Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency Potsdam Conference 75th Anniversary 20240712

Conference and theyre always occasions for looking back and drawing attention and theres another reason to look back at potsdam as we are reentering a world of Great Power Competition and reentering a world where geopolitics seems to have come back to the fore of international thinking and International Relations thinking. So it is well worth us coming back to this subject. So im especially glad to have a chance to talk to you about it. I wish it was in person again in kansas city. I wish that we weraible to do this face to face, but we will do the very best that we can. The key thing here that i want to return to throughout this presentation is shown by this photograph here of Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and smiling and shaking hands and the point i want to reiterate here is that these three men and most of the advisers around them did not believe that what they were doing at potsdam was laying the seeds of a cold war. We know from the scholarship of the 1960s, 70s and beyond, a lot of the historians read potsdam backward and that is to say they read it at the start of the cold war. These three men came to potsdam not to have a cold war among them, but to celebrate the end of the war with germany and figure out what the postworld war would look like and plan the victory over japan in theater. This photograph very much explains the spirits of pot ois dam which was joyful and celebratory in the way they were looking at the postwar world. Although they had suspicions of one another and although their countries did not share all interests, very few people left potsdam believing that relations would be difficult Going Forward. That illusion would get shattered quickly, i would argue within weeks or months, but the mood at the conference itself is very different. Mostly, what theyre trying to do and this is the second theme i want to talk about in tonights lecture. Most of what theyre trying to do is avoid that they believe had been the mistakes of their predecessors and they wanted to avoid the mistakes that the treaty of versailles had committed and ill talk about what those were. What they want to do is leave europe in a Better Foundation and leave it in a better position than Woodrow Wilson did and the generation of 1919 had done in paris. They did not know the future, of course, but they did know the past and the another theme i was interested in in shaping this book and in thinking of writing this book is these men of 1945 and they were all men, looked back at 1919 and what they saw and why it mattered to them. My favorite example of this is what happened to harry truman in 1919, the very day the treaty of versailles was signed in the palace west of paris. Harry truman was not thinking about International Relations very much because its the day that he got married and this is a reminder, too, that these leaders are people. I wrote in the book and i think i would say to this that while one could imagine Joseph Stalin in 1919 or Winston Churchill in 1919, believing one day they might head their countrys governments is hard to believe that this guy thought on june 28, 1919 that he would one day lead the government of the United States and yet there he would be down the road impeach at the moment of the treaty of versailles the world is in the same flux in nan 45. There is the same confusion and the same power competition and the same question whether an ashl alliance that won the war can function in peace. So all of these things are coming back and as ill cover in this lecture i would argue that with one major, big exception of the atomic bomb, all of the issues that they discussed at potsdam would have been quite familiar to people that attended the peace conference in 1919. The fundamental issues had not changed and this is something that they were all aware of, and the other thing i want to stress before we go further is with the exception of harry truman, many of the senior people who attended the potsdam conference had actually been at the versailles peace treaty or had been there for the paris peace conference. They include the american secretary of state, james burns who may well have been the person who convinced Woodrow Wilson to go to paris in person. They include churchill who was there and quite disappointed with the treaty the great powers produced. They include john maynard kings who was at both potsdam and at the paris peace conference. So to these people the paris peace conference does not something that they read about in history books or something that they had a vague memory of. These were fundamental shaping events in their own lives and their own political careers and they believe that the reason they were here fighting a Second World War, closing a Second World War is because of the mistakes made at the end of the first. All of them understood this when it came to potsdam in 1945, the very first thing harry truman said in his role as president of the United States at the conference was awarded to everyone seated around the table that i will show you in just a minute not to repeat the mistakes of 1919 before going to potsdam, Joseph Stalin said the same thing to the american representative Joseph Davies that the one thing they had to do was make sure they didnt make the same mistakes. So what mistakes did they make . This is again, one of those things that to me was very interesting because virtually everybody who came to potsdam had their own view of what they thought had gone so badly wrong a generation earlier. To the american secretary of state the big mistake had been imposing reparations on germany, that germany proved unable to pay that disrupted the european economy and that forced the United States in james burns view to put money into the european system so others would benefit in the 1920s. There was also the argument that shaped the borders. This was a map of europe in 1919 after the paris