However, consideration of those matters was postponed into the Council of Foreign Ministers, which was now established. Views were also exchanged on a plethora of other questions. The Soviets also reaffirmed their Yalta promise to promptly launch an invasion of Japanese-held areas. Key final decisions included: Germany would be divided into the four occupation zones (among the three powers and France) that had been agreed to earlier Germany's eastern border was to be shifted west to the Oder–Neisse line a Soviet-backed group was recognized as the legitimate government of Poland and Vietnam was to be partitioned at the 16th parallel. Though this was the first time the Soviets had been officially given information about the atomic bomb, Stalin was already aware of the bomb project, having learned about it through espionage long before Truman did. was about to use a new kind of weapon against the Japanese. During the Conference, Truman was secretly informed that the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb on July 16 had been successful. Committees that were appointed by the latter for precursory consideration of questions before the conference also met daily.
During the conference, there were meetings of the three heads of government with their foreign secretaries, as well as meetings of only the foreign secretaries. Four days of further discussion followed. By July 28, Attlee had defeated Churchill and replaced him as Britain’s representative, with Britain's new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ernest Bevin, replacing Anthony Eden. From July 17 to July 25, nine meetings were held, when the Conference was interrupted for two days, as the results of the British general election were announced. The foreign ministers and aides played key roles: Vyacheslav Molotov, Anthony Eden and Ernest Bevin, and James F. The goals of the conference also included establishing the postwar order, solving issues on the peace treaty, and countering the effects of the war.
POTSDAM CONFERENCE HOW TO
They gathered to decide how to administer Germany, which had agreed to an unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier. They were represented respectively by General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Potsdam Conference ( German: Potsdamer Konferenz) was held in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Keywords: Anti-Hitler coalition, Potsdam Conference, Atomic diplomacy, V-E Day, war with Japan, polo always settlement in liberated Europe, German problem, reparations, Stalin, Truman and Churchill.Cecilienhof, site of the Potsdam Conference, pictured in 2014 But the United States needed the assistance of the Soviet Union in the Far East against Japan at the time of the Potsdam Conference so they had to postpone their global plans till the defeat of Japan and terminate the Conference on a positive note. It was the dawn of a new era of atomic diplomacy and beginning of American attempts to dominate the world in the spirit of American century. President Truman later called the Potsdam Summit as “the meeting in the shadow of A-Bomb”. In this regard, according the author, the Potsdam Conference can not be interpreted as the beginning of the Cold War but rather as an opportunity to continue the cooperation of the war-time Alliance of the winners of the war in peace time.Īmong the major problems to be solved at the Conference were the German problem, the situation and the future political settlement in liberated Eastern European countries, German reparations and some others. The focal point of the submitted paper is to show that regardless of sharp discussions and disagreements at the tripartite Conference among war time leaders- Stalin, Truman and Churchill and later after the election in UK Attlee finally succeeded in coming to common decisions concerning the post-war world order. I took place after the defeat of Nazi Germany and before capitulation of Imperial Japan to solve the post-war problems in Europe and lay down the foundation of the lasting peace. The Potsdam Conference of USSR,USA and UK held 17 July - 2 August, 1945 was the third and the last “Big Three” war time summit of political leaders of Anti-Hitler coalition during the WW2.