The cold war conference's

The Tehran Conference, 1943

Given that the war had been on-going since 1939 it’s interesting that the leaders, known as the Big Three, didn’t actually meet until the Conference in Tehran, Persia in November 1943.

Objectives:

To discuss the group’s planned invasion of Nazi occupied France. Stalin, the leader of the USSR, was keen to see this happen, as at this point the Soviet Red Army was the only army fighting the Nazis on land.

Outcomes:

• the USA and Britain would invade France by May 1944

• the USSR would join the USA and Britain in the war against Japan, once Nazi Germany was defeated

The Yalta Conference, 1945

In February 1945, the Big Three – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin - met again at Yalta in the Crimea region of the USSR.

Objectives:

With an Allied victory looking likely, the aim of the Yalta Conference was to decide what to do with Germany once it had been defeated. In many ways the Yalta Conference set the scene for the rest of the Cold War in Europe.

Outcomes:

1. Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation with the USSR, Britain, France and the USA each controlling a zone. France had been liberated from Nazi Germany and was included at the conference partly due to pressure from the French leader, General de Gaulle, but also because Britain wanted a European ally with whom it could share the cost of the post-war reconstruction of Germany.

2. The German capital, Berlin, was about 100 miles inside the Soviet zone and it, too, was to be divided into four zones, each controlled by one of the Allied powers. Berlin would become a continuing source of tension once the Cold War began in earnest.

3. All countries freed from Nazi control were to be guaranteed the right to hold free, democratic elections to choose their own governments. This commitment was released as an official joint statement, the Declaration on Liberated Europe. However, Stalin was offered a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe where communist ideals would dominate.

4. Again, Stalin committed to joining the war against Japan, once Germany had been defeated. This was important to the Americans who were suffering heavy losses in the Pacific, despite the fact they were gradually pushing back the Japanese.

5. All the leaders made a commitment to pursue, and put on trial, suspected Nazi war criminals.

6. The Allies agreed to the setting up of the United Nations, an organisation dedicated to international cooperation and the prevention of war.

The Potsdam Conference, 1945

The next meeting of the Big Three took place in July 1945 at Potsdam, just outside Berlin.

Objectives:

The main objective of the Potsdam Conference was to finalise a post-war settlement and put into action all the things agreed at Yalta. While the meeting at Yalta had been reasonably friendly, the Potsdam Conference was fraught with disagreements, which were the result of some significant changes that had taken place since the Yalta Conference.

1. A new US President:

The US President, Franklin D Roosevelt, had died and been replaced by his Vice-President, Harry S Truman. While Roosevelt had been willing to work with Stalin, largely because he needed the USSR to join the war against Japan, Truman made little secret of his dislike for communism and for Stalin personally. Truman remarked that he was tired of babying the Soviets and that the only language Stalin understood was how many army divisions do you have?

2. Nuclear threat:

The first detonation of a nuclear weapon conducted as part of the Manhattan Project.

Just before the Conference began, on 16 July 1945, the USA had successfully exploded an atomic bomb at their test site in the New Mexico desert. When first told about the success of the experiment, Truman is said to have remarked: if it works... I’ll sure have a hammer on those boys. At Potsdam, Truman chose to inform Stalin that the US possessed a new weapon of unusual destructive force. Although Stalin already knew details about the Manhattan Project through his spy networks, he was able to complain at this treatment and the fact that there were secrets between supposed Allies.

3. Expansion of communism:

Despite agreeing at Yalta that free elections would be held in Eastern Europe after the defeat of Nazi Germany, there was little evidence at Potsdam that Stalin intended to allow them. In fact the Red Army was in control of Poland and the USSR was in the process of setting up a communist government.

Focus on Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the USA (1945-53)

• Truman had automatically succeeded to the Presidency as he was Vice President when Franklin D Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945, just weeks before the end of World War Two.

• Truman had served in France during the last five months of World War One and had been a successful officer.

• Truman was a Baptist and, although he did not often speak of religion, this guided his morality and ethics.

• As a politician in the inter-war period, Truman had been a committed ‘Wilsonian’ and had admired Woodrow Wilson’s hopes for American intervention in Europe.

• During the early 1940s, Truman had led committees on fraud and corruption within the military and had emerged a respected political figure.

• However, Truman had not been particularly close to Roosevelt and had even been unaware of the Manhattan Project (the scheme developing the USA’s nuclear weapons).

• Truman remained adamant that choosing to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 had ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.

Since the 1960s, it has been widely accepted that Truman’s attitude to communism was in part responsible for how the Cold War proceeded at the end of 1945. These views have since been challenged but certainly, Truman found it very difficult to get along with Stalin in the way Roosevelt had.

Outcome:

Little real progress was made at Potsdam beyond an agreement to put into action the commitments made at Yalta.

The main points of the three Conferences are summarised in the table below: