yalta and potsdam

• Yalta

  Date - 4-11 February 1945

  Location - Yalta, in the Crimea in the USSR

  Attendees - The ‘Grand Alliance’ (USSR, Britain, USA)
• Reasons for Yalta:

  • voting procedures and membership rules for the UN
  • based on reflection of the League of Nations
  • Fate of Poland and Eastern EU
  • Treatment of defeated Germany and Austria
  • Soviet participation against Japan
• Agreements from Yalta:

  • German’s unconditional surrender
  • Four-power occupation of Germany/Austria (USSR, UK, US, France)
  • becomes crucial within the time period
  • War crime trials for leading Nazis
  • The need for the UN
  • Free election in Eastern EU ASAP
• Outcomes of Yalta:

  • negotiations were in Stalin’s favour as Roosevelt wanted Russian help in the Pacific
  • Stalin promised that Russia would join the war in the Pacific in return for occupation zones in NK and Manchuria
  • Russia agreed to join the UN
• Successes of Yalta:

  • tensions growing particularly around reparations and Poland
  • ‘The Soviet Union has become a danger to the free world.’ Churchill wrote to Roosevelt
• Changes between Yalta and Potsdam:

  • Germany was defeated in May 1945 where significant changes in international relationships impacted the Potsdam conference
  • Red Army occupied majority of Eastern Europe
  • Roosevelt replaced by Harry Truman who was more firm on communism
  • US successfully detonated a nuclear bomb which Stalin only found out at the start of Potsdam
  • Churchill is replaced by Clement Attlee amidst Potsdam
• Potsdam

  Date - July 1945

  Big Three - Stalin, Attlee, Truman
• Agreements from Potsdam:

  • set up the four ‘zones of occupation’ in Germany
  • bring Nazi war-criminals to trial
  • recognition of the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity and holding ‘free and unfettered elections ASAP’
  • Russia allowed to take reparations from Soviet Zone, 10% of industrial equipment
• The Cold War:

  • ideological and geopolitical rivalry between the communist Soviet Union and Capitalist US
  • dominated international relations from 1945 until 1990
  • US and USSR competed to influence the rebuilding of EU and worldwide emerging independence movements