<P> Altogether, around 8 million ethnic German refugees and expellees from across Europe eventually settled in West Germany, with a further 3 million in East Germany . In West Germany these represented a major voting block; maintaining a strong culture of grievance and victimhood against Soviet Power, pressing for a continued commitment to full German reunification, claiming compensation, pursuing the right of return to lost property in the East, and opposing any recognition of the postwar extension of Poland and the Soviet Union into former German lands . Due to the Cold War rhetoric and successful political machinations of Konrad Adenauer, this block eventually became substantially aligned with the Christian Democratic Union of Germany; although in practice' westward - looking' CDU policies favouring the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union worked against the possibility of achieving the objectives of the expellee population from the east through negotiation with the Soviet Union . But for Adenauer, fostering and encouraging unrealistic demands and uncompromising expectations amongst the expellees would serve his "Policy of Strength" by which West Germany contrived to inhibit consideration of unification or a final Peace Treaty until the West was strong enough to face the Soviets on equal terms . Consequently, the Federal Republic in the 1950s adopted much of the symbolism of expellee groups; especially in appropriating and subverting the terminology and imagery of the Holocaust; applying this to post-war German experience instead . Eventually in 1990, following the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, the unified Germany indeed confirmed in treaties with Poland and the Soviet Union that the transfer of sovereignty over the former German eastern territories in 1945 had been permanent and irreversible; Germany now undertaking never again to make territorial claims in respect of these lands . </P> <P> The intended governing body of Germany was called the Allied Control Council, consisting of the commanders - in - chief in Germany of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union; who exercised supreme authority in their respective zones, while supposedly acting in concert on questions affecting the whole country . In actuality however, the French consistently blocked any progress towards re-establishing all - German governing institutions; substantially in pursuit of French aspirations for a dismembered Germany, but also as a response to the exclusion of France from the Potsdam conference . Berlin, which lay in the Soviet (eastern) sector, was also divided into four sectors with the Western sectors later becoming West Berlin and the Soviet sector becoming East Berlin, capital of East Germany . </P> <P> A key item in the occupiers' agenda was denazification . The swastika and other outward symbols of the Nazi regime were banned, and a Provisional Civil Ensign was established as a temporary German flag . It remained the official flag of the country (necessary for reasons of international law) until East Germany and West Germany (see below) were independently established in 1949 . </P> <P> The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union had agreed at Potsdam to a broad program of decentralization, treating Germany as a single economic unit with some central administrative departments . These plans never materialised as the Soviet Union was intent on extracting as much material as possible in order to make good in part the enormous destruction caused by the German Wehrmacht, and the policy broke down completely in 1948 when the Russians blockaded West Berlin and the period known as the Cold War began . It was agreed at Potsdam that the leading members of the Nazi regime who had been captured should be put on trial accused of crimes against humanity, and this was one of the few points on which the four powers were able to agree . In order to secure the presence of the western allies in Berlin, the United States agreed to withdraw from Thuringia and Saxony in exchange for the division of Berlin into four sectors . The State Department and individual U.S. congressmen pressured to have this policy lifted . In June 1945 the prohibition against speaking with German children was loosened . In July troops were permitted to speak to German adults in certain circumstances . In September 1945 the entire policy was dropped . Only the ban on marriage between Americans and German or Austrian civilians remained in place . </P>

Why was germany divided into east and west by 1949