The Potsdam Conference (July 17 to August 2, 1945) brought together the American, Soviet and British heads of state and government to try to settle the future of Germany after the Second World War. Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, veterans of previous Allied conferences, are once again there, while Harry Truman replaces Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who died on April 12. However, the main thing will be played out between the new American president and the Soviet leader. Faced with a Red Army that controls most of Central Europe, Truman nevertheless has a major asset:the atomic bomb tested a day earlier…
Potsdam:the last of the major inter-allied conferences
The Potsdam conference, which took place in a Germany devastated by bombing and fighting, was the last in a cycle that began in November and December 1943 in Tehran. These tripartite conferences (Tehran, Yalta, Potsdam) aim to determine the common plans of the great powers and the preparation of treaties for the post-war world. Particularly revealing of the balance of power and the tensions which play on the relations between Moscow, London and Washington, they have seen the assertion of the increasingly significant role of the Soviet Union.
In Yalta in February 1945, it appeared that Stalin was in a strong position. The Red Army already seemed set to win in the race for Berlin (which would ultimately be refused by Eisenhower) and Roosevelt, very weakened, was won over to many Soviet positions. Despite Churchill's strong reluctance, the American president still hoped for a democratic evolution of the Soviet regime. Roosevelt also counted on the future United Nations to moderate any communist expansionism. This resulted in concessions that his successor Truman would work to manage in Potsdam.
Organizing the post-war world
The first question addressed by the Big Three in Potsdam will be that of the future of Germany. The allies gave themselves the immediate objective of demilitarizing it, even if it meant depriving it of its military-industrial infrastructure. Divided, like Austria, into four zones of occupation (American, British, French and Soviet) it saw its borders largely brought back to the west along the Oder Neisse line in favor of Poland (which the Soviet Union cut off its eastern part). These territorial changes are accompanied by very large population movements, namely the exodus of 11 million Germans expelled from the eastern territories.
Within the new Germany, the big three are committed to pursuing a vigorous policy of denazification and the trial of war criminals, including spectacular trials like the Nuremberg trial will be the highlight. The economy will be de-cartelized and the political system decentralized. With disarmament, these four Ds constitute the assurance for the allies that Germany will never again be able to become a warmongering power again.
Another major issue addressed during the conference, that of Japan. The Empire of the Rising Sun, at war with the Western allies since December 1941, still hopes to find a negotiated solution to the conflict, in particular via the still neutral Soviets in Asia. What Tokyo does not know is that in Yalta Stalin pledged to go to war alongside the Americans. An impressive military force is being set up in the Soviet Far East to take over rich Manchuria and northern Korea.
This prospect is cause for concern in Washington. Indeed, if the defeat of Japan is no longer in doubt (especially in the perspective of future atomic bombings), the Americans intend to keep East Asia under control. They fear in particular that Moscow will get involved in favor of the Chinese Communists, whose truce with the Nationalists of Chiang Kai Check seems fragile.
Anyway, on July 26, the Big Three issue an ultimatum to Japan, ordering it to surrender unconditionally or face prompt destruction. Even if the atomic bomb is not mentioned, it is at the heart of this ultimatum and weighs heavily on the relationship between the USSR and the USA. Stalin will soon be catching up with the Americans.
From the Potsdam Conference to the Cold War
Although officially cordial, relations between Americans and Soviets in Potsdam were already no longer as frank as in Yalta. Truman, though new to foreign policy, did not share Rooseveltian optimism about Stalin.
Another fact characteristic of the emergence of a new system of functioning of international relations, the disappearance of the United Kingdom. If Churchill started the conference, he did not finish it replaced by Labor Clement Attlee. The latter won the first general elections organized since 1935. With the departure of Churchill, the United Kingdom seems relegated to a subordinate role. London is now dedicated to the challenges of economic and social modernization and decolonization. It is the end of several centuries of British imperial adventures.
In the end, with the declaration of the conference which closed on August 2, 1945, the page of the Second World War was turned. The division of Germany and the fate that awaits Japan, are in many respects harbingers of the characteristics of the cold war that is brewing...
Bibliography
- History of international relations 1945-1962 by Charles Zorgbibe, Éditions Hachette, Paris, 1995
- 1945, from Yalta to Potsdam, from illusions to the Cold War by Arthur Funk. Editions Complexe, 1999.
- The Fall of Berlin by Antony Beevor, Antony Beevor, 2002 / De Fallois (fr.), 2002.