Germany Divided and the Blocs Formalize: Berlin, NATO, and the Warsaw Pact

Germany was divided into four occupation zones administered by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, with Berlin similarly divided into four sectors despite lying entirely within the Soviet zone. The Allied Control Council pursued the declared goals of denazification, demilitarization, democratization, and decentralization, but growing divergence emerged between the economic policies pursued in the Western zones and those imposed in the Soviet zone; the American and British zones merged into the "Bizone" in 1947, later joined by the French zone, and the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency reform in western Germany in 1948 became the flashpoint that triggered open confrontation with the USSR.