Seems like they could have drawn the boundaries to give the allies something else instead of half of a city so far from their own zone.
In: 10
It wasn’t split into two, it was split into 4, and later became two.
The allies divided up Germany (and Austria) each into 4 sectors (American, British, French, and Soviet). However, they also decided that Berlin so was important, they they would also split Berlin into 4 sectors as well, despite it being inside of the Soviet sector.
Eventually, the American, British, and French sectors of Germany combined to form a singular West Germany, this included their sectors of Berlin as well. The Soviet Sector, including their part of Berlin, became East Germany.
Berlin was the capital, so it was too important to give to one country, so it got divided separately from the rest of Germany. It’s also worth noting that these territories were supposed to be temporary administrative regions until Germany had its own government that the UK, US, France and USSR were happy with. The issue is that it took decades to reach that point.
Originally Germany was split four ways between France, the UK, the US, and the USSR. Berlin was also split four ways initially, despite being deep within the Soviet zone of occupation.
Now, Stalin wanted all of Berlin, and tried to force the issue by blockading all supplies to the city for the better part of a year. The Western Allies responded by airlifting supplies (check out the Extra History episode on the Berlin Airlift) and Stalin was forced to back down. This was arguably the first “battle” of the Cold War.
Eventually, the three Western occupation zones were combined into the nation of West Germany, and they did the same with their Berlin occupation zones.
Berlin had three Allied sectors: US, British,French that worked together under the Allied Staff Berlin Headquarters which had representatives from each of these nations. Their main purpose was to counter the Soviet threat and keep the city open as the society’s tried to take it through blockade. This was countered by the Berlin Airlift. It was interesting and exciting to be stationed in West Berlin as a young US Army officer in the days of the Berlin Wall. Even then I could see how inept the Russian military was.
The occupation zones were agreed to while fighting was still going on until just after it ended in Europe in 1943-45. The Allies were negotiating to an outcome that could be agreed and keep the big three powers on side with each other at that time. They all had some ideas of the future outcome they would prefer but they weren’t sitting down to decide the exact nature of East and West Germany as they would come to be for the next 40 years because no one foresaw that exact outcome at the time.
Berlin was symbolically important as Germany’s capital, so splitting it meant each allied power could share in the prestige of occupying it. And it was practically important as the largest city in Germany, one of its main financial and industrial centres and the centre of rail networks in northern and eastern Germany. There was nowhere else comparable in Germany and definitely not in the Soviet Zone, America and Britain wouldn’t have accepted full Soviet control of Berlin in return for some much smaller eastern German city.
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