Dividing Germany

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. The division of Germany began not in the ruins of Berlin in 1945, but in the minds of Allied planners years before the Third Reich's final collapse. As early as 1943, when victory over Nazi Germany still seemed distant and uncertain, British, American, and Soviet leaders were already grappling with the fundamental question of what to do with a defeated Germany. The decisions made in wartime conferences and planning sessions would ultimately transform a unified nation that had dominated Central Europe for seventy-four years into two separate states locked in ideological opposition, their border becoming the most heavily fortified frontier in the world. The origins of Germany's eventual division lay in the competing visions that the wartime Allies held for post-war Europe. The United States, led by Franklin D. Roosevelt, initially favored a relatively lenient approach that would integrate a reformed Germany into a new international order based on democratic principles and economic cooperation. Roosevelt believed that harsh treatment would only breed resentment and future conflict, as had occurred after World War I. His vision emphasized the importance of maintaining Allied unity while ensuring that Germany could never again threaten world peace. British planning, shaped by Winston Churchill's deep understanding of European power dynamics, was more concerned with maintaining the balance of power and preventing any single nation from dominating the continent. Churchill recognized earlier than his American counterpart that the Soviet Union might emerge from the war as a greater threat to Western interests than a defeated Germany. His approach to German policy was increasingly influenced by the need to create effective barriers against potential Soviet expansion westward.