Pretty much in half.

And it sure is reassuring to know that a big European war like that could never, ever happen again. Cold or otherwise. Right?

The situation in Germany after World War II was dire. Millions of Germans were homeless from Allied bombing campaigns that razed entire cities. And millions more Germans living in Poland and East Prussia became refugees when the Soviet Union expelled them. With the German economy and government in shambles, the Allies concluded that Germany needed to be occupied after the war to assure a peaceful transition to a post-Nazi state.

What the Allies never intended, though, was that their temporary solution to organize Germany into four occupation zones, each administered by a different Allied army, would ultimately lead to a divided Germany.

“Only over time, as the Cold War eroded trust between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies, did these occupation zones coalesce into two different German nations.”