After Germany's loss in the Second great War, the nation stood in its own ruins, its future uncertain. The victorious allies divided the country among themselves into occupation zones. The western Allies took the western part of Germany, dividing it into the American, British and French Zones, while the Soviets took the Eastern half of the country. The former German Capital, Berlin, was partitioned in a similar manner. The unified Germany Bismarck had worked so hard to unite just 70 years earlier was no more. In 1949 the American, British and French Zones would unite and become the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the soviet zone becoming the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). With the creation of these two new German States, the hopes of those Germans who wished to see Germany reunited were dashed for the next 40 years. Each Germany had a different type of Government on two different sides of the political system. One was more democratic and its citizens enjoyed more freedoms economically and in daily life. The other was staunchly communist, with its citizens living a more repressed existence under the state police (Statsi) and their Government. However different these two Germanys might have been, they both claimed to be the rightful and legitimate German State.
Who though is to blame for the division of Germany? The answer may be provided by several different factors. The first factor is the Soviet Union's desire to form a German State that would be friendly to them and have no desire to invade their country once more. This combined with the Soviet Union's belief that they had fought and defeated the brunt of the German Wehrmacht and thus deserved to be rewarded with greater reparations from their eastern occupation zone assured that Germany was to become divided in the immediate aftermath of the war. Politicians within the two Germanies also responsible for the division of Germany as each considered the other to be "illegitimate" and each had no intentions of reaching a common ground in which would allow for Germany to unified under a single government. The last and arguably the most important factor that kept the two Germanies divided is what West and East Germany represented to the two opposing sides in the Cold War. It was essentially a microcosm of the cold war, with West Germany representing capitalism, democracy and other ideals of the Western World, and East Germany representing the communist ideals of the Soviet Union and its Allies. At times during the division of Germany did both sides often come close to war, including the Soviet blockade of Berlin and the subsequent Airlift by the Western Allies, and the 1961 Berlin Crisis where American Tanks and Soviets Tanks literally faced off in Berlin but no shots were fired. Neither side wanted or though they could afford to lose the whole of Germany to other side and as a result Germany was to remain divided
I agree with you on the reasons behind the continuation of German division long after it was necessary. Certainly for both sides Germany represented a buffer and potential flash point, with Berlin being the point at which the Communist East literally met the Democratic and Capitalist West. You mention the 1961 Berlin Crisis, which is, I believe, the point at which both sides tacitly recognized the permanence of the Wall and began a policy of simply trying to pretend as if the other did not exist, while secretly keeping tabs on the other's every move. If one was to look for the heart of the Cold War, it would arguably have been Berlin.
ReplyDeleteI think what is most clear about whose fault it was that Germany remained divided for so long after World War Two, is that the French, British, and American Zones were all united fairly quickly, and eventually gained sovereignty under a democratic regime, while the Soviet sector was prevented from uniting and kept under Soviet influence for as long as possible. The process of German division came down along the lines of the Cold War struggle, and the division would remain until the end of it. The West was not going to allow Western Germany to fall under communist totalitarian rule any more than the Soviets would allow the East to fall under capitalist democracy, and so Germany became a pawn in the power struggle of these bipolar political views.
ReplyDeleteThe Cold War tensions and the growing division of the world into "camps" certainly helped to maintain the division of Germany. But we need to remember that how things happened is not the only way they could have happened. This is not to say that there were many forces working for a unification of Germany in the post-war period but just to remind us to look at questions from the perspective of contemporaries as well: When we consider the question of who is to blame for the division, we implicitly accept the idea that Germany should be unified, that a united German nation state should exist. In the immediate post-war period, this was not necessarily always the accepted wisdom. some questioned whether there should be a Germany at all; others questioned the wisdom of a united Germany.
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