Leseprobe

13 Potsdam was the last of the three Allied war conferences, and although it took place after the surrender of the German Reich and was to decide the fate of many people, especially in Europe and Asia, the previous meetings of the Big Three in Tehran and Yalta are considered more important and are much better known than the Potsdam Conference. Information on the final encounter between Truman, Stalin and Churchill (later replaced by Attlee as British Prime Minister) as found in films, newspaper articles, photos and radio reports, is usually not presented under the keywords “Potsdam Conference” or “Potsdamer Konferenz” but under “Berlin Confer- ence” and “Konferenz von Berlin”. Berlin, the former capital of the Reich, which had been conquered by the Red Army after fierce fight- ing with many casualties, was not only more famous than tranquil Potsdam, located a few miles away from its gates and surrounded by water. Berlin is also given as the place of the “protocol” terminating the conference—and signed by the three heads of government on 2 August 1945 at 12:30 a.m. but dated 1 August. The location of Potsdam and Cecilienhof Palace was the reason why the city near Berlin was chosen for the meeting of the three Allied heads of state. On one of the last days of the war, on 14 April 1945, it had suffered an air raid by 488 British bombers, which resulted in severe destruction of the old city. The New Garden and Cecilienhof Palace, however, had been spared major damage. The palace and villas in nearby Babelsberg offered enough space both for the comfortable accommodation of the Big Three and their delegations as well as the conference they convened for. The most important representatives were, on the Soviet side, the People’s Commissioner for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav M. Molotov, his deputy Ivan Maisky, Admiral of the Fleet Nikolai G. Kuznetsov, Chief of Staff of the Red Army General Aleksei I. Antonov, and Andrei A. Gromyko, Soviet Ambassador to the USA; on the American side, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff of the US Army George C. Marshall, Averell Harriman, American Ambassador to the USSR, and General of the Air Force Henry H. Arnold. On the British side, they included Foreign Secretaries Anthony Eden and Ernest Bevin, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the British Imperial General Staff and Marshal of the Royal Air Force, and Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. The conference began at 5 p.m. on 17 July 1945 in the resi- dence hall of Cecilienhof Palace and ended there on 2 August 1945 at 12:30 a.m. when Truman, Stalin and Attlee signed the “Protocol of the Proceedings of the Berlin Conference”, which shortly there­ after found its way into the common usage as “Potsdam Agree- ment”—although it was neither an agreement nor a contract. Subse- quent to the conference, the three Allies published their “Report on the Tripartite Conference of Berlin”, an abbreviated summary of the “Protocol”, which could be purchased for 30 pfennigs. Over the sixteen days of the conference, the three heads of state convened for ← The ruins of the Postdam City Palace with a view of St Nicholas Church Jürgen Luh