Allied Control Council

The Allied Control Council or Allied Control Authority was the name of a military occupation governing body of Germany in the aftermath of World War II; the members were the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. France was later added with a vote but had no duties.

After the end of WW II on May 8, 1945 the provisional German Reich (Deutsche Reich) government under Karl Doenitz and Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk was removed and the German government from then on until 1949 was handled by the Allied Control Council. The representatives were as follows: Marshal Georgi Zhukov (Soviet Union), Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (United Kingdom) , General Dwight Eisenhower (United States) and General Jean Joseph-Marie Gabriel Lattre de Tassigny (France).

The building in which the Allied Control Council was housed and from where it operated was previously the building of the German Supreme Court. It became called Alliertes Kontrollratsgebäude. It was situated in Berlin-Schöneberg, Hauptstrasse, in the Kleist Park. The ongoing Iron Curtain confrontations left the function of the Control Council, which was intended to govern as a united body, in limbo. After 1945, when the Soviet Union went its own way and cooperations between the Soviet Union and the other three of the Four Powers totally collapsed, the building stood empty. There was only one guard stationed out front. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and after the Soviet troops left Berlin in 1994, the Allied Control Council building was returned to Berlin city authorities.

see History of Germany\n