The USA, UK and USSR have defeated nazi Germany. The Allies control Europe. In July 1945, the leaders Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin meet outside Berlin to decide what to do with it.
The Potsdam Conference was the third time the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics met—but there were some significant differences between the meetings in Tehran and Yalta, and Potsdam. Harry Truman was now President of the United States after Franklin Roosevelt’s death. And midway through the conference, Winston Churchill lost his position as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, replaced by Labour leader Clement Atlee.
The Potsdam Conference had profound impacts on the world, and set much of the geopolitical order for the rest of the century, and in many ways, to today.
Maps
Map 1: Areas captured by Western Allies ceded to the USSR
Map 2: Allied advances in Europe, December 1944 to May 1945
Map 3: The Pacific theatre, 15 July 1945
Historical photographs
