Der kalte Krieg hatte nie geendet | Von Anke Behrend

Ein Kommentar von Anke Behrend. „Russia is part of East German identity,“ stated Sarah Pagung, a political scientist and Russia expert from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in the Tagesschau, to explain the war skepticism of East Germans. (1) End of the war, occupation zones, and reparations – a brief overview. In the narratives about the post-war period, both the USA and the USSR claim the efforts for a neutral unified Germany for themselves. However, the Western Allies had created facts with the currency reform, the Marshall Plan, and the founding of the Federal Republic that made a unified post-war Germany impossible. Allied negotiations on the future of Germany after World War II began in 1941 (2). Various models of division or non-division were debated, changed, and discarded. The result is known. With the final division of defeated Nazi Germany into an eastern and three western occupation zones, decided in Yalta in February 1945, the assignment to the world political camps was sealed. Both the Soviet Union and the Western Allies secured their future spheres of influence on German territory. The so-called Thuringian occupation change – the Americans withdrew and the Red Army took over Thuringia – was the implementation of the decisions made in Yalta (3). The Potsdam Agreement of August 2, 1945, regulated Germany’s reparations to the victorious powers and other eligible states (4). The reparations were carried out, among other things, by the so-called removal, i.e., the dismantling of usable industrial plants from the respective occupation zones. Due to the significantly greater damage, the USSR also received reparations from the western zones (5). Diplomatic trench warfare erupted over the reparations, partly due to the fact that damages and claims could hardly be correctly quantified, let alone provided by Germany, but also resulting from the problematic relationship between the superpower USA and the USSR since 1918, which was only recognized by the USA in 1933. Moreover, the so-called „Heartland“ (6), consisting mainly of Russia and Eastern Europe, was considered a geopolitical area of interest for the USA. As expected, the entire, confusing war and post-war diplomacy was marked by hardly surmountable tensions between the USA and the USSR. The Western Allies, now merged into a bi- and later trizone, stopped the dismantling in the area of ​​what would later become West Germany with the Truman Doctrine (7) in March 1947. At the same time, the USA stopped the delivery of reparations from its occupation zone to the USSR. The stated goal of the Truman Doctrine was to „assist free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.“ Which meant preventing the feared expansion of the USSR towards the West, although the USSR was so weakened that it posed no real threat. The Red Army recorded 6.2 million fallen soldiers, over 15 million wounded, 4

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Der kalte Krieg war nie vorbei | Von Anke Behrend

Ein Kommentar von Anke Behrend.  „Russland ist Teil der ostdeutschen Identität.“, konstatierte die 1989 geborene, aus Mecklenburg-Vorpommern stammende Politikwissenschaftlerin und Russlandexpertin Sarah Pagung in der Tagesschau, um die Kriegsskepsis der Ostdeutschen zu erklären (1). Kriegsende, Besatzungszonen und Reparationen – ein kurzer Abriss In den Erzählungen über die Nachkriegszeit beanspruchen beide Seiten, USA und UdSSR, die Bemühungen um ein neutrales Gesamtdeutschland für sich. Allerdings hatten die Westalliierten mit der Währungsreform, dem Marshallplan und der Gründung der Bundesrepublik Tatsachen geschaffen, die ein vereintes Nachkriegsdeutschland unmöglich gemacht hatten. Verhandlungen der Alliierten über die Zukunft Deutschlands nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg begannen 1941 (2). Verschiedene Modelle der Teilung oder Nichtteilung wurden debattiert, verändert und verworfen. Das Ergebnis ist bekannt. Mit der endgültigen Aufteilung des besiegten

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