The stated purpose of postwar agreements was to achieve a better world in the future and to secure the peace. In Germany this meant:
(a) to eliminate vestiges of the Third Reich and to prevent rebirth of aggressive forces and
(b) to chart a course of action by which Germany could regain its self-respect and play a constructive role in international affairs.
Even before the Potsdam Protocol was signed, the U.S.S.R. began its efforts to turn Germany into a satellite of the Soviet Union. Groups of German Communists had been in training in the U.S.S.R. all during the war. Their future leaders, Wilhelm Pieck, Walter Ulbricht, Karl Maron, Lothar Bolz, and others, were working closely with the Comintern and the Soviet Army waiting for the entry of Soviet forces into Germany. These men have headed the East German regime since its establishment in 1949, and between 1945 and 1949 they were among the principal officials serving under the Soviet occupation forces in East Germany.
The National Committee for Free Germany, a Soviet-sponsored organization of captured German officers and soldiers, was organized on July 7, 1943, to provide Communist political indoctrination for German prisoners of war in the U.S.S.R. and to form cells among military men as a basis for future German rearmament under Soviet auspices. Prominent graduates of the so-called “Antifa School” (Antifascist School) at Krasniy Gorsk who subsequently received leading positions in East Germany included: Wehrmacht Colonel Luitpold Steidle, later Minister for Health; Wehrmacht Major General Vincenz Mueller, later Lieutenant General and Chief of Staff of the East German armed forces; Wehrmacht Major General Otto Korfes, later a political leader in the National Front in East Germany and responsible for organizing former German army officers; Major Egbert von Frankenberg und Proschlitz, now the military commentator of the East German radio and a leading member of the National Democratic Party, which was established in 1948 by the Soviets as the party for former soldiers and Nazi party members; Wehrmacht Lieutenant General Arno von Lenski, now a Major General in the East German army and its leading expert on tank warfare; former regimental commander Bernhard Bechler, who is now Deputy Chief of Staff of the East German forces; and Wehrmacht Lieutenant General Hans Wulz, now a Major General in the East German armed forces and city commandant in East Berlin.
The Soviet Army for a brief period during May and June 1945 was the sole occupier of Berlin. On June 10, 1945, three weeks before the first U.S. elements entered Berlin, the Soviet occupation authorities licensed four political parties in the city, namely the Communists, the Social Democrats, the Christian Democratic Union, and the Liberal Democrats. The next day these four parties were brought under the Antifascist Democratic Bloc, a Soviet device to control the leaders and programs of these parties and to limit their freedom to those political actions approved by the Communists and the U.S.S.R.
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