The breakdown of the Grand Alliance at Potsdam

Who were the members of the Grand Alliance?

• Harry Truman (Roosevelt’s vice president)

• Clement Attlee (Churchill had lost the General Election in Britain)

• Joseph Stalin

What happened the day before the Potsdam Conference?

The first successful detonation of the USA’s atomic bomb had taken place

• Truman hoped to provide him with the diplomatic leverage he needed to ensure Stalin stayed loyal to the agreements at Yalta

How was Potsdam characterised?

Truman’s abrasive diplomacy and the determination of Stalin and Foreign Minister Molotov not to be intimidated by the USA’s nuclear monopoly

Was there agreements made during The Potsdam Conference?

Resulted in some agreement

but, significantly, there was no long-term blueprint laid out for either the future of Germany or the parameters of international relations in the new world order

What was agreed at the Potsdam Conference?

• Germany to be completed disarmed and demilitarised

• de-Nazification to be carried out

• Decentralisation of the political system was to be untaken

• Freedom of speech and a free press were to be restored

• Germany was to become a single economic unit with common policies on industry and finance

• USSR was to receive reparations from its own zones and an additional 25% from the Western zones

What did The Potsdam Conference not reinforce?

The notion of international cooperation aimed at reconstructing a long-term future for post-war Europe

• did nothing to lay the foundations of a viable and non-confrontational relationship between communist East and capitalist West

What did The Potsdam Conference fail to address?

Address the growing suspicion and uncertainty that had developed between the USA and the Soviet Union