Berlin Declaration (Allies)

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The Berlin Declaration (also: Berlin or June Declaration ) of June 5, 1945 is the first of four documents in which the main victorious Allied powers of the Second World War laid down the principles of their German policy. Less than a month after the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht and two weeks after the arrest of the last Reich Government Dönitz , the commanders-in-chief of the four victorious powers declared that they would take over the supreme power of government in Germany by virtue of occupation law . This included the powers of the German government , the high command of the Wehrmacht and the governments, administrations and authorities of the states, cities and municipalities. For the purpose of joint exercise of governance, they formed the Allied Control Council . Fifteen articles formulated demands that were imposed on Germany and that had to be met immediately.

Emergence

The Berlin Declaration was based on the Allied resolution at the Yalta Conference . The other declarations had also been made binding in Yalta by an inter-allied institution, proposed to the European Consultative Commission , and contained guidelines for the Allied procedure in occupied Germany. They were supplemented by an inter-allied agreement on the participation of France.

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English-language film about the signing of the Berlin Declaration
Memorial plaque on the house at Niebergallstrasse 20 in Berlin-Koepenick

In the preamble of the declaration (full title: [Berlin Declaration] Declaration in view of the defeat of Germany and the assumption of supreme authority over Germany by the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the Union of Socialists Soviet Republics and, through the Provisional Government of the French Republic ), the United States , the Soviet Union , Great Britain and France state that the German armed forces are completely defeated and that Germany is submitting to whatever demands may now or later be placed upon it. Furthermore, there is no central government or authority in Germany that is able to maintain order, administer the country and meet the demands of the Allies . You would therefore have taken over the supreme power of government in Germany, including the powers of the government , the OKW , the states as well as the cities and municipalities. They announced that they would later determine “the borders of Germany or any part of Germany and the legal position of Germany or any area that is currently part of German territory”. An annexation of Germany is not connected with it.

With this declaration, the USA, the USSR, Great Britain and France claimed sovereignty , according to the preamble of the declaration, primarily to restore order in occupied Germany .

The second declaration dealt with the consultation of the allied nations .

The content of the third declaration of June 5 was the division of Germany into four zones of occupation and the allocation of the area of Greater Berlin to the four Allies, divided into four sectors. With it, the London Protocol concerning the zones of occupation in Germany and the administration of Greater Berlin came into force on September 12, 1944, in which Germany as a whole was territorially limited to the borders of 1937, i.e. to its territory before the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland . An eastern zone was assigned to the Soviet Union, a northwest zone to the United Kingdom, a southwest zone to the USA, and a western zone to France. In terms of constitutional law , it was announced that the assumption of governmental power would not result in the annexation of Germany and that the "German borders as of December 31, 1937" continued. In the following years, this addition played a role in the discussion of constitutional and international law on the question of whether the Reich had perished or continued to exist (→  Germany's legal position after 1945 ).

The fourth declaration contained the establishment of a control council , which consisted of the four commanders-in-chief of the zones of occupation. Each commander-in-chief had supreme power in his zone. On issues that affected Germany as a whole, however, they could not decide alone, but had to make joint decisions, and unanimously. This declaration also contained details about the organization of the Control Council.

The declarations were signed by the following commanders in chief:

As with all Allied documents, there was a German version, which, however, was not legally valid in cases of doubt .

Armed forces

All armed forces under German command had to cease hostilities against the armed forces of the United Nations (UN) in all theaters of war . The Allies received information about the position and number of German units. All German or German-controlled armed forces and organizations equipped with weapons were completely disarmed and declared prisoners of war . In addition to the regular units, the Schutzstaffel , the Sturmabteilung and the Secret State Police were explicitly mentioned . Units beyond the 1937 borders had to evacuate the areas. The Allies appointed civilian police units that were only equipped with handguns . Minefields had to be marked and removed.

Aviation and shipping

All military and civil aircraft, including third countries with the exception of the Allies, in Germany had to remain on the ground, German aircraft abroad had to return to Germany. All ships, including those from third countries, had to remain in their port, the crew remained on board. All ships and aircraft had to be kept in good condition for use by the Allies. All ships from countries of the United Nations which were under German control according to prize law or for other reasons had to call at a port to be determined by the Allies.

