Potsdam Conference July 1945

• Potsdam Conference

  July 1945
• The grand alliance met one last time, but the atmosphere had changed
• Stalin's army had liberated Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania
• Stalin had set up a communist government in Poland
• The Red Army remained intact and powerful, unlike the demilitarisation in the west
• The USA had successfully tested the Atomic Bomb without sharing secrets with the USSR
• There was a change in leadership - no longer Roosevelt and Churchill but Truman and Atlee
• They agreed on the division of Germany as at Yalta
• They agreed that democracy would be re-established in Germany
• Germany would pay reparations, most of which would go to the USSR to repair their nation
• The Nazi Party was banned
• The UN was established
• Poland's frontier moved westwards to the rivers of Oder and Niesse
• There was no agreement on Germany in the long term - Stalin wanted them crippled with reparation so never strong enough to attack again, but Truman refused
• The interpretation of "free elections" differed between the USA and USSR