peace conference that putting a map like this together had also been a mistake and trying to draw lines had produced states that were economically unable to contribute to the overall security of the continent and in some cases creating countries like yugoslavia and poland that were too multiethnic to support reasonable politics Going Forward. A third argument and this is a soviet one is the big ms. Taistn 1919 was to take into account was the view of people who lived on this map. Stalin was fond of saying that states were not virtuous simply because they were small or new. In his view, the great powers simply had to take control of this conference and not allow the voices of people from all over the world to play a role. Unlike the paris peace conference which involves people from literally every corner of the globe, in potsdam the faces would be 95 soviet, british or american. As i mentioned earlier all of these issues that theyre dealing with in 1919 come up again in 1945. What to do with germany. Whether the great powers should reconstitute germany or heavy reparations against germany that germany becomes economically barren in effect at the end of the war. How to handle the ethnic map of europe. What role should the United States play and what role should multinational organizations play . All of these questions come up in 1919 and they come up again in 1945 and i would argue that in many cases in many 45 they will take almost a 180degree opposite tact to the one that they took in 1919. Another thing is the condition of germany itself. These are two photographs taken from roughly the same angle and the picture on the right that building that is on the far left of the righthand picture is the new United States embassy just outside the Brandenburg Gate on the side that had been east berlin and the kind of canopylooking thing in the background there is potsdam place. The picture on the left is taken at about the same place in 1945. So one clear difference since the germany of 1945 is in the 1919 case, german nationalists could argue that they had not lost the First World War, and they had been undercut at home and that the army returned as one german politician said undefeated in the field. Its impossible to make that argument in 1945 for the reasons that you can see here. This is done on purpose. The soviets wanted the germans especially the berliners to feel the pain of this war. The devastation that is created here in berlin is so intense that there were Many Americans and british observers who came to potsdam who believed that it could never be rebuilt and it might be better to bulldoze the city and move the german capital some place else. There were people including Henry Morganthau who wanted almost exactly that future with germany. He wanted to deindustrialize it and he wanted to take so much money out of it that he could not rebuild its economy and he wanted it to turn into the federal system and very little power would be in the central government. The socalled morguenthau plan. There were questions being deasd in berlin 1945, could they live better than the russians and the poles and how could they live better than the jews who survived the concentration camps with nowhere to go . What do the people of 1945 think caused this war . Is it something that is fundamentally wrong with the germans themselves . If it is, then a long occupation is going to be necessary. Is it simply the bad legacy of versailles and the Great Depression which is what john maynard believes. Was the problem, a problem of the balance of power in europe . Did it simply get to the point where no one could contain or encircle germany . It comes with a different understanding for what you might want to fix Going Forward in 1945. When youre going have to do, of course, is make clear to everybody that this time germany is completely and utterly defeated and they would do this at potsdam by ensuring that there are no german faces whatsoever. Potsdam is emptied by german before the Conference Begins as another symbol that the german power is over and frederick the great is also there and the palace which is where bill helm ii signed the order to take germany to war in 1945 is also in potsdam. So to the allies potsdam has this symbolism and it is the place where german militarism began and it is their place where the First World War began and it is the place where the Second World War in europe will come to an end, and i cant prove it, but i think the russians arrived at the conference late in order to make sure that the americans and british saw berlin for themselves. President wilson in 1919 had famously not toured the battlefields because he did not, as he put it for his heart to grow hard. What stalin wanted was to see berlin for themselves as they could, and again, this produces different reactions depending upon ones definition of history. Should the allies put money into germany to rebuild this devastation or should they leave germany as one soviet observer put it at the margin of subsistence for a significant period of time . This is downtown berlin. This is potsdam, the lovely, elegant suburb in which this conference is going to happen. Potsdam has this old tradition of being the home of the aristocracy. It also is the place yet jwhere german Film Industry had their headquarters. Those who watched the series babylon berlin, the second part takes place in pot osdam and th great movie studios posted the parties that the attendees went to here in 1945. It has an image of old certante german power. For that reason potsdam is very important. The United States did try to get this conference in alaska or washington, d. C. Because president roosevelt had to make the arduous trip to yalta, where the red army could guarantee security. The palace was built in the middle of world war 1 which i find incredible. For the crown prince, they were to move into it at the end of the First World War. Each while germany is fighting the First World War, and trying to win this war, it