![]() As a result, he did not think the West needed to fear Soviet power plays in other areas of the world. He also believed that Soviet desires to have control over Poland, recover lands lost to the Japanese in 1905, and a guaranteed access to the Dardanelles were similar to those of Russian tsars. Truman, for instance, thought the mistrust between Stalin and the West stemmed from miscommunication during the weeks between FDR’s death and the German surrender. While some officials, such as Admiral William Leahy, agreed with Churchill that one of the Soviet Union’s main goals was the spread of communism, others held a more optimistic view. The United States remained divided on how much of a threat the Soviet Union posed to European peace. Some within the British government even argued that communism was more menacing than Nazism, and prior to Potsdam, Churchill made it clear that the West would “respond in meaningful ways to Russian aggression.” As a result, the British foreign delegation advocated for policies aimed at containing both Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1919 Britain viewed France as the biggest threat to that balance, but now its leaders, especially Churchill, saw the Soviet Union as the greatest danger. ![]() “Soviet loss and suffering played a profound role in the attitudes and behaviors of the Soviets at Potsdam,” argues Neiberg, which complicated matters since the Soviets possessed a desire for revenge that the West did fully comprehend and, therefore, “badly underestimated.”īritain came to the table as they did during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, which outlined the parameters of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, with the same conviction: protecting the balance of powers in Europe. In comparison, Britain lost approximately 383,800 in battle and 67,000 civilians while the United States had about 416,800 deaths in battle and 1,700 civilian deaths. Estimates place Soviet military deaths in battle between 8.8 million and 10.7 million and civilian deaths at 14.6 million, which equated to about 13.9 percent of the country’s total prewar population. Stalin came to Potsdam with the impression that the West had depended on the Soviet Union for victory in Europe. As the historian Michael Neiberg argues in Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe, the disagreements at Potsdam also depended on how each leader viewed history as much as each leader’s strategy and visons for a postwar world. On the other hand, Stalin believed that his Western Allies did not appreciate the sacrifices made by the Red Army and Soviet citizens during the war, remarking at times that the West was committed to denying the Soviet Union appropriate compensation. On the one hand, the United States and Great Britain feared a Soviet-backed communist domination of Europe, which drove their decision making at Potsdam. Unlike the previous conferences at Tehran and Yalta, Stalin and his Western counterparts were becoming increasingly suspicious of each other’s postwar intentions. The Big Three, however, also had to make decisions regarding the stabilization of China, Axis satellite states, and orderly population transfers. Questions dealing with German reparations, the economic rehabilitation of Germany, Poland’s postwar borders, and the composition of Poland’s government proved to be the most contentious. The three most pressing issues discussed at Potsdam concerned how to handle a defeated Germany, the fate of Poland, and the final destruction of Japanese military power. ![]() Consequently, some historians have pointed to the Potsdam conference as one of several fissures between the Soviet Union and the West that set the stage for the Cold War. Even though the Allies remained committed to fighting a joint war in the Pacific, mutual distrust stemming from differing views of what a postwar world should look like led to disagreements on several key issues. Between July 17 and August 2, 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26, 1945, by Prime Minster Clement Attlee), and US President Harry Truman met at Potsdam, Germany, to negotiate the terms for the end of World War II.
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