Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany

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On this day in 1990.

The Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, (or the Two Plus Four Agreement) was negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and the Four Powers which occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe: France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union.

On 2 August 1945, less than a month after the End of World War II in Europe, the Potsdam Agreement was issued at the end of the Potsdam Conference. Among other things, it agreed the initial terms under which the Allies of World War II would govern Germany and the provisional German Polish border known as the Oder-Neisse line. The agreements reached were provisional ones that would be finalised by "a peace settlement for Germany to be accepted by the Government of Germany when a government adequate for the purpose is established" (Potsdam Agreement 1.3.1). The "German Question" became one of the defining issues of the Cold War and until it ended in the late 1980s little progress had been made in establishing a single government of Germany adequate for the purpose of agreeing to a final settlement.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall the German people and the German governments of the of FRG (the government of West Germany) and the GDR (the government of East Germany) made it clear that they wished to form a unitary democratic German state, and that to achieve unity and full sovereignty they were willing to accept the terms of the Potsdam Agreement that affected Germany. It was then possible for all the parties to negotiate a final settlement as envisaged in the Potsdam Agreement. The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed in Moscow on September 12, 1990 and paved the way for German reunification on October 3 that year.

Under the terms of the treaty, the Four Powers renounced all rights they formerly held in Germany, including Berlin. As a result, the reunited country became fully sovereign on March 15, 1991. Soviet troops were to leave Germany by the end of 1994. Germany agreed to limit its combined armed forces to no more than 370,000 personnel, no more than 345,000 of whom were to be in the army and air force. Germany also reaffirmed its renunciation of the manufacture and possession of and control over nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and in particular that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would continue to apply to united Germany. Also, no foreign armed forces and nuclear weapons or their carriers would be stationed in former East Germany or deployed there, making it a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone.

Another of the treaty's important terms was Germany's confirmation of the internationally recognized border with Poland and territorial changes Germany had undergone since 1945, preventing any future claims to territory east of the Oder-Neisse line (see also former German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line). Germany also agreed to sign a separate treaty with Poland reaffirming their present border, which was done on November 14, 1990 with the signing of the German-Polish Border Treaty.

Although the treaty was signed by the two German states as separate entities, it was ratified by a united Germany per the terms of the agreement.