History of East Germany Part I

East Germany, which was known as the German Democratic Republic, was formed as a result of the Yalta Conference at the end of World War II, and existed as a sovereign nation from 1949 to 1990. It comprised the current Federal Republican states of Thuringen, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, excluding West Berlin, which was an enclave for the Federal Republic of Germany. East Germany was a communist nation that was first ruled by and then strongly influenced by the Soviet Union. It disbanded in 1990, during the collapse of Soviet power, when the Federal Republic of Germany absorbed its former provinces as new states.

East Germany had its origins in the aftermath of World War II. During the Yalta Conference of 1945, the Allied Powers agreed that Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation, the borders of which were estimated by tracking the progress of all four armies and determining where they would meet. They also considered dividing Germany into several nations, and set up a committee to determine along what new borders the country would be split.  Each of the Allies assumed control of their respective zones at the end of the war. During this period, many Germans were expelled from Polish territories now under Soviet rule.

The government of East Germany was formed late in 1949, five weeks after the creation of the German Federal Republic (or West Germany). The Soviets surredered complete control of government functions and withdrew most of its presence from the new nation. The new government, led by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany—also known as the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED, in German—initiated a course of economic reforms known as the New Course. Based on similar policies operating in The Soviet Union, the New Course was meant to give workers a higher standard of living by increasing the emphasis on the production of consumer goods. High work quotas led to the Worker’s Uprising in 1953, a series of strikes and demonstrations that the Soviet Army was called in to put down. Approximately 100 strikers and demonstrators lost their lives in the process. East Germany became a sovereign nation, completely independent from the Soviet Union, in 1954.

By this time, East Germany had already dissolved the five larger states that were absorbed into the Soviet occupation zone and divided them into fifteen smaller districts, one of which included East Berlin. The government of the German Democratic Republic also began to consult heavily with the Soviet union on matters of economic and foreign policy, although they were, by treaty, free to make their own decisions regarding all such matters. Soviet troops also remained stationed around the country. The National People’s Army—known in German as the Nationale Volksarmee, or NVA—was formed in 1956, which allowed East Germany to join in the Warsaw Pact, the communist counterpart of NATO.