Events on September 12 in history

The two German states and the Four Powers sign the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Moscow, paving the way for German reunification.

The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (German: Vertrag ber die abschlieende Regelung in Bezug auf Deutschland),

or the Two Plus Four Agreement (German: Zwei-plus-Vier-Vertrag; short: German Peace Treaty),

is an international agreement that allowed the reunification of Germany in the early 1990s. It was negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic (the eponymous Two), and the Four Powers which had occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe: France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the treaty, the Four Powers renounced all rights they held in Germany, allowing a reunited Germany to become fully sovereign the following year. At the same time, the two German states agreed to confirm their acceptance of the existing border with Poland, and accepted that the borders of Germany after unification would correspond only to the territories then administered by West and East Germany, with the exclusion and renunciation of any other territorial claims (e.g., to the Kaliningrad Oblast).

The Allied Control Council or Allied Control Authority (German: Alliierter Kontrollrat) and also referred to as the Four Powers (Vier Mächte), was the governing body of the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany and Allied-occupied Austria after the end of World War II. Members were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and France. The organisation was based in Berlin-Schöneberg. The council was convened to determine several plans for postwar Europe, including how to change borders and transfer populations in Eastern Europe and Germany. As the four Allied Powers had joined themselves into a condominium asserting supreme power in Germany, the Allied Control Council was constituted the sole legal sovereign authority for Germany as a whole, replacing the extinct civil government of Nazi Germany.