Prisoners of war

The Allies received complete lists of names of the prisoners of war under German authority. All prisoners of war had to be cared for and released, the same applied to all those who were imprisoned, interned or subjected to other restrictions due to National Socialist law.

Communications

All radio and communications connections were to be discontinued until further notice.

war criminal

War criminals named by the Allies were to be arrested and handed over to the Allies. This also applied to members of the United Nations who had violated the laws of their country.

Deployment of allied forces

All weapons, ammunition and military equipment, as well as military equipment and systems, as well as traffic and communications equipment, had to be kept in good condition for use by the Allies. The destruction, damage or concealment of the facilities, their property and their archives and files was prohibited. The Allies were free to station forces in any part or all of Germany at their own discretion.

Further measures

The Allies were able to take further measures they deemed necessary for future peace and security. Full demilitarization was explicitly mentioned , and political, administrative, economic, financial, military and other demands were announced.

Implementation and consequences

Occupation zones 1945

At the time of the declarations, the Allied troops were still standing along a previously agreed military demarcation line that ran much further to the east than the intended western border of the Soviet occupation zone. The whole of Berlin had been ruled by a magistrate appointed by the Soviets since May 17, 1945. The declarations of the victorious powers following the British and American troops evacuated the areas in accordance with decisions of the European Advisory Commission (European Advisory Commission) should belong to the Soviet occupation zone. In return, the three Western powers moved into Berlin.

However, none of the zones defined at that time had a long-term existence: France spun off the Saar area from its occupation zone in 1946 and then joined the Saarland, which was now enlarged in terms of area, economically. The three western zones later became part of the Federal Republic of Germany , the region from Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania to Saxony became the Soviet occupation zone , from which the German Democratic Republic emerged . The eastern territories of the German Empire came under Soviet and Polish administration in 1945 . The border between the western zones and the Soviet zone followed, with few deviations, the course of the border between the state of Mecklenburg , the Prussian province of Saxony and the state of Thuringia on the one hand and the Prussian provinces of Schleswig-Holstein , Hanover and Hesse-Nassau as well as the Free State Braunschweig and Bavaria on the other hand. In 1948, the four-sector city of Berlin split politically into an eastern and western part . Neither became a constitutive part of the two German states, nor were they later incorporated by them.

Legal validity

In the post-war period , German constitutional and international law experts asked the question of the Berlin Declaration whether the Allies were entitled to invoke paragraph 4 of the document of surrender , which contained a reservation that this declaration of surrender could be replaced by other general conditions of surrender that were adopted by the UN and in whose name Germany could be imposed. This part was based on a draft declaration of surrender by the European Consultative Commission, which, although approved at the Yalta conference , was not used. This raised the question of whether this reservation included the right of the Allies to govern themselves.

Because the military surrender in the form of the Berlin Declaration was followed by new surrender conditions, the historian Andreas Hillgruber assessed this as “a state-political surrender unilaterally declared by the main victorious powers” ​​and as a “novelty under international law”. According to Adolf M. Birke , the Berlin Declaration corresponded to the "General Instrument of Surrender", ie the general provisions of surrender that the document of surrender had explicitly left open. In this and in the agreements of the European Consultative Commission, the will of the victorious powers had been expressed to "shape the legal situation of Germany through unilateral allied acts". The contemporaries of 1945 had not yet grasped the explosive nature of the issue under international law; the victorious powers had no concept for this. Elke Fröhlich assumes a “constitutional vacuum” between the arrest of the Dönitz government on May 23, 1945 and the Berlin declaration in which the victorious powers of Germany “also capitulated politically and politically”.

Legal consequences

With their "Declaration in view of the defeat of Germany", the four main victorious powers took over the supreme authority over Germany. According to the historian Rudolf Morsey, the Berlin Declaration was the “Basic Law of the Occupation Era”. Together with the accompanying declarations, it formed the basis for the four-power responsibility for Germany as a whole, which was repeatedly affirmed by all those involved, and thus for all allied rights of reservation towards Germany. The four-power rights and responsibilities were not completely abolished until the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of September 12, 1990 , despite the gradual return of sovereignty .

