(
de facto not including
Saarland) in Germany (1947–1949) (1948–1949) which contained recommendations for the establishment new state and formed a working basis for the
Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany; 1 July 1948 (1961–1989) of the Saarland into the Federal Republic of Germany on 1 January 1957 with the
new state coat of arms of the
Saarland in
Leipzig in the
East German uprising of 1953 on 17 June , September 1973 signed an agreement on transit fees with the head of department in the
East German Ministry of Finance, Hans Nimmerich, in the House of Ministries After the
suicide of Adolf Hitler on 30 April 1945,
Karl Dönitz assumed the title of
Reichspräsident in accordance with
Hitler's last political testament. As such, he authorised the signing of the
unconditional surrender of all German armed forces, which took effect on 8 May 1945. He tried to establish a government under
Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk in
Flensburg. This government, however, was not recognised by the Allies; and Dönitz and all its other members were arrested on 23 May by British forces. On 5 June 1945, in Berlin, the supreme commanders of the four occupying powers signed a common
Berlin Declaration, which formally confirmed the defeat of
Nazi Germany in
World War II, as well as the complete legal extinction of the
German Reich with the death of Adolf Hitler on 30 April 1945 Germany was occupied by four countries representing the victorious
Allies signing the agreement (US, UK, France, and the USSR). The declaration also formed the
Allied Control Council (ACC) of these four countries ruling Germany, and confirmed the German borders which had been in force before
the annexation of Austria. With the Potsdam Agreement at the
Potsdam Conference between the three main Allies defeating the European
Axis (US, UK, and the USSR) on 2 August 1945, Germany was divided by the Allies into occupation zones, each under the
military government of one of these four countries. The agreement also modified Germany's border, with the country
de facto losing its
former territories east of the
Oder–Neisse line to Poland and the Soviet Union (most for Poland because the
eastern territories of
former Poland were annexed by the USSR). Germany's border decision came under pressure from Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union. During and after the war, many ethnic Germans who had lived in the historically German lands in
Central and Eastern Europe, including territories east of the Oder–Neisse line,
fled and were expelled to post-war German and Austrian territory. Saarland, an area in the
French occupation zone, was separated from Germany when its own constitution took effect, to become
a French protectorate on 17 December 1947.
Developments from 1948 Among the Allies, geo-political tension between the Soviet Union and Western Allies in
occupied Germany as part of their tension in the world led the Soviets to
de facto withdraw from the ACC on 20 March 1948 (four occupying countries restored the act of the ACC in 1971) and
blockade West Berlin (after the introduction of a
new currency in West Germany on 20 June of the same year) from 20 June 1948 to 12 May 1949, but the USSR could not force the three Western Allies to withdraw from West Berlin as they wanted; consequently, the foundation of a new German state became impossible. The Federal Republic of Germany, or "West Germany", a
liberal democracy, was established in the
US,
UK, and
French zones on 23 May 1949. West Germany was
de jure established in the
Trizone occupied by three Western Allies and established on 1 August 1948. Its forerunner was the
Bizone formed by the US and UK zones on 1 January 1947 before the inclusion of the French zone. The Trizone did not include West Berlin, which was also occupied by three Western Allies, although the city was
de facto part of the West German state; the German Democratic Republic or "East Germany", a
communist state with a
planned and
public economy which declared itself as the new state and the
successor of the German Reich, a legal-former German state (in contrast to the Federal Republic of Germany, which considered itself a state partially identical with the German Reich and not merely its successor, with the "partial identity" limited to apply only within its current
de facto territory), was established in the
Soviet zone on 7 October 1949. It
de jure did not include East Berlin, occupied by the Soviets, although the city was
de facto its capital: the severe ideological conflict between German politicians and sociologists in their self-governing east–west society was preceded by the influence of higher foreign occupiers; however this only really rose to become official with the birth of the two countries of Germany in the context of the period of international tension during the
Cold War. The capital of West Germany was
Bonn; however it was only considered provisional due to the West German aspiration to establish Berlin as its capital, although at the time Berlin was divided, with the eastern part
de facto managed by East Germany. East Germany originally also wanted to gain West Berlin and make the unified Berlin its capital.
1952 onwards The Western Allies and West Germany rejected the
Soviet Union's idea of neutral reunification in 1952, resulting in the two German governments continuing to exist side-by-side. Most of the
border between two Germanies, and later the border in Berlin, were physically fortified and tightly controlled by East Germany from 1952 and 1961, respectively. The flags of the two German countries were originally the
same, but in 1959 East Germany changed
its flag. The West German government initially did not recognize the new and
de facto German–Polish border, nor East Germany, but later eventually recognized the border in 1972 (with the 1970 Treaty of Warsaw) and East Germany in 1973 (with the 1972 Basic Treaty) when applying
a common policy to reconcile with the communist countries in the East. The East German government also had encouraged two-state status after initially denying the existence of the West German state, influenced by the Soviet policy of "
peaceful coexistence". The mutual recognition of the two Germanies paved the way for both countries to be widely recognized internationally. The two Germanies
joined the United Nations as two separate country members in 1973 and East Germany abandoned its goal of reunification with their compatriots in the West in
a constitutional amendment the following year. (United States) and
Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Union) at the first Summit in
Geneva, Switzerland on 19 November 1985 against the government in
Leipzig, 16 October 1989
Mikhail Gorbachev had led the country as
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since 1985. During this time, the Soviet Union experienced a period of
economic and political stagnation, and correspondingly decreased intervention in
Eastern Bloc politics. In 1987, the United States President
Ronald Reagan gave a famous speech at the
Brandenburg Gate, challenging
Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "
tear down this wall" which prevented freedom of movement in Berlin.
The wall had stood as an icon for the political and economic division between East and West, a division that
Churchill had referred to as the "
Iron Curtain". Gorbachev announced in 1988 that the Soviet Union would abandon the
Brezhnev Doctrine and allow the Eastern European countries to freely determine their own internal affairs. In early 1989, under a new era of Soviet policies of
glasnost (openness) and
perestroika (economic restructuring), and taken further by Gorbachev, the
Solidarity movement took hold in Poland. Further inspired by other
images of brave defiance, a
wave of revolutions swept throughout the Eastern Bloc that year. In May 1989, Hungary removed their border fence. However, the dismantling of the old Hungarian border facilities did not open the borders nor were the previous strict controls removed, and the isolation by the
Iron Curtain was still intact over its entire length. The opening of a border gate between
Austria and Hungary at the
Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, at the end of which there was no longer a GDR and the
Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. The media reaction of
Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror" of 19 August 1989 showed the public in East and West that the Eastern European communist rulers had suffered a loss of power in their own sphere, and that they were no longer in control of events: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into
Poland, in which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Marks, and then they were persuaded to come to the West." In particular, Habsburg and the Hungarian Minister of State
Imre Pozsgay considered whether Moscow would command the
Soviet troops stationed in Hungary to intervene. But, with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the nonintervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus, the bracket of the Eastern Bloc was broken. Hungary was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use force of arms. By the end of September 1989, more than 30,000 East German citizens had escaped to the West before the GDR denied travel to Hungary, leaving Czechoslovakia as the only neighboring state to which East Germans could escape. Even then, many people within and outside Germany still believed that real reunification between the two countries would not happen in the foreseeable future. The turning point in Germany, called
Die Wende, was marked by the "
Peaceful Revolution" leading to the
fall of the Berlin Wall on the night of 9 November 1989, with East and West Germany subsequently entering into negotiations toward eliminating the division that had been imposed upon Germans more than four decades earlier. == Process of reunification ==