Leseprobe

87 left Downing Street to let his long-time deputy shape the future of the United Kingdom. After the conferences in Tehran (28 November to 1 December 1943) and Yalta (4 to 11 February 1945), the Potsdam Conference (17 July to 2 August 1945) was the Big Three’s last meeting. Hence Churchill’s suggestion to use “Terminal” as code word for the confer- ence hosted on the banks of Jungfernsee in the New Garden. “Termi- nal” was, however, an appropriate attribute also in that the parties involved—as though “floundering through the corridors of chaos” 10 — were looking for clues for a new world order. The simultaneity of opposites: Great Britain in 1945 International framework conditions had begun to change. With Ger- many’s unconditional military surrender, signed at the American and Soviet headquarters in Reims and Berlin-Karlshorst on 7 and 9 May 1945, respectively, the informal temporary alliance had reached the goal which the Western Allies had set themselves in Casablanca in January 1943. The Reich’s political surrender, upon which the European Advisory Commission had agreed in July 1944, followed on 5 June 1945 by a unilateral legal act. 11 Germany was occupied as a conquered enemy state, and the main victorious powers assumed supreme authority. The achievements of the past, however, said little about the new challenge of jointly shaping a European peace order. Yesterday’s coalition partners had not been able to forge a lasting consensus—neither about the structure of future peace, nor about the future shape of the occupied country. Even those in the corridors of power were far more aware of what they wanted to prevent than of what was to become of the vanquished. In the absence of a classic cease- fire agreement, they understood the combination of unconditional surrender and the Allied takeover as a kind of preliminary peace 12 that would allow them to clarify the procedural options for a final peace settlement in the course of time. Britain’s policy was influenced, first, by the uncertainty about the general conditions—specifically, Moscow’s and Washington’s intentions, the catastrophic economic situation at home, the unpre- dictability of the upcoming elections to the Commons as well as powerful historical narratives such as “Versailles 1919” and “Munich 1938”—and, second, by its self-image. In February 1945, Churchill had returned confidently from Yalta to London. “Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler”, he told some of his advisers. “He was wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong about Stalin.” 13 A few weeks later, this was no longer the case. On the contrary, when during the last weeks of the war, Central Europe’s historic capitals fell one after the other, the question of the Churchill, Truman and Stalin at the Potsdam Conference Clement Attlee, Harry S.Truman und Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference