302 ChaPter^6
at Versailles after World War I, it would again take center stage as World War
II ended. Germany was again perhaps the key country in the effort for wide-
spread economic reconstruction. From the U.S. point of view, its attempt to
shut off the Open Door in Europe from the 1930s through the war years
was its greatest threat, and the Americans wanted to be sure that Germany
would be rebuilt and re-established as an important capitalist economic part-
ner after the war, which meant keeping it out of Communist hands as well.
To the Russians, however, Germany was an aggressive nation that had
invaded it twice in less than thirty years and had killed perhaps 25 million
of its people, and it should be forced to pay heavy reparations, or penalties
and restitution, for the horrors it inflicted. The final decision on Germany
addressed both U.S. and Russian concerns, but with the advantage to the
Americans. Germany was divided into 4 zones and the U.S., the Soviet
Union, Great Britain, and France [which was controversial since it had
fallen to Germany early and had a small role in the war] were all given
control over a particular zone.
The Americans, British, and French–the western powers–took control of
the western part of Germany, which was traditionally its industrial heartland
and full of resources–while the Soviet Union, which had done more than any
force to defeat the Nazis–took control of the agricultural, and less affluent,
east. For their part, the Russians started dismantling German factories and
industry to ship back to the Soviet Union to help them rebuild their own
country, while the Americans and their allies began to rebuild Germany along
capitalist, private-enterprise lines so it could be a market for U.S. goods and
investment and a partner in the new world economic order the U.S. was orga-
nizing. The German decision did not satisfy everyone, and it did not take long
for the issue to cause trouble. Although the U.S. and others had put Nazi
leaders on trial at Nuremberg, Germany was still being run by many of its
pre-war leaders and businessmen. By mid-1946, the Americans began to put
ex-Nazi officials back into their previous government and economic positions,
and began to withhold reparations payments promised to the Soviet Union.
In December, the Americans, British, and French merged their zones, creating
what would later become West Germany [officially the Federal Republic of
Germany, or FRG]. To Stalin, these were aggressive acts, intended to harm the
Russians and prevent their reconstruction, while expanding American power.
The alliance between the U.S. and Soviets, so important in defeating the