Protocol on Zones of Occupation and the Administration of "Greater Berlin" (September 12, 1944) It was at the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 that U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt first announced to the public that the aim of the war was Germany’s unconditional surrender. Over the following eighteen months, the three leading Allies – the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union – gave concrete form to their plans for the government and administration of postwar Germany. The protocol of September 12, 1944, limited Germany’s territory to its 1937 borders, that is, to its borders prior to the annexation of Austria and the Sudeten region. The protocol also called for the establishment of three occupation zones, which were to be administered separately. These zones were to follow existing administrative boundaries (except in the case of Prussia, which was to be split up) and to take population size into account. Additionally, the Allies agreed on the joint administration of the capital of Berlin by an allied Komendatura. While the occupation of both the “Eastern Zone” and the northeastern part of Berlin by Soviet forces had already been finalized, the allocation of the “North-Western Zone,” the “South-Western Zone,” and the northwestern and southern parts of Berlin still remained formally open.
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page 1 of 3 Protocol between the governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, on the zones of occupation in Germany and the administration of “Greater Berlin” The Governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have reached the following agreement with regard to the execution of Article 11 of the Instrument of Unconditional Surrender of Germany: 1. Germany, within her frontiers as they were on the 31st December, 1937, will, for the purposes of occupation, be divided into three zones, one of which will be allotted to each of the three Powers, and a special Berlin area, which will be under joint occupation by the three Powers. 2. The boundaries of the three zones and of the Berlin area, and the allocation of the three zones as between the U.S.A., the U.K. and the U.S.S.R. will be as follows: Eastern Zone [ . . . ]: The territory of Germany (including the province of East Prussia) situated to the East of a line drawn from the point on Lübeck Bay where the frontiers of Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg meet, along the western frontier of Mecklenburg to the frontier of the province of Hanover, thence, along the eastern frontier of Hanover, to the frontier of Brunswick; thence along the western frontier of the Prussian province of Saxony to the western frontier of Anhalt; thence along the western frontier of Anhalt; thence along the western frontier of the Prussian province of Saxony and the western frontier of Thuringia to where the latter meets the Bavarian frontier; then eastwards along the northern frontier of Bavaria to the 1937 Czechoslovakian frontier, will be occupied by armed forces of the U.S.S.R., with the exception of the Berlin area, for which a special system of occupation is provided below. North-Western Zone [ . . . ]: The territory of Germany situated to the west of the line defined above, and bounded on the south by a line drawn from the point where the western frontier of Thuringia meets the frontier of Bavaria; thence westwards along the southern frontiers of the Prussian provinces of Hessen-Nassau and Rheinprovinz to where the latter meets the frontier of France will be occupied by armed forces of * * * [asterisks appear in original]
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