From the Potsdam Conference and the four zones of occupation through the Berlin Blockade and the founding of two German states, the 1953 uprising and the building of the Wall, the Élysée Treaty and Brandt's Ostpolitik, the German Autumn and Helmut Kohl, the fall of the Wall and reunification, the move of the capital back to Berlin and the introduction of the euro, the Merkel years and the refugee summer, to the Zeitenwende after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Slide across the decades to read the major events of post-war Germany.
From 17 July to 2 August, Stalin, Truman, and Churchill — replaced mid-conference by Attlee — meet at Cecilienhof Palace outside Berlin. They divide Germany into four occupation zones, transfer the Polish frontier westward to the Oder-Neisse line, and authorise the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.
From the Potsdam Conference and the four zones of occupation through the Berlin Blockade and the founding of two German states, the 1953 uprising and the building of the Wall, the Élysée Treaty and Brandt's Ostpolitik, the German Autumn and Helmut Kohl, the fall of the Wall and reunification, the move of the capital back to Berlin and the introduction of the euro, the Merkel years and the refugee summer, to the Zeitenwende after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Slide across the decades to read the major events of post-war Germany.
From 17 July to 2 August, Stalin, Truman, and Churchill — replaced mid-conference by Attlee — meet at Cecilienhof Palace outside Berlin. They divide Germany into four occupation zones, transfer the Polish frontier westward to the Oder-Neisse line, and authorise the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.
On 20 June the western zones introduce the Deutsche Mark, replacing the worthless Reichsmark; three days later the Soviets blockade West Berlin. For 462 days, until 12 May 1949, American and British aircraft fly in 2.3 million tons of food, coal, and supplies. The blockade is a Soviet defeat.
On 23 May the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) is promulgated; the Federal Republic of Germany is constituted at Bonn, with Konrad Adenauer of the CDU as first chancellor. On 7 October, in response, the Soviet zone is reorganised as the German Democratic Republic, with Walter Ulbricht's SED in power. Germany is divided.
On 16 June construction workers on the Stalinallee strike against work-quota increases; the next day a million East Germans across 700 towns join in. Soviet T-34 tanks crush the demonstrators in Berlin and elsewhere; at least 55 are killed. The first popular rising in the Soviet bloc fails — but signals the GDR's chronic legitimacy crisis.
On 5 May the Paris Treaties restore West German sovereignty; on 9 May the Federal Republic joins NATO and the Bundeswehr is constituted. Five days later the Warsaw Pact is signed, with East Germany's Volksarmee admitted in 1956. The two German states are armed against each other under their respective superpower alliances.
In the early hours of 13 August, East German troops and police begin sealing the boundary between East and West Berlin with barbed wire; the concrete wall follows in the days after. The 'Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart' is in fact built to stop the haemorrhage of East Germans to the West — 2,000 a day in the preceding weeks.
On 22 January, Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle sign the Élysée Treaty in Paris, formalising Franco-German reconciliation. The hereditary enmity of three wars in seventy-five years becomes a partnership that will drive European integration for the next half-century.
Throughout the year, students under Rudi Dutschke occupy West German universities, protesting Vietnam, the emergency laws, the Springer press, and — above all — the unbroken Nazi careers of their professors and their parents. The first generation born after 1945 demands an accounting from the first generation of the Federal Republic.
On 7 December, Chancellor Willy Brandt — Social Democrat, anti-Nazi exile, mayor of West Berlin during the building of the Wall — falls to his knees before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial. Der Kniefall von Warschau becomes the most powerful gesture of post-war German reconciliation with eastern Europe.
In September the Red Army Faction kidnaps the industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer; in October Palestinian sympathisers hijack a Lufthansa jet to Mogadishu. After commandos free the hostages, the RAF leaders in Stammheim prison kill themselves; Schleyer is murdered. The crisis tests the Federal Republic's democracy to the limit.
On the evening of 9 November, the Politburo spokesman Günter Schabowski misreads a press-conference note and announces — incorrectly — that East Germans may now travel freely 'as of immediately, without delay'. Within hours, crowds gather at the Bornholmer Strasse crossing; the guards, without orders, open the barriers. The Berlin Wall has fallen.
On 3 October, the German Democratic Republic accedes to the Federal Republic under Article 23 of the Basic Law. Forty-five years of partition end. The Two-Plus-Four Treaty (12 September) settles the external aspects: a united Germany within NATO, accepting permanent eastern frontiers, with full sovereignty restored after the withdrawal of the last Soviet troops in 1994.
On 20 June, after a famous debate, the Bundestag votes 338-320 to move the seat of government from Bonn back to Berlin. The Berlin Republic — distinct in feel from the Bonn Republic of the Federal era — slowly takes shape over the next decade as the federal ministries, parliament, and chancellery move east.
On 24 March, German Tornados take part in NATO air strikes against Serbia — the first combat action by German troops since 1945. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a former '68 radical and Green pacifist, justifies the intervention with the argument 'Never again Auschwitz' against ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
On 1 January, after a year of dual circulation, euro notes and coins replace the Deutsche Mark as legal tender. The currency that had symbolised the Wirtschaftswunder gives way to a European money managed by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt — a German institution running a continental currency.
On 22 November, after an inconclusive election, Angela Merkel — East German pastor's daughter, physicist, Christian Democrat — is elected chancellor in a grand coalition with the SPD. She becomes the first woman, the first East German, and the first scientist to hold the office. She will hold it for sixteen years.
Through the summer of 2015, hundreds of thousands of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi refugees move up the Balkan route toward Germany. On 31 August, Merkel tells a press conference: 'Wir schaffen das' — we can manage this. By year's end the country has admitted some 890,000 asylum seekers, the largest single-year admission in German history.
On 27 February, three days after Russia's full invasion of Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz tells the Bundestag that the country faces a Zeitenwende — a 'turning of the age'. He announces a special €100-billion fund to rearm the Bundeswehr, a commitment to permanent NATO defence spending above two percent of GDP, and the supply of weapons to Ukraine.