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

When one really thinks about it, the Potsdam Conference should have been a time of celebration. It should have been the most harmonious and most hopeful of the Big Three conferences. In short, it should have marked the start of a new era of good feeling among the Allied powers now that their common foe, Nazi Germany, had been defeated. Unfortunately, it did not turn out that way – and in practical terms, there was really no chance that it ever would. 

Indeed, spirits were high at the onset of the Conference and there were even moments where smiles and laughter were shared – particularly at the dinner parties that each delegation took turns hosting – but music, food and alcohol profoundly helped create those moments which would do a fine job at smoothing over any tension and frustration felt during the day. But as the Conference rolled on and as social gatherings became a thing of the past, one day of friction and exasperation would run into the next. 

The biggest problem was that the Americans, British and Soviets were finally forced to face their differences for the first time at Potsdam. During the previous conferences at Yalta and Tehran, which took place while they still needed each other to fight Hitler and defeat fascism, they had been able to make grand statements about the future of Germany and Europe while postponing or delegating issues on which they disagreed. 

At the very first plenary session on July 17, Truman insisted on results, “something in the bag at the end of every day,” as Churchill observed, underscoring the whole reason why he had made the long journey to Potsdam in the first place. He wanted the future of Germany settled on terms accepted as satisfactory to all three delegations as it was German aggression that  necessitated a gathering of the victorious heads of state for the second time in a matter of just two and a half decades. Both the Americans and British wanted free elections in Poland, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans and they – particularly the Americans – initially wanted the Soviet Union to join in the war against Japan as soon as possible. 

Except for the latter, unfortunately, all of this faced ambiguity, delays, and frustration, with Stalin having no desire to accept any agreement that threatened the control he already had – that is, wherever the Red Army stood. 

Stalin saw himself as the leader of the country that had made the ultimate sacrifice and suffered more domestic terror at the hands of the German Army than any other Allied nation during World War II; and therefore, he had already made up his mind well before his arrival in Germany that he would surrender nothing of any kind that harmed the Soviet Union’s post-war interests or threatened its post-war security when the bargaining and negotiating began. 

This could very well have been predicted after the very first meeting between Stalin and Truman on July 17. At that lunch, the Generalissimo told the President that he wanted to cooperate with the United States in peace as in war. 

“But in peace,” Stalin said, “…that would be more difficult…”, immediately filling the ‘Little White House’ with tension and revealing to those who had been around since the Roosevelt days that Potsdam was not going to be like the previous summits. 

Difficulty was a common strain that would become more and more palpable as the Conference wore on and even resulted in outbursts like at the end of the twelfth plenary session when Truman brought up the issue of internationalizing certain waterways. The President believed that this would help to lubricate trade and promote peace in political post-war Europe; Stalin, on the other hand, could not have disagreed more. 

Truman wanted his proposal to at least be mentioned in the final communiqué, something to which Attlee also agreed. But when Stalin expressed his disapproval, Truman pointed out that this proposal had been discussed during the Conference already and that he was only pressing this one issue.

“Marshall Stalin,” Truman began. “I have accepted a number of compromises during this conference to confirm with your views, and I make a personal request now that you yield on this point…”

“Nyet!” Stalin exclaimed. Then, with emphasis, and in English for the first time all Conference, he repeated:

“No, I say no!”

It was an embarrassing and a profoundly difficult moment that turned Truman beet red. 

“I can’t understand that man!” Truman was heard to say. He then turned to Byrnes and said, “Jimmy, do you realize we have been here seventeen whole days? Why, in seventeen days you can decide anything!”

In a letter to his mother, Truman called the Russians the most pigheaded people he had ever encountered. He now realized that they were relentless bargainers who “forever pressing for every advantage for themselves,” as he later said. As much as he might have tried and no matter how much he relied on his Midwestern optimism to help him, Truman could make little or no progress with Stalin. 

This then begs the question of whether or not Roosevelt would have done better at Potsdam, or if there would have been more of a favorable outcome in the eyes of the British if Churchill had not left halfway through the Conference. It is hard to say, but it is also a question that Truman must have asked himself several times during and after the summit. Truman knew that he was inexperienced and ignorant when it came to matters of foreign policy. Not ignorant in the sense of being unintelligent – Truman was very intelligent – but ignorant in the sense of not knowing what had really gone on in the previous meetings with Stalin and Churchill, except for what he had read in the minutes from previous conferences and what the likes of William Leahy or Jimmy Byrnes – people who had been in the executive circle for quite some time – had told him. Roosevelt never prepped Truman for the presidency, he never took him under his wing, and never shared anything of significance or importance with him during the eighty-two days that Truman served as his vice president. So Truman knew that he had a whale of a job to do going into Potsdam and everyone else around him knew it too. 

But even those who had been in the Roosevelt circle were not so sure if Truman’s predecessor would have done any better getting through to Stalin at Potsdam. Interpreter Chip Bohlen, interestingly, thought that Roosevelt would have been less successful, since, with his personal interest in earlier agreements with Stalin, would have acted more angrily than Truman when faced with Stalin’s intransigence. Along with Bohlen, and others like the United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman, and others who were experienced in dealing with the Russians, they thought that Truman had actually done himself well. 

“He was never defeated or made to look foolish or uninformed in debate,” Bohlen would write.

And since Stalin and Molotov never attempted any cunning tricks and given the fact that they mostly only held stubbornly to their own line, Truman’s inexperience in diplomacy did not really matter in the end. 

Truman left no doubt in his diary that he understood the reality of the Stalin regime when the Potsdam Conference was over. 

“It was a police government pure and simple. A few top hands just take clubs, pistols and concentration camps and rule the people on the lower levels.” 

Later, Truman would tell his good friend and future Secretary of the Treasury, John Snyder, about a bone-chilling exchange he had with Stalin about the Katyn Forest Massacre of 1940.

When Truman asked what had happened to the Polish officers, Stalin answered coldly, “They went away.”

Despite all the stress, frustration, rancor and serious exhaustion that came from dealing with Stalin and the Soviets, according to Truman’s biographer, David McCullough, “Still-still-Truman liked him.” 

Truman would admit years later that he had been naive at Potsdam. He called himself “an innocent idealist” and referred to Stalin as the “unconscionable Russian Dictator.” Yet even then he added: 

“And I liked the little son-of-a-bitch.”

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