In the next series of articles we will try to clarify the causes and consequences of one of the events that marked Europe for 40 years, the division of Germany after World War II, as well as taking a brief look at the last blows that this division still has in modern Germany. To do this, we will review from the deep roots of the problem, going through the different War and Post-War Conferences in which the subject of Germany was dealt with until its definitive definition.
Introduction
Before beginning to analyze the division, it is necessary to analyze the deep roots that led the Allied powers to end up taking this extreme decision. In this way we will be able to understand the environment in which we find ourselves and what we are facing. Although the German division dates back to 1949, we must go back to the First World War (1914-1918) to understand the political and ideological situation of both parties, since the consequences of the decisions made here will ultimately cause the German division three decades later.
After the armistice of November 11, 1918, between January and June 1919, a series of intense and harsh meetings took place in Paris between the four great victorious powers, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Italy. These four countries, as winners, give themselves the purpose of configuring a new political order and restoring balance to Europe. This select and elite group is known as the Council of Four. The Council, after arduous negotiations, marked by French intransigence and the absence of the defeated countries, draw up the different peace treaties. In the Versailles Treaty of 1919, signed with Germany, the victorious powers established harsh peace conditions, hence the Germans nicknamed it “dictat”the Dictation.
The economic war compensations demanded were enormous (compensations that Germany finished paying on October 3, 2010). Very large territorial concessions (Germany lost 14% of its European territory, in addition to all its colonies). In general, the mistreatment was abusive (demilitarization, international isolation,…). And if to this, in addition, all the blame for the conflict on Germany is charged (article 231), then German sentiment could only have two paths: total resignation and acceptance of the peace treaty, or the most absolute revenge. And the second was chosen.
Cover of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919
This excessive burden that the victors placed on Germany is considered one of the causes of the outbreak of World War II. Thus, it is argued, that this humiliation suffered by Germany in 1919 was one of the causes that led, just 14 years later, to the far-right National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) led by Adolf Hitler, seizing power. in the young Weimar Republic. Some authors point out, however, that Nazism was an isolated event and conditioned by the socio-economic moment of the 1930s. However, if we look at the 25-point Program of the NSDAP approved on February 24, 1920 in München, the following is observed in the second point:
Wir fordern die Gleichberechtigung des deutschen Volkes gegenüber den andere Nationen, Aufhebung der Friedensverträge von Versailles und St Germain.
We demand equal rights for the German people in their relations with other nations and the abolition of the Peace Treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain.
It clearly shows the revanchist spirit that exists in the most radical sectors of Germany, and that links their requests with the denigrating, for Germany, Treaty of Versailles of 1919, and with the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, signed a few months then between the victorious allied powers and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the harshness of this treaty being also enormous, even though Austria-Hungary was the only State that truly had a reason to go to war, and whose importance for the NSDAP lies in that said treaty prohibits the union of Germany and Austria, something that clashes head-on with the German ultra-nationalist idea of the party headed by Hitler, since, as mentioned in the first point of the Nazi program:
Wir fordern den Zusammenschluß aller Deutschen auf Grund des Selbstbestimmungsrechtes der Völker zu einem Groß-Deutschland.
We demand the union of all Germans under the right of self-determination of peoples to create a Greater Germany.
Therefore, as can be seen, the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 provoked in Germany a feeling of revenge or vengeance against those who at the time humiliated it, both foreigners and nationals (considered traitors to the country for accepting such conditions without having lost completely the war). The rapid rise of the Nazi party caused this feeling of revenge to come to power.
On the Allied side, positions on the 1919 Peace of Versailles, especially among intellectuals, were also quite divided. For some it was seen as the end of the conflicts in Europe. Thanks to the effort and sacrifice of the Great War, the old monarchies had fallen, democracy was triumphing and the great danger, especially from the French point of view, Germany, was under control. In addition, an international organization, the League of Nations, had been created. This society aspired to solve international problems diplomatically. For all these reasons, it can be said that they were not only the “roaring 20s” in economic terms, but also political ones.
