Supervisory Board

A unified approach to the post-war future of Germany was developed at meetings of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition since Tehran . At a meeting in Casablanca in 1943, it was announced that the Allies would wage war against Germany until its unconditional surrender , and the Yalta Declaration contained provisions for the division of Germany into occupation zones , coordinated administration and control carried out through the Central Control Commission . After the unconditional surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945, on May 23, the imperial government led by Karl Dönitz and Johann Ludwig Schwerin von Crozig was arrested in Myurvik .

In the Berlin Declaration of June 5, 1945, the victorious powers officially announced the assumption of supreme power in Germany within its borders on December 31, 1937, and established a control mechanism and the borders of the occupation zones of Germany and the occupation sectors of Berlin. Germany’s final borders and its legal status were to establish a peace treaty , which had never been concluded before the adoption of the Final Settlement Treaty with respect to Germany in 1990 .

Regarding Austria , where on April 27, 1945, the Presidiums of the reestablished Social-Democratic Party of Austria , the Austrian People’s Party and the Austrian Communist Party in their Appeal on the independence of Austria in accordance with the Declaration on Austria, adopted at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers of the USSR, USA and Great Britain in In 1943, the Anschluss was declared null and void, Austria was independent and a provisional government was formed, and on July 4 the corresponding Agreement on the control system over Austria was signed.

In accordance with the control mechanism established by the relevant agreement of November 14, 1944 and confirmed at the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945, supreme power in Germany is exercised by the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces of the four victorious powers, each in their own occupation zone, according to instructions from their respective Governments, and also jointly on issues affecting Germany as a whole . " Accordingly, the Control Council consisted of Marshal G. K. Zhukov , General Eisenhower , Field Marshal Montgomery and General Latre de Tassigny .

The control council was located in the building of the Prussia Court of Appeal in the Schöneberg district of Berlin . The main function of the Supervisory Board was to develop plans and reach agreed decisions on the main military, political, economic and other issues common to all Germany, which should be taken unanimously. Each side retained full responsibility for managing its zone of occupation.

The founding meeting of the Control Council was held on July 30, 1945 simultaneously with the Potsdam Conference. The meetings of the Supervisory Board in accordance with the regulations were convened at least once every ten days and at any time at the request of any of its members. The meetings of the Supervisory Board were prepared by the standing Coordination Committee .

Coordination Committee

The Coordination Committee initially included: from the USSR — VD Sokolovsky , from the USA — Lucius Clay , from Great Britain — Brian H. Robertson, and from France — Louis M. Kölz. The quadrilateral committee had twelve divisions: military, naval, military, transport, political, economic, financial, reparations and supplies, internal affairs and communications, legal, prisoners of war and displaced persons and the workforce department. They were successively managed by four directors in a month.

Appeals and laws of the Supervisory Board

Directive No. 10 of the Control Council of September 22, 1945 On the methods of legislative activity of the Control Council establishes that the legislative activities of the Control Council in occupied Germany are in the form of:

• appeals on issues of particular importance to the occupation authorities or the German people;
• laws of general application, unless otherwise indicated;
• orders setting forth the requirements of the Supervisory Board for Germany, which are not established in the Laws;
• directives to familiarize themselves with the general intentions and decisions of the Control Council on administrative and technical issues;
• instructions setting out specific requirements for specific authorities.

Appeals and laws of the Supervisory Board were signed by members of the Supervisory Board. Orders were signed by members of the Supervisory Board or members of the Coordination Committee. Directives and instructions were signed by members of the Coordination Committee. In the absence of one of the members of the Supervisory Board or the Coordination Committee, the documents were signed by their deputies.

Until 1948, more than 80 meetings of the Allied Control Council were held. The first two laws of the Supervisory Board concerned the abolition of national socialist law and the dissolution and liquidation of national socialist organizations. Along with the establishment of time limits (for example, the Oder-Neisse line ) and the legitimization of deportation and resettlement , the Control Council focused on the demilitarization of the German economy. Like reparations , the economic demilitarization of the dismantling and removal of industrial equipment was carried out by each of the occupation authorities in an autonomous mode, and there was no uniform policy of the Control Council on this issue.

The growing tensions between the USSR and the Western powers, in particular in the Middle East and Asia , led to a lack of trust between the parties involved in the governance of Germany. In July 1946, the USSR regarded the demands for preserving the economic integrity of Germany, put forward by the United States in the Control Council, as an attempt to influence itself, which in fact was the end of the idea of ​​joint activity within the Control Council. In response to the statement of the USSR, the United States and Great Britain directed their actions to restore the economic integrity of their zones and established, on January 1, 1947, Bizonia , to which France joined its occupation zone on April 8, 1949 , shortly before the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany .

On February 25, 1947, the Law of the Control Council No. 46 was issued, which liquidated the state of Prussia .

On March 20, 1948, the Soviet Union boycotted the meeting of the Control Council in protest against the holding of the London meeting of the six powers , and the Control Council did not meet anymore.

After conducting a separate monetary reform in the three western zones of occupation on the night of June 20 , 1948 , which led to monetary reform in the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany and the blockade of West Berlin , the division of Germany became inevitable.

In fact, the only functions performed jointly by the Allies remained the control of air traffic, carried out by the flight safety center from 1945 to 1990 , and the protection of the joint administration of the four powers under the joint administration of the war criminals in Spandau , where the last of the convicts on Nuremberg The process of the Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess .

The formal Supervisory Board was liquidated only with the unification of Germany after Germany gained full sovereignty in accordance with the provisions of the Two Plus Four Treaty of 1990 .

By the First Agreement on the system of control over Austria of July 4, 1945, the four victorious powers established the Allied Commission for Austria , consisting of the Allied Council , the Executive Committee and the four headquarters of the occupying authorities in various areas of work. Meetings of the Allied Commission under the replaceable chairmanship were also held once every ten days. By the second Agreement, concluded on June 28, 1946 , the provisional government of Austria was granted broad legislative powers without the right of veto on them by the occupation authorities. The Allies reserved the right of veto only in relation to constitutional laws. The second Agreement remained in force until the adoption of the Declaration of Independence of Austria . The last meeting of the Allied Commission for Austria was held on June 27, 1955 .

• Unconditional surrender of Germany. Creation of the UN // History of Diplomacy / ed. A. A. Gromyko , I. N. Zemskova, V. A. Zorin, V. S. Semenov, M. A. Kharlamov. - M .: Politizdat , 1975. - S. 645-647. - 752 s.