<P> Beginning in May 1945, many of the American combat troops and airmen in and around Germany were sent back to the United States based on their Advanced Service Rating Scores . Some of the experienced officers and non-commissioned officers were selected to be sent to the Pacific Theater of Operations for the proposed Invasion of Japan, but most of those men who had served the longest in combat were discharged from the U.S. Army, the Army Air Forces and the U.S. Navy upon their return home . Following the surrender of the Japanese Empire in mid-August 1945--by its acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration--a higher percentage of soldiers, airmen and sailors were granted their final discharges from service . The signing of the surrender of Japan took place on 2 September 1945 officially ending hostilities in World War II in the Pacific, but active combat within the Pacific theater had ended weeks earlier . </P> <P> The Canadian Army was tied down in surrounding the Netherlands until the Germans there surrendered on 5 May 1945--just two days before the final surrender of the Wehrmacht in Western Europe to U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower . After the liberation of the Netherlands and the conquest of Northern Germany by the British Army, the bulk of the Canadian Army returned home, leaving Northern Germany to be occupied by the British Army and (around Bremen and Bremerhaven) by the U.S. Army . </P> <P> Then in July 1945, the British Army withdrew from small slices of Germany that had previously been agreed to be occupied by the Soviet Army . The Control Commission for Germany - British Element (CCG / BE) ceded some slices of its area of occupation to the Soviet Union--specifically the Amt Neuhaus of Hanover and some exclaves and fringes of Brunswick, for example, the County of Blankenburg and exchanged some villages between British Holstein and Soviet Mecklenburg by the Barber - Lyashchenko Agreement . </P> <P> Within the British Zone of Occupation, the CCG / BE re-established the German state of Hamburg, but with borders that had been drawn by Nazi Germany in 1937 . The British also created the new German states of Schleswig - Holstein--emerging in 1946 from the Prussian Province of Schleswig - Holstein; Lower Saxony--the merger of Brunswick, Oldenburg, and Schaumburg - Lippe with the state of Hanover in 1946; and North Rhine - Westphalia--the merger of Lippe with the Prussian provinces of the Rhineland (northern part) and Westphalia--during 1946--47 . Also in 1947, the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen became an exclave of the American Zone of Occupation located within the British Zone . </P>

Why did britain france and the us combine their sections to form west germany