Despite the joint Berlin Declaration, the Allies pursued different political goals in 1945. As Walter Ulbricht reported, the Red Army put up posters proclaiming “the basic line of Soviet policy towards defeated Germany”: “The Hitlerites come and go, but the German people, the German state remains”. Josef Stalin assured in his “Address to the People” of May 9, 1945: “The German troops are capitulating. The Soviet Union celebrates victory, even if it does not prepare to dismember or destroy Germany ”. However, if Germany were to continue to exist as a subject of international law , as Stalin's formulations indicated, the occupying powers would be subject to the restrictions defined by the international war law in the Hague Land Warfare (→  occupation in international law ): On this legal basis, the state order of Germany and its territorial structure would not have been influenced by the victorious powers may be changed. Therefore, France in particular took the position that the German Reich had perished. However, this apparently contradicted the statement in the Berlin declaration that Germany would not be annexed. As the legal historian Bernhard Diestelkamp assumes, it was important for the USA and Great Britain not to abandon the Hague Land Warfare Regulations, which they simply declared to be “inapplicable”, or any claim of Germans to equal treatment with their own citizens in their occupation policy to be constricted. They therefore deliberately left the question of the downfall or continued existence of the German Reich open and even resisted any legal stipulation: in 1946 the Legal Division of the Control Commission for the British zone simply declared that the Allies' relations with Germany were "through the declaration of surrender of 5. 6. Established in 1945 […]. These statements are to be regarded as final. No further correspondence or any other discussion is permitted on this subject ”. The historian Gerrit Dworok assumes that the victorious powers themselves assumed in the Berlin Declaration that Germany had lost its sovereignty in the course of the unconditional surrender and the occupation, but still existed as a subject of international law.

In the West German discussion about the legal situation in Germany after 1945 , the Berlin Declaration was interpreted differently. According to prevailing doctrine and the highest court rulings , the German Reich did not go under. It had simply lost its ability to will and act. His legal capacity, however, persisted, as the Federal Republic of Germany was identical to him as a subject under international law . The historian Wolfgang Jacobmeyer wrote in 1976: “The historical and political sciences have rejected this doctrine as a mere legal-dogmatic thinking game; and they emphasized the ability to act as an essential criterion for the existence of the state ”. He was referring to Reimer Hansen's criticism of this doctrine from 1966, which was also adopted by Andreas Hillgruber in an essay in 1969.

The continuity of all three elements of the state must be verifiable in order for the quality of the state to continue: This is not a problem for the people of the state and state territory , but according to widespread opinion, German state power was ended by the arrest of the Dönitz government and its takeover by the Allies in the Berlin Declaration . The international law experts Otto Kimminich and Dieter Blumenwitz take the view that they exercised state authority in trust for the German state. The international lawyer Georg Teyssen, on the other hand, argues that the victorious powers neither had a mandate for such a fiduciary exercise of state authority nor even had the intention to do so. The international lawyer Gilbert Gornig argues that at the middle and lower levels, for example in the newly formed German states since July 1945 , state power continued to be exercised. Ingo von Münch , on the other hand, takes the view that a temporary cessation of state authority, as in the case of Austria in the years 1938 to 1945, is entirely compatible with the continued existence of the state. The decisive factors are the facts that the Allies expressly declared in the Berlin Declaration that they did not want to annex Germany, as well as the lack of an explicit act of dissolution, as is the case for Prussia with the Control Council Act No. 46 of February 25, 1947. According to the unanimous opinion of well-known international lawyers, the occupation regime, before the German state power was gradually rebuilt (beginning at the middle and lower levels ), represented "a legal relationship of a unique kind" (occupatio sui generis ) , "which lacks a uniform interpretation to this day". It was fundamentally different from any previously known occupation regime.

The Berlin Declaration was interpreted in the Federal Republic during the early Adenauer era as evidence that the Allies, including the Soviet Union, had thereby given assurances regarding the German borders as of December 31, 1937. The legal scholar Eberhard Menzel called this a legend , whereby the sentence about the non-annexation of Germany in the Berlin Declaration was interpreted meaninglessly and the Allied reservation contained in it regarding the determination of future borders was simply ignored. The Berlin Declaration does not contain any guarantee of the territorial acquis within the 1937 borders.

