ombat that included a river assault. The US 5th Infantry Division and US 6th Armored Division captured Frankfurt after several days of intense fighting, and it was declared largely secure on 29 March 1945. More details of this battle are provided at History of Frankfurt am Main.
After the end of the war, Frankfurt became a part of the newly founded state of Hesse, consisting of the old Hesse-(Darmstadt) and the Prussian Hesse provinces. The city was part of the American Zone of Occupation of Germany. The Military Governor for the United States Zone (1945�1949) and the United States High Commissioner for Germany (HICOG) (1949�1952) had their headquarters in the IG Farben Building, intentionally left undamaged by the Allies' wartime bombardment. Frankfurt was the original choice for the provisional capital of West Germany�they even went as far as constructing a new parliament building that has never been used for its intended purpose. Since 1949 it is used to house the radio studios of Hessischer Rundfunk. In the end, Konrad Adenauer (the first post-war Chancellor) preferred the tiny city of Bonn, for the most part because it was close to his hometown, but also for another reason; many other prominent politicians opposed the choice of Frankfurt out of concern that Frankfurt, one of the largest German cities and a former centre of the old German-dominated Holy Roman Empire, would be accepted as a "permanent" capital of Germany, thereby weakening the West German population's support for reunification and the eventual return of the Government to Berlin.
During the 1970s, the city created one of Europe's most efficient underground transportation systems. That system includes a suburban rail system (S-Bahn) capable of reaching outlying communities as well as the city centre, and a deep underground light rail system with smaller coaches (U-Bahn) also capable of travelling above ground on street rails.
Since the postwar period Frankfurt has emerged once
