Background
On 2 August 1945, the Potsdam Agreement was issued at the end of the Potsdam Conference. Among other things, it agreed on 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 salient and crucial issues of the long-running Cold War, and until it ended in the late 1980s, little progress had been made in the establishment of a single government of Germany adequate for the purpose of agreeing to a final settlement. This meant that in some respects (largely but not only technical), Germany did not have full national sovereignty.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall the German people and the German governments of the Federal Republic of Germany (in the West) and the German Democratic Republic (in the East) made it clear that they wished to form a united 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 envisioned in the Potsdam Agreement.
Read more about this topic: Treaty On The Final Settlement With Respect To Germany
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