builds this massive palace to the crown prince. This building will become the center, really of the conference. Its relatively modern. It has electricity in every room and it has modern kitchens and it has enough space that the british, american and soviet delegations can all set up offices which ill show you here in just a bit. When the great powers came to the conference, they saw what you see here. Its still there. That gigantic red star of geraniums that the soviets planted to greet the great powers as they showed up. Inside potsdam, the soviets divided those two areas into three sectors and american, soviet and british sector to house the great vips that had come. This is the back of the palace that looks leak a lovely lake and no expense was spared to make this conference the best it would be and they werent extensive, but the papers were very fun and joan bright who was the protocol director and all of the effort that she went to to make sure that this conference went just right on the british side and the soviets brought in the heads of their major hotels, as well to mack sure the hospitality was there. Absolutely no expense there. Mill being was brougmilk was br in by the united kingdom. When truman didnt like the sheet music in the palace, he had the air force bomber fly to paris and bring them back sheet music opini music. Whatever they wanted they could have. They were literally the conquerors and no german faces to be seen anywhere in potsdam. This is the room stalin used as his office for most soviet leaders and the soviets are the hardest group to read here both because many of their ar kwiefs are not open or, of course, even if they are not open theyre in russia, but from what we can tell from the primary sources and there are quite a few contemporary primary sources, the fundamental problem that they saw in the treaty of versailles that resulted was the failure to build states on the border of russia that could act as buffers. This time what the soviets want are stable, reliable countries that will serve as a buff are not just between the soviet union and germany, but the soviet union that is still seen as the potential Security Threat in the post world war. They wanted to take as much money and as much Industrial Assets as they could and they turned entire infantry divisions, 20,000 men strong and give them the mission of taking everything that they can get their hands on and they did there in pot ois dam itself at the end of the conference and they took books and light fixtures and everything from the nearby houses and villas and they threw into the lake that was behind the palace and anything they didnt want they would fill potholes with and the germans wouldnt get it at the end of the war. They are most concerned with making sure another invasion does not happen. This is the office from the study that harry truman used and truman is a sympathetic figure to me because he became president of the United States in 1945, despite the bad health that president roosevelt was in truman was kept almost completely in the dark about what american policy is and when he became president he asked to see the transcripts of the yalta conference so that he could figure out what the United States had agreed to do at yalta only to find that those transcript apparently didnt exist so truman is having to figure out what america agreed to at yalta by talking to people who were there and getting contradictory information and contradictory reports. Truman as a senator had found a gap in the u. S. Defense departments budget that he dhal ef challenged the u. S. Army on and stenson told him that he understood that truman was a senator, but he could not share what that was for. Its only after truman became president that truman explained what the Manhattan Project was. So one thing that harry truman is certainly interested in is trying to get a handle on what his new responsibilities are. Hes interested in what we would call a reis the of relations from the soviet union. Truman thinks if he can look the soviet leaders in the eyes he can cut a deal with them. He wants help with defeating japan. He wants to be sure that the soviet union will participate fully in the United Nations and some of the other organizations that the United States is trying to build and he wants to create a balanced europe which means the United States does not need to send an army back to europe for a third world war. Its for this reason that truman tried to delay the potsdam conference for as long as he could, both to give himself time to get up to speed on these issues and to give scientists in new mexico more time to work on the Manhattan Project. The weakest of the three great powers is undoubtedly the british and i love this photograph because it is taken at a rather silly moment when they lay out three chairs as you see here for the test to take pictures. Churchill was supposed to have the middle chair. When you see the chair occupied in the left he did so grudgingly and he began to move his chair closer and closer and closer to trumans. What he wanted to send was a message. This isnt the only time he did this, that there is an angloamerican unity that the United States on their page so he started to close his chair closer and closer to the center. Churchill was aware that americas interest and britains interest were beginning to diverge. Britain would have to spend resources to rebuild its empire, something the United States under both roosevelt and truman had said they were not interested in doing. Truman wants to be sure that the United States will, in fact, commit to europe at all. At potsdam he says repeatedly he does not want to have a longterm permanent present in europe and he wants to help them get back on their feet and he wants to go back to our side of the atlantic ocean. Its also, of course, the case that truman knows that there is a war still to be won with japan and that American Military force will have to be diverted. So as i mentioned in the book it was