Allied Control Council
The British representative at the EAC, Sir William Strang, was undecided on whether a partial occupation of Germany by Allied troops was the most desirable course of action.
At the first EAC meeting on January 14, 1944, Strang proposed alternatives that favored the total occupation of Germany, similar to the situation following the First World War when Allied rule was established over the Rhineland.
He also believed that it would make the lessons of defeat more visible to the German population and would enable the Allied governments to carry out punitive policies in Germany, such as transferring territories to Poland.
The main arguments against total occupation were that it would create an untold burden on Allied economies and prolong the suffering of the German population, possibly driving new revanchist ideologies.
He even proposed a draft declaration to be issued by the Allied governments in case no political authority remained in Germany due to chaotic conditions.
As such, he authorised the signing of the unconditional surrender of all German armed forces, which took effect on 8 May 1945 and tried to establish a government under Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk in Flensburg.
Eventually, determined not to accord any recognition to the Flensburg administration, they agreed to sign a four-power declaration of the terms of the German surrender instead.
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.
They dealt with the abolition of Nazi laws and organisations, demilitarisation, and denazification, but also with such comparatively pedestrian matters as telephone tariffs and the combat of venereal diseases.
10 (20 December 1945), which authorised every occupying power to have its own legal system to try war criminals and to conduct such trials independently of the International Military Tribunal then sitting at Nuremberg.[11]: Vol.
10 resulted from disagreements arising among the Allied governments regarding a common policy on war criminals and marked the beginning of the decline in inter-Allied cooperation to that effect.
38, which, while trying to impose some common rules, allowed the four occupation governments discretion as to treatment of persons arrested by them for suspected war crimes, including the right to grant amnesty.[11]: Vol.
16 (6 November 1945) provided for the equipment of the German police forces with light weapons to combat crime, while the carrying of automatic rifles was prohibited except with special Allied permission.[11]: Vol.
The category of persons to which the directive applied were those who held significant positions in the Nazi Party or those who joined prior to 1937, the time when membership became compulsory for German citizens.[11]: Vol.
VIII, 1–5 One major issue dealt with by the Control Council was the decision made at the Potsdam Conference regarding the forced removal of German minorities from Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland to Allied-occupied Germany.
I, 199–201 France, not having been a party to the Potsdam conference, reserved the right not to be bound by any agreements made there; and accordingly refused to accept German expellees into the French zone of occupation.
V, 56 On 17 September, the council issued recommendations to the four occupying powers to establish tracing bureaus to assist displaced persons.[11]: Vol.
32 (10 July 1946) permitted the German local authorities to employ women in manual labor, due to the shortage in manpower.[11]: Vol.
IX, 1–2 From the outset, France sought to leverage its position on the Allied Control Council to obstruct policies it believed conflicted with its national interests.
In particular, they resisted all proposals to establish common policies and institutions across Germany as a whole and anything that they feared might lead to the emergence of an eventual unified German government.
Over the course of 1947 and early 1948, they began to prepare the currency reform that would introduce the Deutsche Mark and ultimately lead to the creation of an independent West German state.
As the Control Council could act only with the agreement of all four members, this move basically paralysed the institution, while the Cold War reached an early high point during the Soviet blockade of Berlin of 1948–49.
The Allied Control Council was not formally dissolved and the four Allies de jure still worked together in ruling both Germany ("Germany as a whole") and Austria but ceased all activity until 1971 except the operations of the Four-Power Authorities, namely the management of the Spandau Prison (where persons convicted at the Nuremberg Trials were held until 1987) and the Berlin Air Safety Centre.
In Eastern Germany, the Soviet administration with its 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 near-sovereignty also in 1955.
This, as the final peace treaty signed by the four powers and the two German states, formally restored full sovereignty to a reunified Germany.
During its short active life, the Allied Control Council was housed in and operated from the former building of the Kammergericht, the supreme court of the state of Prussia, which is situated in Berlin's Schöneberg locality.
After the cessation of most council activity in 1948, all occupying powers quickly withdrew from the building to their respective sectors of the city, leaving the facility cold, empty and dark.
As a symbol of the BASC's continued presence, the four national flags of the occupying powers still flew over the large front doors every day.
This led to mysterious legends and ghost stories about the eerie, dark facility with its grand, granite statuary overlooking the beautiful park.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the departure of Russian troops in August 1994 (a withdrawal that took place in accordance with article 4 of the Two Plus Four Treaty), the building was returned to the German government.
