Retro Raunch Revisit

JUL 17, 1945: In WWII's last major gathering of the 3 main allied leaders, Winston Churchill joined by Joseph Stalin & Harry Truman all meet at a Conference in the German city of Potsdam (changed from the first-proposed location of Berlin) to decide the future of the recently defeated Nazi nation. The 2 previous Conferences of Tehran in Nov/Dec 1943 and Yalta in Feb 1945 had been military strategy gatherings and discussions for Europe's reorganization. [The other summits had been the Aug 1941 Atlantic Charter, Jan 1943 Casablanca, Aug 1943 First Quebec, Nov 1943 First Cairo, Dec 1943 Second Cairo and Sept 1944 Second Quebec. Other locations were Moscow, Washington, Bermuda and Malta]. Potsdam was in the Soviet-controlled sector of Germany who had unconditionally surrendered in May 1945. In a purpose to avoid the crucial mistakes of the 1919 Paris Conference, the big 3 (Britain, Russia & the USA) were set upon planning postwar peace and the governing of Germany to be divided into 4 occupation zones with the 4th power being France -- who having been excluded from the Conference had bitterly refused to accept any of its obligations to abide by agreements and reseverved the right to block any policy & institutional proposals that could lead to a future unified Germany. The original participants had changed as Truman had become US President after the death of Franklin Roosevelt back in Apr, and while during the talks, Churchill was defeated in a British general election as Prime Minster that saw his Conservatives (mostly in a coalition government for the war's duration) ousted and him being replaced by Labour's Clement Attlee. During Potsdam that also involved the allied foreign ministers, Truman was secretly informed of the Trinity atomic bomb test as part of the Manhattan Project's successful development. Always suspicious of Stalin, he still hinted to him about the creation & use of a new weapon against Japan but the Russian leader had already learned of the bomb through espionage & intelligence since 1941. Other items on the agenda included Poland and the Eastern Bloc satellite states remaining in a Communist sphere, the Baltic States remaining reincorporated in the USSR, Vietnam to be partitioned, the Russians to launch an invasion on Japanese-held areas, and co-operation with China's Chiang Kai-shek to outline Japan's surrender in Asia. From ensuing various declarations & councils, German demilitarization & disarmament was to be followed by a program of denazification with all fascist laws abolished & outlawed; war criminals to be put on trial that resulted in the Nuremberg proceedings from Nov 1945 to Oct 1946; Austria to also be divided into 4 occupation zones with the capitals of Berlin & Vienna similarly divided into 4 sectors; all former German annexations to be reversed; German populations in conquered countries subject to orderly & humane expulsion; the German judicial, educational & political system to adopt democratic ideals; war reparations to be received from the occupation zones, and German industrial war potential to be destroyed with aircraft factories & shipyards dismantled. Within 18 months of Potsadm, allied relations with the Soviets had soured considerably, and the diplomatic deterioration led directly to the emergence of the Cold War.