Editor’s note: Every day, The Denver Gazette reprints some of the best front pages of the Rocky Mountain News as pulled from its 100-plus-year archives.

The Potsdam plan for turning Germany into a rural backwater with farms and very little industry didn’t last very long. Instead, Germany ended up as four occupied zones for a short while with the three Western Zones (U.S., U.K. and France) being combined into West Germany and the Soviet zone becoming East Germany. Once that happened — and the Cold War started — it became in the interest of both sides to rebuild their Germanies into industrial powers capable of self-defenses.