According to the historian Henning Köhler , the Berlin Declaration, which was originally issued by the victorious powers to legally secure the complete submission of Germany, developed a paradoxical effect in the following decades. It established the right of the Western Allies to be present in Germany, to which they came back in the four-power agreement on Berlin of 1971: the claim to control had become an obligation to protect. Its effect is also dialectical when it comes to the continued existence of Germany : in 1945 it led to the “annulment of German statehood”, but the four-power responsibility enshrined in it had become “the strongest legal bracket for the continued existence of this very Germany as a whole”.

See also

Web links

Commons : Berlin Declaration  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Theo Stammen , Gerold Maier: The Allied Occupation Regime in Germany . In: Josef Becker , Theo Stammen, Peter Waldmann (eds.): Prehistory of the Federal Republic of Germany. Between surrender and the Basic Law. UTB / W. Funk, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-7705-1769-5 , p. 64 f.
  2. ^ Official Journal of the Control Council in Germany, supplementary sheet No. 1, p. 7; Printed in Dietrich Rauschning (ed.), Legal Status of Germany - International Treaties and Other Legal Acts , 2nd edition 1989, p. 15 ff .; Documents on the Berlin question 1944–1966 , edit. v. Wolfgang Heidelmeyer / Günter Hindrichs, 3rd edition, Munich 1967, No. 10.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Declaration in view of the defeat of Germany and the assumption of supreme governmental power over Germany by the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and by the Provisional Government of the French Republic . In: Official Journal of the Control Council in Germany . Berlin 1945, supplementary sheet No. 1, p. 7–9 ( online [accessed May 8, 2016]).
  4. ^ Friedrich Ebel / Georg Thielmann / Susanne Hähnchen, legal history. From Roman antiquity to modern times , 4th edition, CF Müller, Heidelberg 2012, § 17 Rn. 887 .
  5. ↑ See Karl Strupp / Jürgen Schlochauer, Dictionary des Völkerrechts , Vol. 2 (1961), p. 197 .
  6. ↑ On the territorial status cf. Protocol on the zones of occupation in Germany and the administration of Greater Berlin of September 12, 1944 with supplementary agreements of November 14, 1944 and July 26, 1945 (last version: August 13, 1945); see. also Georg Ress , in: Ulrich Beyerlin u. a. (Ed.), Law between upheaval and preservation. Festschrift for Rudolf Bernhardt (= contributions to foreign public law and international law; vol. 120), Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 1995, p. 839 fn 57 , 849 .
  7. ↑ See Werner Weidenfeld , Karl-Rudolf Korte (ed.): Handbuch zur deutschen Einheit 1949–1989–1999 , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1999, ISBN 3-593-36240-6 , p. 122 .
  8. ^ Friedrich Ebel / Georg Thielmann / Susanne Hähnchen, legal history. From Roman antiquity to modern times , 4th edition, CF Müller, Heidelberg 2012, § 17 Rn. 890 .
  9. ^ Karl Dietrich Erdmann : The end of the empire and the new formation of German states . In: Herbert Grundmann (Ed.): Gebhardt. Handbook of German History , Volume 22, dtv, Munich 1980, p. 36 ff.
  10. ↑ Andreas Hillgruber : Germany between the world powers 1945-1965 . In: Peter Rassow and Theodor Schieffer (eds.): German history at a glance . Metzler, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-476-00258-6 , p. 748.
  11. ^ Adolf M. Birke: Nation without a house. Germany 1945–1961 . Siedler, Berlin 1994, p. 42; similar to Joachim Rückert : The elimination of the German Reich - the historical and legal-historical dimension of a suspension situation. In: Anselm Doering-Manteuffel (Hrsg.): Structural features of the German history of the 20th century (= Writings of the Historisches Kolleg, vol. 63), Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-486-58057-4 , p. 77 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  12. ↑ Elke Fröhlich: Capitulation, Germany 1945. In: Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml and Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1997, p. 541.
  13. ^ Rudolf Morsey: The Federal Republic of Germany. Origin and development until 1969 (=  Oldenbourg floor plan of history , vol. 19). Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-70114-2 , p. 2 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  14. ^ Wilhelm Grewe : Germany Treaty . In: Werner Weidenfeld and Karl-Rudolf Korte (eds.): Handbook on German Unity 1949–1989–1999 . Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1999, p. 293.
