The leaders of the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union – the three great powers that had defeated Nazi Germany – met at the Potsdam Conference near Berlin from July 17 to August 2, 1945, at a crucial time in defining the new balance of power after WWII. The summit also provided an early glimpse of the tensions that would develop between the United States and the Soviet Union, which led to a Cold War that lasted for more than four decades.
The conference was attended by US President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was abruptly replaced on July 26 by his successor Clement Attlee, following the announcement of the British election results. .
The conference took place just three months after Truman took over the presidency following the death of his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. As historian David McCullough recounts in his 1992 biography, Truman, the new president was not eager to travel so early for his first meeting with the other two leaders of the Big Three who had defeated Nazi Germany.
“I have a briefcase full of information from past conferences and suggestions on what to do and say,” he wrote in a letter to his mother and sister. Nonetheless, he sailed to Europe on the American cruiser Augusta, his first visit to the mainland since fighting in World War I. After Truman’s arrival he was fortunate enough to visit the conquered city of Berlin, where he was disturbed by hordes of civilians without shelter, many of them children, struggling to survive in the bombed out ruins. (Truman later described Berlin as “a ghost town” in a radio address to the Americans.)
Determining the fate of Germany after WWII
The fate of Germany after the war was an important topic of the conference. According to the US State Department’s story of the event, Stalin pressured FDR at the previous Yalta conference in February 1945 to force defeated Germans to pay heavy post-war reparations, half of which would go to the Soviet Union. Roosevelt had accepted this request. But Truman, who was keenly aware that similar economic punishments inflicted on the Germans after World War I had led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, was determined not to make the same mistake. Ultimately, the Allies struck a deal in which the Soviets were able to remove German industrial machinery from their area of occupation.
READ MORE: How the ‘Big Three’ started the Cold War at the Yalta conference
The Big Three worked out many details of the post-war order in the Potsdam Accord, signed on August 1. They confirmed the disarmament and demilitarization plans for Germany, which would be divided into four allied occupation zones controlled by the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. They also went ahead with plans to radically overhaul German society, repealing laws passed by the Nazi regime and removing Nazis from German education and justice systems, and to arrest and try Germans who committed crimes. war crimes. They also approved the formation of a Council of Foreign Ministers, which would act on behalf of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China to draft peace treaties with former German allies, such as Italy and Bulgaria.
The Potsdam Agreement also called on Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, which wanted to expel ethnic German populations within their borders, to do so “in an orderly and humane manner”. The idea was to avoid a massive influx of refugees into a Germany where existing residents were already struggling to cope. But the redistribution of the border between Poland and Germany has not been resolved.
READ MORE: As the Allies moved closer to Hitler, they fought for future world domination
Pressure Japan to quit the war
Another important objective of the Potsdam conference was to put pressure on Japan, which was still at war. To this end, on July 26, the United States and Britain, along with China, issued the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened a massive air and naval attack and a ground invasion that would “deal the final blows on Japan. ”, Unless the Japanese agree to surrender. The declaration set out the Allies’ non-negotiable peace terms, which included the unconditional surrender and disarmament of the Japanese army, the occupation of Japan “until there is convincing evidence that the war power of the Japan is destroyed ”and trials for Japanese war criminals and the creation of a democratic system of government with free speech and other rights for citizens. In return, Japan would be allowed to maintain industries that were unrelated to the war and to have access to raw materials, and would eventually be allowed to resume international trade.
Just before the start of the conference, Truman got the secret news of the success of the American atomic bomb test by Manhattan Project scientists, and apparently decided to use that knowledge to give him a negotiating advantage over Stalin. After an afternoon meeting on July 24, Truman walked up to Stalin and quietly told him that the United States had developed “a new weapon of unusual destructive force.” , more powerful than any known bomb, and planned to use it soon unless Japan surrendered.
Probably to Truman’s surprise, Stalin didn’t seem overly interested in the revelation. “All he said was he was happy to hear it, and hoped we would ‘put it to good use against the Japanese’,” Truman recalled later. Stalin’s mild reaction was due to the fact that he had at least two spies inside the Manhattan Project and was already familiar with the United States’ atomic weapons program. The Soviet leader has not budged from his negotiating positions.
Potsdam was the last time the leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, who had maintained a strained alliance despite their differences during the war, met to discuss post-war cooperation .
s:
“The Potsdam Conference, 1945.” Office of the Historian, Department of State of United States.
Truman, by David McCullough, 1992, June 1992. Simon & Schuster.
“The Potsdam Agreement: Procedural Protocol”, August 1, 1945. NATO.
“United States Foreign Relations: Diplomatic Documents, Berlin Conference (Potsdam Conference)”, 1945, Volume II, United States Department of State.
“He’s Honest – But Clever As Hell”: When Truman Met Stalin “, by Kristine Phillips, July 17, 2018, Washington post.
“Radio report to the American people on the Potsdam conference, August 9, 1945.” The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara.
