Cooperation and Conflict — 1945–1946

Abstract

The Potsdam Protocol imposed a provisional de facto partitioning of Germany into four separate zones of occupation, which would be administered jointly by the Allied Control Council while Allied diplomatic representatives were to formulate a peace settlement. However, it soon became apparent that the protocol provisions would not be followed by all of the occupation powers, since the individual objectives of France and the Soviet Union could not be reconciled with those of the United States and the United Kingdom. Inter-allied cooperation in the Allied Control Council and the Council of Foreign Ministers was hindered by disputes arising from these separate objectives, and the Soviet Union pursued postwar political reconstruction measures in its occupation zone that later contributed to establishing an ideological east-west political division of Germany.