Potsdam conference

• The Potsdam Conference


  17th July to 2nd August 1945
• The Potsdam Conference was the final meeting of the Grand Alliance and they addressed the issue of the government of Europe following the collapse of Germany
• Change in circumstances at the Potsdam Conference

  • Germany had surrendered in May 1945
  • Scientists in the USA had developed an atomic bomb (which they tested successfully the day after the conference began)
  • The United Nations had been created in the Treaty of San Francisco in June 1945. Eventually, 51 members signed the treaty. The USA, the Soviet Union, France, Britain and China were made permanent members off the United Nations Security Council, with the power to veto resolutions
• Change of personnel at the Potsdam Conference

  • Roosevelt died in April 1945 and was replaced by Harry S. Truman
  • Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party last the 1945 general election. The new Labour prime minister was Clement Attlee.
  • Compared to Roosevelt and Churchill, Truman and Attlee were new to diplomatic discussions, making it harder to negotiate with Stalin
• Truman was determined to take a 'get tough' approach with Stalin and deliberately delayed the date of the conference until the atomic bomb was ready
• As a newly elected prime minister, Attlee's main concern was to return to Britain to take charge and he did not want the talks to drag on
• Agreements at the Potsdam Conference

  • Germany would be divided into four sectors controlled by the four Allied powers
  • Germany would pay reparations, with each ally taking reparations from the sector they controlled
  • There would be free elections in Germany and the other Eastern European countries
• The development of the atomic bomb

  Made Truman feel more confident and determined in the negotiations at Potsdam
• The USA having the atomic bomb


  Did not make it easier to persuade Stalin to allow Western European countries more freedom, as Stalin felt even more determined to make the Soviet Union secure by creating a buffer zone of communist countries in Eastern Europe
• The USA's nuclear monopoly did not last, as Soviet scientists were already working on their own version of the atom bomb and their first successful test was on 29 August 1949, just four years after the USA
• By 1964, Britain, France and China also had the atomic bomb, which dramatically increased Cold War tensions
• The terrible consequences of using an atomic bomb may have made both the USA and the Soviet Union more reluctant to go to war, as they entered an arms race in which each side tried to make sure their nuclear weapons were more powerful than those of their rival