG and the GDR.
Occupation of Germany
At the end of May 1945, the territory of the former Nazi Germany was divided into several parts. Austria withdrew from the empire. Alsace and Lorraine returned under French protection. Czechoslovakia received back the Sudetenland. Statehood was restored in Luxembourg.
Part of the territory of Poland, annexed by the Germans in 1939, returned to it. The eastern part of Prussia was divided between the USSR and Poland.
The rest of Germany was divided by the Allies into four zones of occupation, where Soviet, British, American and French military authorities exercised control. The countries that took part in the occupation of German lands agreed to pursue a coordinated policy, the main principles of which were the denazification and demilitarization of the former German Empire.
Formation of the Federal Republic of Germany
A few years later, in 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was proclaimed on the territory of the American, British and French zones of occupation, the capital of which was Bonn. Western politicians thus planned to create in this part of Germany a state built on the capitalist model, which could become a springboard for a possible war with the communist regime.
The Americans provided considerable assistance to the new bourgeois German state. Thanks to this support, the FRG quickly began to turn into an economically developed power. In the 1950s, there was even talk of a "German economic miracle."
The country needed cheap labor, the main source of which was Turkey.
How the German Democratic Republic came to be
The response to the creation of the FRG was the proclamation of the constitution of another German republic - the GDR. This happened in October 1949, five months after the formation of the FRG. In this way, the Soviet state decided to resist the aggressive intentions of the former allies and create a kind of stronghold of socialism in Western Europe.
The Constitution of the German Democratic Republic proclaimed democratic freedoms to its citizens. This document also consolidated the leading role of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. For a long time, the Soviet Union provided the government of the GDR with political and economic assistance.
However, in terms of industrial growth, the GDR, which embarked on the socialist path of development, lagged significantly behind its western neighbor. But this did not prevent East Germany from becoming a developed industrial country, where agriculture also developed intensively. After a series of stormy democratic transformations in the GDR, the unity of the German nation was restored, on October 3, 1990, the FRG and the GDR became a single state.
