Western Zones During The Cold War

Madi C.
The division of Berlin among the allied forces after World War II was a compromise that provided the United States with their primary weapon in defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War conflict. Victorious, the Allies began to divide and occupy the battered and weakened Germany on June 5, 1945. Areas in the western portion became American, British, and French zones, whilst the east was given to the Soviet Union. They will be more commonly known later as the eastern and western zones, after the American zone combined powers with the British and French areas. The west was controlled by a capitalist style government that focused on economic recovery from the bloody war that left millions of German people homeless. The east was ran
The western zones would belong to Britain, France, and America, and would eventually combine into a single, western sector that would be called The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). It would be lead with a capitalistic style government, and the eastern zone would be owned by Soviet Russia, which ran its sector in a communist style. Russia’s zone was known as the German Democratic Republic, (GDR) which was not a republic at all, but rather a dictatorship Lead by Joseph Stalin and Walter Ulbricht who thought communism was the newest form of democracy, as well as the best. It was one of the largest occupational zones given at the time, and it contained just under a quarter of Germany’s pre-war industrial producers, and around 24% of the population. The resource they lacked, however, was coal, which was controlled by the Allies. The differences of government lead to somewhat of a competition between the GDR and the FRG. Each wanted to see which government would be more successful, and in the end, the west would be seen as a beacon of democracy and success of capitalism in an area that was mostly communism. The U.S. would realize this, and with its successful western style government, the FRG was becoming more powerful, and more
These promises were made in order to cause a situation such as this, mostly because both areas were in about the same condition. The German people were placed in badly broken cities with few places to live, little to eat, and confusion of what to do in their new situation. While Stalin did want to reunite the Germanies, he wanted this because he wanted communist rule over the entire area, and he knew just how to word this so that he could manipulate the citizens to be on his side. On June 5, 1947 an economic recovery program for Europe proposed by George Marshall, an American general. This plan, called the Marshall Plan, would give the U.S. and its allies help in rebuilding the west. This gave the FRG another upperhand, where these city will also be complete and clean the GDR will lay destroyed and still appearing as if it was a war zone. The people of the west would also be happier, and have places to live. This would cause thousands of people from the GDR to migrate to the west. To keep their people from pursuing this, the east devised a plan to keep their civilians from leaving. In order to prepare for the construction of the Berlin Wall, in 1948 East Germany would block all means of entrance to West