ABSTRACT
The end of World War II has popularly been called Germany’s “zero hour,” yet historians have stressed that in many respects Germany after April 30, 1945, the day that Adolf Hitler took his life, was ripe with continuities. In terms of leadership, of course, change was rapid. Germany emerged from World War II as one nation occupied by four allied powers. By 1949, the irrevocable differences between the Soviet Union and the Western allies had resulted in Germany’s formal division into two states. The division of Germany was part of the tumultuous redrawing of central European borders after World War II based on Cold War power shuffles, yet Germany’s role in this process remained special. In no other case had a single country been physically divided into communist and capitalist spheres, with both sides, like rivalrous siblings, serving as proxies for their respective superpowers.