  15. ↑ Andreas Rödder : Germany united fatherland. The history of reunification , Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-56281-5 , p. 147 ff .; Manfred Görtemaker : History of the Federal Republic of Germany. From the foundation to the present , CH Beck, Munich 1999, p. 755; Jochen Abr. Frowein : The development of the legal situation in Germany from 1945 to reunification in 1990. In: Ernst Benda / Werner Maihofer / Hans-Jochen Vogel (ed.): Handbook of Constitutional Law of the Federal Republic of Germany , 2nd edition, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1994, p. 31, Rn. 25th
  16. ↑ Both cited from Ernst Deuerlein : Potsdam 1945. End and beginning . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1970, p. 11.
  17. ^ Bernhard Diestelkamp : Legal history as contemporary history. Historical considerations on the development and implementation of the theory of the continued existence of the German Reich as a state after 1945. In: Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte 7 (1985), pp. 184 f .; see. Charles de Gaulle's statement of May 15, 1945: “The victory therefore had to be a total victory. It happened. In this respect, the state, power and doctrine, the German Reich is destroyed ”, quoted by Manfred Görtemaker: History of the Federal Republic of Germany. From the foundation to the present , CH Beck, Munich 1999, p. 18.
  18. ↑ Jochen Abr. Frowein: The development of the legal situation in Germany from 1945 to reunification in 1990 . In: Handbook of Constitutional Law of the Federal Republic of Germany , 2nd edition, Water de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1994, p. 23, Rn. 9 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  19. ^ Bernhard Diestelkamp: Legal and constitutional problems on the early history of the Federal Republic of Germany . In: Juristische Schulung , Heft 7 (1980), pp. 481-485, the quotation p. 482.
  20. ↑ Gerrit Dworok: "Historikerstreit" und Nationwardung. Origins and Interpretation of a Federal Republican Conflict . Böhlau, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-50238-6 , p. 118 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  21. ^ Gilbert Gornig : The status of Germany under international law between 1945 and 1990. Also a contribution to the problems of state succession. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2007, p. 22 f.
  22. ↑ Wolfgang Jacobmeyer: Die defeat 1945 , in: Westdeutschlands Weg zur Bundes Republik 1945–1949. Contributions by employees of the Institute for Contemporary History (= Becksche Schwarze Reihe, Vol. 137), Munich 1976, ISBN 3-406-04937-0 , p. 15.
  23. ^ Otto Kimminich: The sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany . Joachim Heitmann Verlag, Hamburg 1970, p. 38 ff .; Dieter Blumenwitz: What is Germany? Constitutional and international law principles on the German question . 3rd edition, Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertaufenen , Bonn 1989, p. 36, both quoted from Gilbert Gornig: Germany's status under international law between 1945 and 1990. Also a contribution to the problems of state succession. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2007, p. 21.
  24. ↑ Georg Teyssen: Germany theories on the basis of the Eastern Treaty policy . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 165 f., Quoted from Gilbert Gornig: The status of Germany under international law between 1945 and 1990. Also a contribution to the problems of state succession. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2007, p. 21.
  25. ^ Gilbert Gornig: The status of Germany under international law between 1945 and 1990. Also a contribution to the problems of state succession. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2007, p. 21.
  26. ^ Ingo von Münch: The German citizenship. Past - present - future . De Gruyter Recht, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89949-433-4 , p. 79 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  27. ↑ Georg Dahm , Jost Delbrück , Rüdiger Wolfrum : Völkerrecht , Vol. I / 1, 2nd edition, Berlin 1989, p. 225 with further references.
  28. ^ Theo Stammen , Gerold Maier: The Allied Occupation Regime in Germany . In: Josef Becker , Theo Stammen, Peter Waldmann (eds.): Prehistory of the Federal Republic of Germany. Between surrender and the Basic Law. UTB / W. Funk, Munich 1979, p. 61 f.
  29. ↑ Eberhard Menzel: The Potsdam Agreement and the Ostpolitik of the Federal Government , in: Ernst Deuerlein et al .: Potsdam and the German Question , Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1970, p. 129 f.
  30. ^ Henning Köhler: Germany on the way to itself. A history of the century . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, p. 444 f.