What Agreements Were Made at the Potsdam Conference

Posted on March 5, 2022 Posted By: jeffjorgy Categories:

The last of the Allied conferences took place from 17 July to 2 August 1945 in Potsdam near Berlin. Six months earlier, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had made post-war preparations in Crimea, but the promises made at Yalta were unable to withstand the balance of power on the ground. In the meantime, the climate had changed considerably: Germany had capitulated on May 8, 1945, and the war in Europe was over. Japan stubbornly resisted the U.S. bombing, but the U.S. had one last asset: on July 16, the first atomic bomb test explosion took place in the New Mexico desert. At the Potsdam Conference, Harry Truman replaced Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died on 12 April 1945, and Clement Attlee led the British delegation after Winston Churchill`s defeat in the general election on 26 July. Only Joseph Stalin was personally present at all Allied conferences. After the end of the Second World War in Europe (1939-45) and the decisions of the previous conferences in Tehran, Casablanca and Yalta, the Allies had assumed supreme authority over Germany with the Berlin Declaration of 5 June 1945.

At the Berlin Conference of the Three Powers (official title of the Potsdam Conference) from 17 July to 2 August 1945, they agreed and adopted the Protocol of Deliberations of 1 August 1945, which was signed at the Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam. The signatories were General Secretary Joseph Stalin, President Harry S. Truman and Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who had replaced Winston Churchill as the United Kingdom`s representative after the 1945 British general election. The three powers also agreed to invite France and China to participate as members of the Council of Foreign Ministers set up to monitor the agreement. The Provisional Government of the French Republic accepted the invitation on 7 August with the important reservation that it would not accept from the outset any obligation to possibly re-establish a central government in Germany. The leaders decided that the Allied Control Council in Germany would deal with the issue and give priority to the equal distribution of Germans among the occupation zones. Representatives on the Control Board were to report to their governments and to each zone administration on the number of people who had already entered Germany from Eastern European countries. [7] These representatives would also constitute an assessment of the future pace of transfers, with a focus on Germany`s absorption capacity. The Potsdam Conference, which took place near Berlin from 17 July to 2 August 1945, was the last of the three major meetings of World War II. Soviet Prime Minister Joseph Stalin and new US President Harry S.

participated. Truman and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain (replaced on 28 July by his successor Clement Attlee). On July 26, the leaders issued a statement demanding Japan`s “unconditional surrender,” concealing the fact that they had privately agreed to let Japan keep its emperor. Otherwise, the conference focused on post-war Europe. A Council of Foreign Ministers was agreed, comprising the big three, as well as China and France. The German military administration was established, with an Allied Central Control Council (the requirement that approval decisions be unanimous would later prove crippling). The Heads of State and Government agreed on various agreements on the German economy, with a focus on the development of agriculture and non-military industry. The institutions that had controlled the economy under the Nazis were to be decentralized, but all of Germany would be treated as one economic entity. War criminals would be brought to justice.

Stalin`s request to define the German-Polish border was postponed to the peace treaty, but the conference agreed to his transfer of land east of the Oder and Neisse rivers from Germany to Poland. In the case of reparations, a compromise was made on the basis of the exchange of capital goods from the western zone for raw materials from the east. He resolved a dispute, but set a precedent for the management of the German economy by zone and not globally, as the Western powers had hoped. Although post-war Europe dominated potsdam`s agenda, the war hid in the Pacific off stage. Truman received news of the success of the atomic bomb test shortly after his arrival in Potsdam; he broke the news to Churchill, but only casually mentioned “a new weapon” to Stalin. Truman continued to ask Stalin for help against Japan, but he knew that if the bomb succeeded, Russian help would not be needed. In fact, the bomb would give the United States unprecedented power in the postwar world. The reader`s companion to American history. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, editors.

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