Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference (July 17 – August 2, 1945) was the last of the wartime summit meetings, held in the ruined Cecilienhof Palace in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. Truman, Stalin, and initially Churchill (replaced mid-conference by incoming Prime Minister Attlee following the British election) met to settle the post-war order for Germany and Europe. The conference produced agreements on Germany's division into four occupation zones, denazification, reparations, and the post-war borders of Poland — which shifted dramatically westward, expelling some 12 million ethnic Germans from their homes. Potsdam revealed how fundamentally the relationship between the victorious powers had changed since Yalta. Truman arrived knowing the atomic bomb had been successfully tested at Trinity on July 16; he mentioned to Stalin only that the US possessed 'a new weapon of unusual destructive force,' and Stalin's apparently calm response baffled Truman (the Soviet intelligence services already knew about the Manhattan Project from espionage). The fundamental disagreement over Poland — the Soviets had already installed a communist-dominated government — pointed toward the confrontation to come. Truman left Potsdam convinced that the Soviet Union was not a trustworthy partner and that firm resistance to its expansionism was essential.
- Year: 1945 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
