 | Allied Control Council: Encyclopedia II - Allied Control Council - Operation
Allied Control Council - Operation
On 30 August 1945 the Control Council constituted itself and issued its first proclamation, which informed the German people of the Council's existence and asserted that the commands and directives issued by the Commanders-in-Chief in their respective zones were not affected by the establishment of the Council. The initial members of the Control Council were as follows: Marshal Georgy Zhukov for the Soviet Union, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery for the United Kingdom, General Dwight Eisenhower for the United States, and General Jean Joseph-Marie Gabriel Lattre de Tassigny for France.
In the following time, the Allied Control Council issued a substantial number of laws, directives, orders, and proclamations. They dealt with the abolishment of Nazi laws and organisations, demilitarisation, denazification, but also with such comparatively pedestrian matters as telephone tariffs or the combat of venereal diseases. However, relations between the Western Allies (especially the United States and the United Kingdom) and the Soviet Union quickly deteriorated, and so did their cooperation in the administration of occupied Germany. Against Soviet protests, the two Anglo-Saxon powers pushed for a heightened economic collaboration between the different zones, and on 1 January 1947 the British and American zones merged to form the Bizone. Over the course of 1947 and early 1948, they began to prepare the currency reform that would introduce the Deutschmark, and ultimately the creation of an independent West German state. When the Soviets learnt about this, they claimed that such plans were in violation of the Potsdam Agreement, that obviously the Western powers were not interested in regular four-power control of Germany anymore, and that under such circumstances the Control Council had no purpose anymore. On 20 March 1948, Marshal Sokolovsky, the Soviet representative, walked out of the meeting of the Council, never to attend one again.
As the Control Council could only act with the agreement of all four members, this move basically shut down the institution, while the Cold War reached an early high point during the Soviet blockade of Berlin. The Allied Control Council was not formally dissolved, but ceased all activity except the operation of the Spandau Prison where persons convicted at the Nuremberg Trials were held until 1987.
The Western powers instituted the Allied High Commission by September of 1949 which remained in operation until 1955. In Eastern Germany, the Soviet representative of the ACC was the highest authority, later this position was converted to a High Commissioner as well, until the German Democratic Republic gained sovereignty.
Germany remained under nominal military occupation until 12 September 1990, when the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, the final peace treaty, was signed by the four powers and the two German governments, restoring German sovereignty. This meant the official end of the Allied Control Council, insofar as it still existed at all.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Operation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
