The Three Conferences

• Superpower relations and the Cold War 1941 to 1991 were covered in the GCSE Edexcel Nine to One course.
• The first conference of the grand alliance was held at Tehran in Iran in December 1943.
• The three nations at the conference had different goals: the USA wanted the support of Stalin to defeat the Japanese, the USSR wanted the USA and Britain to open up a second front in Western Europe, and Britain wanted support in defeating Nazism and defending its empire.
• The USA and Britain agreed to invade Western Europe in May 1944, which would ease pressure on the USSR who were being invaded by the Nazis and suffering heavy losses.
• The USSR in return agreed to support the USA in defeating the Japanese after the Nazis were defeated.
• At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the three members of the grand alliance discussed what they were going to do with Germany once they had defeated the Nazis.
• Germany was split into four zones of control: the USSR, the USA, Britain, and France, with Berlin also split into four zones.
• The Nazis were to be prosecuted and the United Nations set up to police disputes between nations.
• All countries would be allowed to join the United Nations, but there was some dispute over membership for some of the nations that made up the Soviet Union.
• The USSR confirmed that they would support the USA against the Japanese as soon as the Nazis were defeated.
• The USSR agreed that future elections in the USSR would be free, but Poland remained a source of contention.
• Roosevelt and Churchill were determined to let the people of Poland choose their own future, but Stalin was worried about a future invasion from Germany.
• It was agreed that a free election would be held in Poland, but Stalin was sure the election would return a result for the Communist Party.
• Britain supported the London Poles, a group of Polish politicians who had been forced to flee Poland.
• The USA dropped the first atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, the day after the conference began, shocking Stalin as he felt that as an ally of the USA he should have been warned.
• Stalin wanted to share the occupation of Japan once they surrendered, but Truman refused.
• The agreements made in the three conferences held at least for a while, but the fragile alliance based only on a determination to defeat the Nazis fell apart as soon as the Nazis had fallen.
• The three nations met once again in August 1945, this time at Potsdam, which is just outside Berlin, to finalize the future of Germany and Europe.
• Germany was reduced in size slightly and Germany and Berlin were split into four zones, with the Soviet Union assigned to the north-east of Germany, the area with the least wealth.
• President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 and was replaced by the younger and less experienced Harry S Truman.
• On May 7, 1945, the Nazis surrendered and the war was over.
• The tenuous relationship between the USA and the USSR was already beginning to collapse.
• The conference confirmed many of the items agreed in Yalta, including the establishment of a United Nations which any country was allowed to join, with five permanent members: Britain, France, the USA, the USSR, and China.
• The council of foreign ministers was established to oversee the writing and agreeing of treaties following the war.
• Germany was to pay reparations as it had at the end of World War One, but the terms were made more manageable by allowing Germany to pay in equipment and materials as well as money.
• Truman disliked Stalin and distrusted him, accusing him of breaking his promises about Poland and the treatment of prisoners of war.
• Poland's border with the Soviet Union was moved west as agreed, giving the USSR the land it felt had been taken from it.
• The conference agreed to the denucification of Germany, banning the Nazi party from existing, removing all evidence of the Nazis from Germany, and trying the leaders of the Nazi party as war criminals.
• Churchill tried to continue the work he had started but was replaced during the Potsdam Conference by Clement Attlee, whose priority was to get back to Britain and start repairing the damage from the war.
• Stalin started to back out of the initial promises of free elections for all Soviet-occupied nations and began to install communist governments who would do the will of the Soviet Union.
• Truman approached the conference aggressively, wanting to give Stalin no room to get out of any of the prior agreements.