Allied Control Council: Encyclopedia II - Allied Control Council - Creation

Allied Control Council - Creation

After the death of Adolf Hitler, Karl Dönitz became president of Germany in accordance with Hitler's last political testament. He authorised the signing, at Rheims, of the unconditional surrender of all German forces, which took effect on 8 May 1945, and tried to establish a government under Chancellor von Krosigk. This government was not recognised by the Allies, however, and Dönitz and the other members were arrested on 23 May by British forces.

The surrender document used by SHAEF at Rheims, was modelled on the one used a few days earlier to allow the German forces in Italy to surrender^[1]. They did not use the one which had been drafted for the surrender of Germany by the "European Advisory Commission" (EAC). This created a legal problem for the Allies, because although the German armed forces had surrendered unconditionally, the civilian German government had not been included in the surrender. This was considered a very important issue, given that Hitler had used the surrender of the civilian government, but not of the military, in 1918, to create the "stab in the back" argument^[2]. The Allies understandably did not want to give any future hostile German regime any kind of legal argument to resurrect an old quarrel. Eventually they decided not to recognise Dönitz, but to sign a four power document instead, creating the Allied Control Council. On 5 July 1945, in Berlin, the supreme commanders of the four occupying powers signed a common Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany (the so-called Berlin Declaration), which formally abolished any German governance over the nation:

In reality, of course, all German central civilian authority had ceased to exist with the death of Hitler and the fall of Berlin at the latest. These parts of the Berlin declaration, therefore, merely formalised the de facto status and placed the Allied military rule over Germany on a solid legal basis.

The actual exertion of power was carried out according to the model first laid out in the "Agreement on Control Machinery in Germany" that had been signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union on 25 November 1944 in London. Germany was divided into three zones of occupation, an American, a British, and a Soviet one, and each zone was ruled by the Commander-in-Chief of the respective occupational forces. (Later a French zone was added.) "Matters that affect Germany as a whole," however, would have to be decided jointly by all three Commanders-in-Chief, who for this purpose would form a single organ of control. This authority was called the Control Council.

The purpose of the Allied Control Council was to deal with the German central administration, an idea that hardly materialised as that administration totally broke down with the end of the war, and to assure that the military administration was carried out with a certain uniformity throughout all of Germany. The Potsdam Agreement of 2 August 1945 further specified the tasks of the Control Council.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Creation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki