British occupation zone in Germany
The British occupation zone in Germany was one of the Allied-occupied areas in Germany after World War II. The United Kingdom, along with the Commonwealth, was one of the three major Allied powers that defeated Nazi Germany. By 1945, the Allies had divided the country into four occupation zones: British, Soviet, American and French lasting until 1949, whence the new country of West Germany was established. Out of all the four zones, the British had the largest population and contained within it the heavy industry region, the Ruhr, as well as the naval ports and Germany's coast lines.
German policemen are disarmed shortly after the entry of British forces into Hanover in 1945
Copy of the Ordinance No. 55, with which on 22 November 1946, the British military government founded the state of Lower Saxony retroactively to 1 November
Aerial view of the prisoner of war compound at Hamburg packed with surrendered German troops
Supplementary food card for industry workers in the British zone of occupation district of Hanover
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