The Potsdam Conference: July 24th 1945 – The Nuclear Age Begins

Today marked one week since the Potsdam Conference got underway at Cecilienhof. After all the evening plenary sessions, daytime meetings between the foreign ministers, economic subcommittee meetings, and sessions among the Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff, it is safe to say that negotiations began to wear down the delegations.

Perhaps not so much the heads of state themselves, but the men that worked tirelessly within their respective delegations – who were the driving engine of all the business done at Potsdam – could feel the exhaustion from endless discussions that had resulted in very little progress so far. Great Britain’s chief of Imperial General Staff, Sir Alan Brooke, may have spoken for many when he wrote in his diary:

“It all feels flat and empty. I am feeling very, very worn out.”

It was certainly the complexity of the issues that put agreements on hold day after day. The Americans – and the British for the most part – favored the establishment of a peace treaty with Italy, but Stalin made hay while the sun shined out of this, arguing that if Italy should swiftly get a peace treaty and be granted admission into the United Nations, then the United States and Great Britain should be compelled to extend their enthusiasm and recognize the governments of Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania at the same time – all areas where the Red Army thoroughly occupied and countries that were being drastically put under the sphere of Soviet influence.

By this point, the Polish question had dominated much of the roundtable talks between the Big Three. Stalin had clashed bitterly with Churchill and Truman over Germany’s borders to the east and believed that Poland should get a large chunk of Germany’s eastern frontier. Since valuable territory – rich in mineral resources – was at stake and given the fact that millions of ethnic Germans lived in the region, so much debate had ensued that Stalin suggested that the Poles, who represented the provisional government in place at that time, come to Potsdam and give their viewpoints on the matters at hand.