However, there were voices that over time, and especially after the Great Depression of 1929, saw how the optimism of the 1920s was turning into pessimism. The global uncertainty caused by this crisis, coupled with social discontent, especially in Germany and Italy for nationalist reasons, led to the rise and triumph of totalitarian parties. At first, Western political groups accepted the presence of these totalitarianisms as they were strong enemies of communism, and thus curbed their possible advance towards the West.
For this reason, the victorious countries in World War I began to support these totalitarianisms through what is known as the “Appeasement Policy” of the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain made facilities for the defeated, especially Germany, by reducing war sanctions or allowing union with Austria. The objective was twofold: to maintain peace in Europe and stop communism. In the end, this policy failed due to high German claims. In addition, the League of Nations was also unable to cope with the international crisis, so in 1939 the Second World War broke out.
Thus, we find ourselves in a very rarefied political and social environment in Europe in the 1930s. All foreign eyes are very attentive to Nazi Germany. This will cause that, in the second half of the 1940s, much of the world, and especially the allies, see Germany as the great world enemy due to the violent nature of its people, and the cause of the two wars that in little less than 30 years, have brought about the destruction of Europe.
For all these reasons, when Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied powers on May 7-8, 1945, the decision-making that took place about the German future between 1945 and 1949 is a tremendously complex and delicate situation where not only are intermingled territorial and economic issues with feelings of revenge, especially in France, or political ideas, which confronted the US and the USSR in the context of an incipient Cold War, but also fear repeating past mistakes and provoking a bad peace leading to a new and catastrophic war. All of this would lead the Allies to seek to punish Germany in such a way that she would never be able to get back on her feet.
The process of seeking this final punishment for Germany, which ended in its division, was the result of a series of lengthy meetings and negotiations between the Allied powers. These met several times throughout the war in various conferences that will define the future of the Axis powers and, especially, of Germany.
Casablanca Conference (January 1943)
Held in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, at the meeting codenamed SYMBOL, the US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, as well as some advisers from both countries and the leaders of the of the French resistance. However, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the USSR (CPSU) Josef Stalin did not attend. Although he received the invitation from the Western powers to attend, he rejected it, arguing that his presence was much more important in the USSR itself, which was immersed in the decisive battle of Stalingrad, than in Casablanca, so the conference was bipartisan.
from left to right Henri Giraud, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, and Winston Churchill
In this first major allied conference concerning military issues, both leaders agreed on three fundamental points for the future of the war: the policy of “Europe First” either “Atlantic First”, that is, to focus war efforts on unconditionally defeating Nazi Germany first before Japan; the German unconditional surrender; and the first traces of the lines of the new European political system after the war.
The allies, after managing to give the first setbacks to the Nazi army, defeating it in El Alamein (Egypt) and in Northwest Africa (Operation Torch), and when the battle in Stalingrad began to lean on the Soviet side, began the discussion of their future actions joint, being the most outstanding aspect the planning of the allied landing in Sicily. However, the most interesting agreement reached, and at the same time controversial, is the German unconditional surrender. This agreement marks the allied intentions to take the war to its ultimate consequences, something that had not happened in the Great War when the armistice was accepted.
This strategy of unconditional surrender did not emerge at the Casablanca Conference, but had already been handled since 1939 by the British and Americans as the only possible solution at the end of the war. The idea was the political defeat of the Nazis and of Germany, and not just defeat on the battlefield. This would avoid repeating what happened after the Peace of Versailles in 1919, where peace never definitively closed the conflict. However, it would not be until January 1943 when this Allied objective was made public, and marked the line to follow, with the idea of provoking, in Churchill’s words, “the categorical defeat of irreconcilable evil”.
Therefore, Nazi Germany is seen as a demon, which has broken the peace in Europe. However, at no time do both countries remember that at the time they saw positive features in this regime as a strong counterpoint to the Soviet threat of which,…