page_title: Development of the inner German border
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Development of the inner German border / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Boundary stone between the Kingdoms of Prussia (KP) and Hanover. Located near Heldra.
context_page_description: The development of the inner German border took place in a number of stages between 1945 and the mid-1980s. After its establishment in 1945 as the dividing line between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of Germany, in 1949 the inner German border became the frontier between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. The border remained relatively easy to cross until it was abruptly closed by the GDR in 1952 in response to the large-scale emigration of East Germans to the West. Barbed-wire fences and minefields were installed and draconian restrictions were placed on East German citizens living near the border. Thousands were expelled from their homes, with several thousand more fleeing to the West. From the late 1960s, the border fortifications were greatly strengthened through the installation of new fences, detectors, watchtowers and booby-traps designed to prevent attempts to escape from East Germany. The improved border defences succeeded in reducing the scale of unauthorised emigration to a trickle.
context_section_description: The inner German border owed its origins to the agreements reached at the Tehran Conference in November–December 1943. The conference established the European Advisory Commission (EAC) to outline proposals for the partition of a defeated Germany into British, American and Soviet occupation zones (a French occupation zone was established later). At the time, Germany was divided into the series of gaue – Nazi administrative subdivisions – that had succeeded the administrative divisions of Weimar Germany.
  The demarcation line was based on a British proposal of 15 January 1944. It envisaged a line of control along the borders of the old states or provinces of Mecklenburg, Saxony, Anhalt and Thuringia, which had ceased to exist as separate entities when the Prussians unified Germany in 1871; minor adjustments were made for practical reasons. The British would occupy the north-west of Germany, the United States the south, and the Soviet Union the east. Berlin was to be a separate joint zone of occupation deep inside the Soviet zone. The rationale was to give the Soviets a powerful incentive to see the war through to the end. It would give the British an occupation zone that was physically close to the UK and on the coast, making it easier to resupply it from the UK. It was also hoped that the old domination of Prussia would be undermined.
  The United States envisaged a very different division of Germany, with a large American zone in the north, a smaller zone for the Soviets in the east (the American and Soviet zones meeting at Berlin) and a smaller zone for the British in the south. President Franklin D. Roosevelt disliked the idea of a U.S. occupation zone in the south, because its supply routes would depend on access through France, which it was feared would be unstable following its liberation. One version of events (of at least two distinct versions of the circumstances of American approval), has it that to forestall anticipated American objections, the British proposal was presented directly to the EAC without the prior agreement of the Americans. The Russians immediately accepted the proposal and left the U.S. with little choice but to accept it. The final division of Germany was thus mainly along the lines of the British proposal, with the Americans given the North Sea port-cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven as an enclave within the British zone to ease President Roosevelt's concerns about supply routes.
  The division of Germany came into effect on 1 July 1945. Because of the unexpectedly rapid Allied advance in central Germany in the final weeks of the war, British and American troops occupied large areas of territory that had been assigned to the Soviet occupation zone. This included a broad area of what was to become the western parts of East Germany, as well as parts of Czechoslovakia and Austria. The redeployment of Western troops at the start of July 1945 was an unpleasant surprise for many German refugees, who had fled west to escape the Russian advance. A fresh wave of refugees headed further west as the Americans and British withdrew and Soviet troops entered the areas allocated to the Soviet occupation zone.
  Following Germany's unconditional surrender in May 1945, the Allied Control Council (ACC) was formed under the terms of the Declaration on the Defeat of Germany, signed in Berlin on 5 June 1945. The council was "the highest authority for matters concerning the whole of Germany", on which the four powers – France, the UK, the U.S., and the USSR – were each represented by their supreme commander in Germany. The council functioned from 30 August 1945 until it was suspended on 20 March 1948, when cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviets had broken down completely over the issue of Germany's political and economic future. In May 1949, the three western occupation zones were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), a democratically governed federal state with a market economy. The Soviets responded in October 1949 with the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a highly ce
caption: Border marker of the Kingdom of Prussia. The inner German border largely followed historic boundaries such as this one.
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