William Tyler
Germany in the Aftermath of War: Denazification and Division

The end of WWII did not bring peace. The Allies (US, USSR, Britain, and France) soon had to decide how to deal with the nazis. Those thought to be guilty of the most heinous crimes were brought to justice at Nuremberg, a newly established international court. But Nazism ran much deeper in German society than the relatively few tried in the court. This situation was worsened as The USSR drew away from their allies in the parts of Germany allocated to it in the immediate aftermath of the war. This widening gap was most evident in Berlin, which despite being entirely within the Russian zone of occupation, was divided into West Berlin and East Berlin.

Peace in Europe never fully materialised because the continent slipped into a new war- The Cold War, famously described by Winston Churchill as an iron curtain falling between Western and Eastern Europe. By 1961 this had taken physical shape with East Germany building a wall right through the middle of Berlin and sealing themselves off from West Berlin. Bismarck’s dream of a unified Germany lay in the rubble of WWII, and for many it seemed as though this division would last for a very long time indeed.

With President Putin’s views about restoring Russia to a Tsarist and Soviet Russia, we have clearly not reached the end of the story of European realignment, begun so long ago by Bismarck. The analogy is not that of a jigsaw puzzle, with all the pieces fitting neatly into a pattern, but rather of a kaleidoscope, which any number of countries can shake and alter.