who agreed to divide germany into zones at the end of ww2
History of Germany (1945–90) At the Potsdam Conference (17 July to 2 August 1945), after Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945,[6] the Allies divided Germany into four military occupation zones â€” France in the southwest, Britain in the northwest, the United States in the south, and the Soviet Union in the east, bounded eastwards by the Oder-Neisse line. At Potsdam these four zones in total were denoted as 'Germany as a whole', and the four Allied Powers exercised the sovereign authority they now claimed within Germany in agreeing 'in principle' the future transfer of lands of the former German Reich east of 'Germany as a whole' to Poland and the Soviet Union.[7] These eastern areas were notionally placed under Polish and Soviet administration pending a final peace treaty (which was not formalized until 1990, 45 years later); but in actuality were promptly reorganized as organic parts of their respective sovereign states.
End of World War II in Europe At 02:41 on the morning of 7 May, at SHAEF headquarters in Reims, France, the Chief-of-Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, signed an unconditional surrender document for all German forces to the Allies, committing representatives of the German High Command to attend a definitive signing ceremony in Berlin. General Franz Böhme announced the unconditional surrender of German troops in Norway on 7 May. It included the phrase "All forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European Time on May 8, 1945."[19][26] The next day, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and other German OKW representatives travelled to Berlin, and shortly before midnight signed an amended and definitive document of unconditional surrender, explicitly surrendering to all the Allied forces in the presence of Marshal Georgi Zhukov and representatives of SHAEF.[27] The signing ceremony took place in a former German Army Engineering School in the Berlin district of Karlshorst; it now houses the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.