ABSTRACT
Having defeated and occupied Germany the Allies had to decide what to do with it. At several important wartime meetings the Allied leaders had discussed the matter. Their views changed somewhat according to the military and international situations, the venue and so on. They had to decide on the new Germany’s frontiers, on the form the occupation would take, on the compensation Germany should pay, on the political future of Germany, the type of state or states it should construct, and the best means of preventing a recrudescence of Nazism, militarism, or the kind of nationalism which could endanger peace. Meeting at Yalta, in the Crimea, in February 1945, Stalin, Roosevelt
and Churchill agreed that ‘the Eastern frontier of Poland should follow the Curzon Line ... They recognise that Poland must receive substantial accessions of territory in the North and W est... the final delineation of the Western frontier of Poland should thereafter await the Peace Conference’. In other words they were recognising the Soviet Union’s acquisitions from Poland in 1939, offering Poland German territory in the west and in the north, East Prussia. The Western leaders lost some of their enthusiasm for Polish expansion at Germany’s expense as it became clear that postwar Poland would be Soviet-orientated. At the Potsdam conference in August 1945 the Anglo-Americans
found themselves faced with a fait accompli by the Russians who had handed over to the Poles all the lands up to the Oder-Neisse Line. The conference decided to place all ‘former German territories’ east of a line running from ‘the Baltic Sea, immediately west of Swinemunde, and thence along the Oder River to the confluence of the western Neisse River and along the western Neisse to the Czechoslovak frontier, including that portion of East Prussia not placed under the administration of the Soviet Union, ‘under the administration of the Polish State’. This was ‘pending the final determination of Poland’s western frontier’. By this statement the Western Powers were recognising de facto Poland’s new frontier with Germany even
though, in later years, due to the Cold War, they and the West Germans were to emphasise the words, ‘pending the fined determina tion’. But by agreeing that ‘the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken’, the Western Powers were making it very difficult to argue in favour of a new revision of Germany’s frontiers at Poland’s expense. With the loss of the OderNeisse territories the Germans forfeited 24 per cent of the entire area of 1937 Germany. The conferences did not deal with Germany’s western frontiers. The reestablishment of Austrian independence had been declared an Allied aim by the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union, Britain and the U S A in Moscow on 1 November 1943. In an agreement of 12 September 1944, signed in London, Britain,
USA and the Soviet Union agreed that the Germany of 31 December 1937 should be divided into three occupation zones, an eastern, a north-western and a south-western. Berlin would be divided in a similar way and would be ruled by an Inter-Allied Commandatura. The Russians would receive the eastern zone but it was not decided, due to Anglo-u s rivalry, which zones the two Western Powers would receive. This matter was cleared up by an agreement of 14 November under which Britain was assigned the north-west and the U S the south-west. On the same day the three powers decided Germany would be ruled by an Allied Central Council. They also made provision for a French zone to be carved from the Anglo-U S zones. It was later agreed, against some opposition from Stalin, to give France a place on the Central Council. The Yalta communique recognised Germany’s obligation to pay
compensation to the Allied Nations. The nations to receive priority treatment would be those ‘which have borne the main burden of the war, have suffered the heaviest losses and have organised victory over the enemy’. Reparations could be exacted from ‘the national wealth’— equipment, machine-tools, ships, rolling stock, investments abroad, etc-from ‘annual deliveries of goods from current productions’ or by ‘use of German labour’. Potsdam went into greater detail about reparations. It laid down that the USSR and Poland were to receive their share from the Soviet Zone and from German foreign invest ments, and the Anglo-Americans and other nations from the Western Zones and German foreign investments. The conference further granted the Soviet Union the right to substantial reparations, partly in exchange for raw materials and food, from the remaining intact steel, chemical and machine-making plant, in the Western Zones. What kind of political future could the German people expect? The
Potsdam communique assured them that ‘it is not the intention of the
Allies to destroy or enslave the German people. The Allies want to give the German people the chance to prepare itself to rebuild its life on a democratic and peaceful basis’. Once it had achieved this Germany would once again be able to take its place among the nations. Potsdam implied a united Germany, except for the territories east of the Oder-Neisse Line, in that it spoke of the economic unity of Germany, equal treatment for all Germans, and the setting up of ‘a few, important, central German administrative departments’. This was somewhat in contrast to earlier discussions of the ‘Big Three’. They had toyed with various schemes for the division of Germany into several states. The most controversial of these was that advocated by U S Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau. He wanted boundaries to the east similar, but not as favourable to Poland, as those which came into existence in 1945. Secondly, he wanted the internationalisation of the Ruhr and the Kiel Canal area. Thirdly, France should get the Saar and the adjacent territories bounded by the Rhine and the Moselle Rivers. Finally, he advocated the establish ment of a North German state including much of old Prussia, Saxony and Thuringia, and a South German state comprising Bavaria, Wuerttemberg, Baden and some smaller areas. The plan also demanded that the Ruhr ‘should not only be stripped of all presently existing industries but so weakened and controlled that it cannot in the foreseeable future become an industrial area’. Morgenthau’s pro posals never became official policy despite Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s signatures on the plan at the Quebec Conference in September 1944. The plan did though influence future policy towards Germany. How did the Allied leaders intend to, in the words of Potsdam,
‘assure that Germany never again will threaten her neighbours or the peace of the world’? By complete ‘disarmament and demilitarisation of Germany and elimination or control of all German industry that could be used for military production’. To this end all German military, semi-military organisations, even veterans’ organisations ‘shall be completely and finally abolished’. All Nazi organisations were dissolved, all Nazi or militarist propaganda banned, all Naziinspired laws abolished, all war criminals brought to justice. Further, all Nazi members ‘who have been more than nominal participants in its activities and all other persons hostile to Allied purposes shall be removed from public and semi-public office and from positions of responsibility in important private undertakings’. On the positive side, German education and the judicial system, administration and local government were to be reconstructed according to democratic principles. Democratic parties were to be encouraged and, ‘Subject to the necessity for maintaining military security, freedom of speech,
press and religion ... [and]... the formation of free trade unions shall be permitted’. The Germans were allowed ‘average living standards not exceeding the average of the standards of living of European countries’ (excluding the uK and the USSR).
