What was the nature of the agreements made at the Potsdam conference in 1945?
The three victorious allied nations after World War II were represented by Russian Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, UK Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and later Clement Attlee, and US President Harry S. Truman. They discussed the substance and procedures of the peace settlements in Europe but did not attempt to write peace treaties. That task was left to a Council of Foreign Ministers. The chief concerns of the the big three, their foreign ministers, and their staffs were the immediate administration of defeated Germany, the demarcation of the boundaries of Poland, the occupation of Austria, the definition of the Soviet Union’s role in eastern Europe, the determination of reparations, and the further prosecution of the war against Japan. The amity and good will that had largely characterized former wartime conferences was missing at Potsdam, for each nation was most concerned with its own self-interest, and Churchill particularly was suspicious of Stalin’s motives his
