Zone of Soviet occupation in postwar Germany
The
Soviet occupation zone in Germany
(
German
:
Sowjetische Besatzungszone (SBZ)
or
Ostzone
,
lit.
'
East Zone
'
;
Russian
:
Советская оккупационная зона Германии
,
romanized
:
Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii
) was an area of Germany that was occupied by the
Soviet Union
as a
communist
area, established as a result of the
Potsdam Agreement
on 1 August 1945. On 7 October 1949 the
German Democratic Republic
(GDR), commonly referred to in English as
East Germany
, was established in the Soviet occupation zone.
The SBZ was one of the four
Allied occupation zones of Germany
created at the end of World War II with the Allied victory. According to the
Potsdam Agreement
, the
Soviet Military Administration in Germany
(German initials: SMAD) was assigned responsibility for the middle portion of Germany. Eastern Germany beyond the
Oder-Neisse line
, equal in territory to the SBZ, was to be annexed by Poland and its
population expelled
, pending a final peace conference with Germany.
[1]
By the time armed forces of the United States and United Kingdom began to meet Soviet Union forces, forming the
Line of Contact
, significant areas of what would become the Soviet zone of Germany were outside Soviet control. After several months of occupation, these gains by the British and Americans were ceded to the Soviets by July 1945, according to the previously agreed occupation zone boundaries.
The SMAD allowed four
political parties
to develop, though they were all required to work together under an
alliance
known as the "
Democratic Bloc
" (later the
National Front
). In April 1946, the
Social Democratic Party of Germany
(SPD) and the
Communist Party of Germany
(KPD) were
forcibly merged
to form the
Socialist Unity Party
which later became the governing party of the GDR.
The SMAD set up
ten "special camps"
for the detention of
Germans
, making use of some former
Nazi concentration camps
.
In 1945, the Soviet occupation zone consisted primarily of the central portions of
Prussia
. After Prussia was dissolved by the Allied powers in 1947, the area was divided between the German states
(Lander)
of
Brandenburg
,
Mecklenburg
,
Saxony
,
Saxony-Anhalt
and
Thuringia
.
[2]
On 7 October 1949, the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic. In 1952, the
Lander
were dissolved and realigned into 14 districts
(Bezirke)
, plus the district of
East Berlin
.
In 1952, with the
Cold War
political confrontation well underway,
Joseph Stalin
sounded out the Western Powers about the prospect of a united Germany which would be non-aligned (the "
Stalin Note
"). The West's lack of interest in this proposal helped to cement the Soviet Zone's identity as the GDR for the next four decades.
"Soviet zone" and derivatives (or also, "the so-called GDR") remained official and common names for East Germany in West Germany, which refused to acknowledge the existence of a state in East Germany until 1972, when the government of
Willy Brandt
extended a qualified recognition under its
Ostpolitik
initiative.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- Brennan, Sean,
'Land Reform Propaganda in Soviet Occupied Germany'
, University of Kent
- Lewkowicz, Nicolas
The German Question and the International Order, 1943?48
(Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke and New York) (2008)
- Lewkowicz, Nicolas,
The German Question and the Origins of the Cold War
(IPOC: Milan) (2008)