1) The creation of the FRG 1945-49

• Germany surrendered on 8th May 1945.
• Hitler's expansionist aims and genocidal policies against Jews and others had brought the country to catastrophe.
• Four million Germans were dead and 10 million will be expelled as refugees.
• There was widespread fear of starvation and outbreak of disease among its inhabitants, many of whom were living in cellars or in the open, their homes having been destroyed.
• 7 million men were missing or prisoners of war.
• Four zones of occupation initially focused on demilitarisation and de-Nazification.
• An economic recovery from the war was slow, the three western zones increasingly merged to facilitate development, while the Soviet one increasingly became communist.