The Allied Control Council (ACC) or Allied Control Authority, and also referred to as the Four Powers, was the governing body of the Allied occupation zones in Germany (1945–1949/1991) and Austria (1945–1955) after the end of World War II in Europe. After the defeat of the Nazis, Germany and Austria were occupied as two different areas, both by the same four Allies. Both were later divided into four zones by the 1 August 1945 Potsdam Agreement. Its members were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France. The organisation was based in Schöneberg, Berlin.
Kammergericht, Berlin, 1945–1990 headquarters of the Allied Control Council: View from the Kleistpark
Removing an 'Adolf Hitler Street' sign, part of denazification
Arrival of the four foreign ministers at the Allied Control Council headquarters building for the signing of the final protocol of the Four Power Agreement on Berlin on 3 June 1972
Kammergericht building in 1938 with its tower
The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Unlike occupied Japan, Germany was stripped of its sovereignty and former state: after Nazi Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, four countries representing the Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty through the Allied Control Council (ACC). At first, Allied-occupied Germany was defined as all territories of Germany before the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria; the Potsdam Agreement on 2 August 1945 defined the new eastern German border by giving Poland and the Soviet Union all regions of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line and divided the remaining "Germany as a whole" into four occupation zones, each administered by one of the Allies.
Royal Air Force's Malcolm Club in Schleswig, formerly the Stadt Hamburg Hotel in late 1945
British armoured car, at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, 1950
French forces in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, 1946
Cover of the 1947 Saar constitution