[1945 - 1949] Allied Occupation and Division

We begin in the spring of 1945. What you must understand is the concept of *Stunde Null*—the Zero Hour. For Germany, the war ended not with a bang, but with a profound, echoing silence, punctuated by the scrape of shovels on rubble. The great cities—Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne—were no longer cities but vast, skeletal landscapes. In Cologne, over 70% of the city was simply gone. Across the nation, some 7.5 million Germans were homeless, living in cellars or the hollowed-out husks of buildings. The air carried a unique scent: the sweet, sickly smell of decay mixed with the cold dust of pulverized stone and plaster. This was daily life. Survival was a full-time occupation. The average German’s official ration allowance hovered around a dangerously low 1,000 to 1,500 calories a day. Hunger was a constant, gnawing companion. People became gaunt figures in worn, often-mended clothes, their faces etched with exhaustion. Out of this devastation, a new figure emerged: the *Trümmerfrau*, or rubble woman. With their bare hands, simple tools, and sheer grit, these women, their heads wrapped in scarves against the endless dust, formed human chains to clear millions of cubic meters of debris, sorting bricks one by one for reuse. They were, in a very real sense, clearing the rubble of the past to make way for an unknown future. Into this vacuum of power and infrastructure stepped the victors. At conferences in Yalta and Potsdam, the leaders of the Allied powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France—had already drawn lines on a map. Germany, and its capital Berlin, were to be carved into four occupation zones. It was meant to be a temporary, joint administration. The four powers arrived with different methods and goals. In the American zone, there was a formidable push for “Denazification.” Millions of Germans had to fill out a *Fragebogen*, a detailed questionnaire about their activities during the Third Reich, a bureaucratic attempt to cleanse a nation’s conscience. The Americans also brought CARE packages, filled with food and supplies that represented unimaginable luxury. In the British zone, the focus was on pragmatically restoring order and restarting industry. The French, having been occupied themselves, were harsher, extracting heavy reparations from their zone in the industrial Saarland. And then there was the Soviet zone in the east. Here, the change was immediate and revolutionary. The Soviets dismantled entire factories, shipping them back to the USSR as war reparations. They broke up the old Prussian estates, the *Junker* properties, redistributing land to the peasants. They installed German communists, many of whom had spent the war in Moscow, into key administrative positions. From the very beginning, the eastern zone felt different. A new social order was being imposed by force. The fragile cooperation between the former allies was not to last. The ideological chasm was simply too wide. The first major crack appeared not over borders, but over money. By 1948, the black market was the only market that truly functioned. A pack of American cigarettes, not the worthless Reichsmark, was the real currency. To combat this and kick-start the economy, the three Western Allies made a fateful decision. In June 1948, without consulting the Soviets, they introduced a new, stable currency: the Deutsche Mark. For people in the western zones, it was a miracle. Overnight, shop windows that had been empty for years filled with goods. The black market vanished. The economy, so long stagnant, began to breathe again. But in Moscow, this was seen as an act of economic aggression—a move to create a separate, capitalist West German state. The Soviet response was swift and brutal. Their target was the ultimate symbol of the four-power arrangement: the divided city of Berlin, located deep inside the Soviet zone. On June 24, 1948, Soviet forces blockaded all road, rail, and canal access to West Berlin. A city of over two million people was now an island, held hostage. The Soviets were betting that the Western powers would abandon the city. What followed was one of the first great dramas of the Cold War. The American military governor, General Lucius D. Clay, declared, "They can't drive us out of there." Instead of retreating or trying to blast through the blockade, the West chose a third option, one of staggering audacity: they would supply the entire city from the air. The Berlin Airlift began. At first, it seemed impossible. How could you feed and heat a metropolis with nothing but airplanes? But day and night, the drone of engines became the city’s new soundtrack. American C-54s and British Yorks, planes that had recently dropped bombs, now dropped life. At the peak of the operation, an aircraft was landing at one of West Berlin’s airports—Tegel, Gatow, or the famous Tempelhof—every 45 seconds. They brought everything: flour, coal, medicine, machinery. One pilot, Gail Halvorsen, started dropping candy bars in tiny, handkerchief parachutes for the children watching below. Soon, many pilots were doing the same, and the lumbering cargo planes earned a new name: *Rosinenbomber*, or “Raisin Bombers.” They delivered more than food; they delivered hope. Over 11 months, the airlift brought in over 2.3 million tons of supplies on more than 278,000 flights. It was a logistical masterpiece and a profound act of political defiance. In May 1949, realizing they had been outmaneuvered and outlasted, the Soviets lifted the blockade. The West had held firm. But the victory came at a cost. The Berlin Blockade had shattered any remaining illusion of four-power cooperation. The divide was now permanent and hostile. The year 1949 would formalize the split. In the west, the three Allied zones were consolidated. On May 23, the *Grundgesetz*, or Basic Law, was ratified, establishing the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), with the mild-mannered Konrad Adenauer as its first Chancellor. Five months later, in October, the Soviets established their own state in the east: the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The Zero Hour was over. The rubble was being cleared, and new structures were rising. But Germany was no longer one nation. Two states now stood where one had fallen, each tethered to a rival superpower, staring at each other across a new, ideological frontier that would soon be fortified with barbed wire and watchtowers. The stage for the next forty years of German, and world, history was set.