Divided Germany
Map of Germany with occupation zones, Atlanta Service Frankfurt/Main, ca. 1946.
Divided Germany
After the end of the Second World War, the four victorious Allied powers divided Germany and Berlin into occupation zones in 1945. Shortly afterwards, the victors’ alliance collapsed: the Cold War began. The Soviet Union and the USA fought for supremacy in the world. Germany, divided by the “Iron Curtain”, became a central arena of ideological and political conflict between the two social systems.
While the three Western powers pushed for the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was established in East Germany under Soviet control.
Since the end of the war, the Soviet occupying power had already established a Stalinist system of terror and persecution of dissidents here with the help of German communists. Hundreds of thousands of people tried to escape the repression of the SED regime by fleeing. Others voiced criticism or offered resistance and were targeted by the Soviet secret service. They were imprisoned in camps and prisons run by the occupying power, where many of them died.
At the Third Party Congress of the SED in July 1950, the state party was proclaimed a “new type of party”, a cadre party made up of professional revolutionaries in Lenin’s spirit.
During the Cold War, Berlin was a “frontline city” between East and West and at the same time one of the few gates through the “Iron Curtain”. Graphic from an American advertising brochure for West Berlin.
Guard post in front of the US headquarters in Berlin-Dahlem, 1949 / Allied Museum Berlin
People’s Police on May 1, 1953 in East Berlin / Press and Information Office of the Federal Government / Richard Perlia
Policeman from West Berlin at the sector border in Berlin-Kreuzberg. / Allied Museum Berlin
Discussion groups in front of the House of the “German Economic Commission” in East Berlin on the occasion of the founding of the GDR on October 7, 1949 / Press and Information Office of the Federal Government / Richard Perlia
The Brandenburg State Administration of the German People’s Police congratulates the Soviet Control Commission (SKK) in Potsdam on “Liberation Day” on May 8, 1950 / Polizeihistorische Sammlung, Berlin / Herbert Dörries
Demonstration preparation on the occasion of the 2nd SED party conference in East Berlin, July 1952 / Press and Information Office of the Federal Government / Richard Perlia
May Day 1953 rally in East Berlin / Press and Information Office of the Federal Government / Richard Perlia
Young people fleeing from Soviet tanks on June 17, 1953 in East Berlin, Friedrichstrasse / Press and Information Office of the Federal Government / Richard Perlia