The carrying out of the Potsdam Agreement has, however, been obstructed by the failure of the Allied Control Council to take the necessary steps to enable the German economy to function as an economic unit.

James F. Byrnes, as U.S. Secretary of State, made this complaint in the first postwar year as the Allied occupation of Germany bogged down. The Potsdam Agreement (August 1945) had committed the four occupying powers—United States, Britain, Soviet Union, and France—to administer Germany as a single economic unit through the Allied Control Council in Berlin. In practice, growing East–West tensions and repeated deadlock in the Control Council prevented coordinated policy on reparations, production, trade, and food distribution. Byrnes’s remark reflects U.S. frustration that the occupation framework was failing to restore basic economic functioning and was contributing to hardship and instability in Germany, accelerating the drift toward separate Western and Soviet zones.