Midway through the seventeen-day meeting, nearly everyone was stunned when Winston Churchill - Britain’s war leader - was voted out of office.
Clement Atlee, the new prime minister, took over
negotiations on behalf of the United Kingdom while Churchill went into seclusion for months. One can readily understand if the chemistry between the Allied leaders had changed.
Attending his first war conference as leader of the United States, Harry Truman had something else that was new in his life. The day before Potsdam discussions began, the American government had
successfully tested a new weapon: the atomic bomb.
Joseph Stalin, the one leader who spoke for his country at every Allied conference, also harbored
a secret. He never planned to remove his troops from the central-and-eastern-European countries they had liberated. (Scroll down halfway and click on “Start” to see, and hear, the animated summary.) In some of those lands, like Bulgaria, forced labor camps already existed.
Historians trace
seeds of the Cold War to the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences. To learn why, let’s step back in time to examine decisions made during the summer of 1945. We’ll begin our journey
in Berlin, the
bombed-out German
capital soon to become a city divided unto itself.