The Potsdam Conference: August 2nd 1945 – The Conference Ends

In 1919, the Italian Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino, expressed his anger with Woodrow Wilson, shouting, “Is it possible to change the world from a room, through the actions of some diplomats? Go to the Balkans and try an experiment with the Fourteen Points.”

Like most of his fellow European diplomats, Sonnino was irritated with American ideals and frustrated by the lack of real power the United States put behind its principles. Despite its wealth and its post World War I food relief program that likely saved millions of Europeans from starvation, there was a limit on what America could and would do. Soon, it would leave Europe, head back to its own shores, giving many Europeans reasons to criticize America both for the failure to back up its ideals and its unwillingness to pay the price required of the great power it now thought it had become.

The end of World War II threatened a repetition of that same gap between ideals and actions.

The American leaders of 1945 hoped to use their power with the British and the Soviets to reshape Europe, largely predicated on their own image – that was, a democratic Europe with markets open to global trade that would provide the necessary foundation for a future of stability and peace.

Despite the fact that they knew that their goals would not always line up with those of the Soviets – or even the British and French for that matter – the American delegation did not leave Potsdam thinking that a future of conflict with the Russians was either inevitable or even likely.

Although some insiders predicted a future of increased East-West conflict – like British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and American diplomat George Keenan, who served as deputy head of the mission to Moscow – more people came out of Potsdam optimistic rather than pessimistic.