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East Germany The Soviet Military Administration
The day after the formal German surrender, the Soviet
commander established the Soviet Military Administration in
Germany (Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland--SMAD)
to govern the Soviet occupation zone. Headquartered in
Berlin-Karlshorst, the SMAD was the Soviet occupation authority
until its functions were handed over to the Soviet Control
Commission on October 7, 1949, the day on which the German
Democratic Republic was founded.
The Yalta and Potsdam agreements entered into by the Soviet
Union, Britain, and the United States called for Germany's
complete disarmament. Not only would no German ground, sea, or
air forces capable of military action be created, but also no
industrial capability to support such forces would be permitted.
Police forces were to be local and decentralized.
Almost from the beginning of the occupation, the Communist
Party of Germany, headed by Walter Ulbricht, began to assume
civil authority. In the process of constructing a socialist
system in the country, the party looked for political reliability
as the principal qualification for leadership, even at the
expense of competence. Initially, at least, reliability was
measured primarily by a person's anti-Nazism. Not all persons
selected were communist or of working-class background. None,
however, were anticommunist. To ensure their reliability, the
German Administration of the Interior, which later became the
Ministry of the Interior, was established by the SMAD. The
supervision of the police forces--reorganized on the basis of the
five existing states of the Soviet zone--was a prime objective of
the new German Administration of the Interior.
At the same time that the police forces were being
reorganized, the system of justice underwent a similar and much
more stringent restructuring. All judges, prosecutors, and
lawyers who had Nazi connections were summarily removed from
office. Because the Nazis had dominated the legal system, this
meant virtually a clean sweep. To fill the void, members of the
legal profession who had retired before 1933 were pressed into
temporary service. For a longer term solution, people with
anti-Nazi and preferably working-class backgrounds were trained
in intensive law courses, lasting six to nine months, run by the
Soviet Army.
Data as of July 1987
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