Unit 4.10 Ideological Differences at the End of World War II

4.10  Ideological Differences at the end of World War II

Big Three at Potsdam Conference;
Winston Churchill (Great Britain), Franklin Roosevelt (U.S.A), Joseph Stalin (U.S.S.R.)

 In 1945, as it became apparent that the end of World War II was near and an Allied victory was assured, power politics became very important at the final meeting of the Big Three: the United States, Britain, and USSR. To further understand the power politics, consider the perspective of each of the nations attending the final two wartime conferences, the Yalta Conference and the Potsdam Conference.

The Yalta Conference

The Big Three (Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt) met for the last time at Yalta in the Crimea (southwestern part of the Soviet Union by the Black Sea) in February 1945. (The next time the Big Three powers met, Churchill and Roosevelt had been replaced.) To understand the significance of this meeting, note the following:

• Soviet troops were only forty miles from Germany's capital, Berlin. British and American troops were not even in Germany yet. Because the Soviet Red Army occupied much of eastern Europe, Britain and the US could do little about Stalin's claims to eastern Europe.

• Britain and especially the U.S. were preoccupied with the war against Japan in the Pacific, which the Soviets had not been involved with.

These two points are essential to remember when you consider the Yalta Agreement.

The main terms of the Yalta agreement were as follows:

• Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation: American, British, French, and Soviet.

• The Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany.

• In exchange for the Soviet Union's entrance into the war against Japan, it would receive territorial concessions in the far east: the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands (just north of Japan), certain rights in Manchuria (China), and other territorial privileges in the Far East.

• In Europe, Poland's boundaries would be altered at Stalin's request. Poland's eastern boundary with the USSR would be given to the USSR as part of Stalin's buffer zone against the west.

• Poland would be left to choose freely its own government.

The Potsdam Conference

The Potsdam meeting in July 1945 was the last WWII wartime conference, and it introduced two new people. Stalin was joined by Clement Atlee, the new British prime minister, and Harry S. Truman, the new U.S. president. By now the war in Europe was over; Nazi Germany had been defeated. The U.S. was preparing for an invasion of Japan. Britain, similar to the remainder of Europe, was crippled by the war. Soviet troops still occupied much of eastern Europe. The one U.S. advantage was that it had developed a successful atomic bomb that the Americans were planning to use against Japan.

Mistrust had developed between Stalin, a communist totalitarian dictator, and the Western capitalist democracies. Already Stalin was exerting his power and influence in eastern Europe. The British or the Americans seemed unable to do anything about Stalin's expansionism. The Potsdam Conference, however, did make some formal agreements, although a number of issues were left unresolved. These issues were to be settled at a future meeting, one that never happened.

The Potsdam settlements included the following:

• Germany was to pay reparations for war damages.

• Germany was to be de-nazified; all aspects of Hitler's fascism were to be removed.

• Nazis accused of war crimes would be brought to trial and punished.

• Final boundaries for the Allied occupation zones of Germany were decided.

• Poland's borders would be re-drawn.

• German military and its arms industry would be dismantled.

• Now that Germany had been defeated, the Soviet Union would join in the war against Japan.