POTSDAM CONFERENCE

POTSDAM CONFERENCE took place in a suburb of Berlin from 17 July to 2 August 1945. President Harry S. Truman, Marshal Joseph Stalin, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced at midpoint by the newly elected Clement Attlee) met to reach accord on postwar Germany and the Pacific war. The "big three" confirmed a decision, made at Yalta, to divide Germany into British, American, Russian, and French occupation zones. They pledged to treat Germany as a single economic unit while allowing each of the four occupying commanders to veto any decision. Germany was slated for total disarmament, demilitarization, the trial of war criminals, and denazification. Other provisions included reparations (with the final sum unspecified); the forced return of 6.5 million Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary in an "orderly and humane manner"; and the temporary retention of the Oder-Neisse boundary. The Council of Foreign Ministers, a body composed of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia, was entrusted with preparing peace terms for Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, Hungary, and Finland. On 14 July, having been informed of the successful atomic tests at Alamogordo, New Mexico, three days before, Truman told an unsurprised Stalin, "We have perfected a very powerful explosive which we are going to use against the Japanese and we think it will end the war."

As Russia had not yet declared war on Japan, the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945 was signed only by the United States and Great Britain, though with China's concurrence. It threatened the "utter devastation of the Japanese homeland" unless Japan accepted "unconditional surrender." Specific terms included total disarmament, the destruction of its "war-making power," the limitation of Japan's sovereignty to its home islands, stern justice to "all war criminals," the establishment of "fundamental human rights," the payment of "just reparations in kind," and the limitation of its economy to peacetime undertakings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Feis, Herbert. Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960.

Gormly, James L. From Potsdam to the Cold War: Big Three Diplomacy, 1945–1947. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990.

Mee, Charles L., Jr. Meeting at Potsdam. New York: M. Evans, 1975.

Justus D.Doenecke

See alsoGermany, American Occupation of ; Japan, Relations with ; World War II ; Yalta Conference .