stalin that decides where this conference will be and the only thing that churchill is able to decide is the code name of the conference which he decides will be codenamed terminal. It is also true that churchill did everything he could to get truman to come to london first before potsdam and trum an refused. He said he would not allow it to be the angloamerican discussion. He was trying to as his foreign minister said, win on the power of his personality and that will be difficult for a country that will come out of the war victorious, but knows its going to come out of the war in a relatively poor position. This is a picture i also wanted to show just because of the smiling faces. Everybody, but chip bowlin there in the dead center. The two men on the right are molotov, the soviet foreign minister and the new secretary of state. This is genuine delight. They are enjoying that they defeated nazi germany and this hugging and kissing may not last forever, but at least at this moment in potsdam they see themselves as hunkering heroes all together and the three great powers decided they will be the only people who will be here. France does not get an invitation. Harry truman was furious with Charles De Gaulle for the rude treatment during the war and truman told james burns aide if i want to see de gaulle, i will send for him just as i would the head of any minor power which is a great line. Poll understa poland is not invited to the conference either to present their various position. So it is the great powers who are going to run this and make these decisions. This is the table in the main Conference Room inside the palace. It is intentionally kept small to limit the number of people who can attend. Only the people who are sitting at the table are allowed really to have a voice. The people that you see in the back are there to be advisers. Theyre there to be translators and several of them who left memoirs said they spent an awful lot of time cleaning those ashtrays. You can see the room is red. That is also by design and you can see that theyre starting to think about what they want when push comes to shove in setting the future of europe. The treaty of versailles analogy is not the only thing they talk about. Some of the american hard liners and british hardliners talk about the munich analogy. They need to be careful that what they do with the soviets are sufficiently strong so that the soviets dont take advantage of the generosity of the west. They dont want to be in a position where the soviets come out of this conference too strong. Ill talk about that. Anybody who talked about that could use the word appease am, a loaded word in 1945, a word that remains quite loaded. The big question for the United States is what do you think the soviet union wants . What are they . What can we expect them to do . Before becoming president of the United States, truman noted he had never even met a russian. The first russian that he meets is molotov, the soviet foreign minister whose nickname is stone ass among the american diplomatic corps because of his ability to sit there, silently and with no emotion on his face at all when he didnt want to reveal anything that he was thinking. He must have been a very, very difficult person to play poker against, a game that truman was very, very good at. Trum an assembles the russia team and finds theres very little agreement among his senior soviet advisers and you can see the three most important are there. Admiral harriman, the ambassador to the soviet union. Hes the hardliner of the four. There are at least three ways of thinking about what the soviet union will do in the postwar period. The soft liners that include joseph daveys is what the soviets really want is no different from what the czar wanted in 1914. That is to say the problem is not idea logical. The problem is just like the czar, what stalin will want is security is his western frontier and access through the straits in the south. To renegotiate something called the convention of 1936 to allow soviet ships to pass through the straits un unblocked unhindered is the word i wanted. Sorry. So by this logic, you dont need to think about an ideological conflict with the soviet union and you dont need to worry about giving the soviet union an opening into places where they are unlikely to go. The second way of thinking largely comes from chip bowlin and admiral harriman who argues this is something different, that what youre seeing in the soviet union is not like the czars system because this truly is a different ideology, that the soviets will not feel safe until the moment when they think that most of the world agrees with them ideologically or until they fully control them. So in bowlins mind the United States has to be prepared to deal with soviet expansion. It has to be prepared to test the limits of what the west is willing to do. The third one, and i have to say, still when i read george canons writings all these years later i am amazed by both his ability to look backwards and to look forwards. Canon wrote perceptively to truman that the problem with the soviet system is while the United States and the british will come out of the Second World War feeling triumphant, they will come out despite being the victors of the war. Theyll come out with it increased pt canon argued that the problem that it had is thatlet system fundamentally doesnt work in peacetime, that it wasnt working in the 1930s and once Economic Conditions of post world war came back the Economic Conditions of the soviet union wont work in the 1950s and 60s either. Because the soviets came out of the Second World War so paranoid and they would have the balance of military power in their hands any military attempt by the United States and Great Britain it force the russians into doing something they dont want to do will be met with force. So if the United States wants to try to push the soviets around in europe they have to expect that its going to have to be done with full military force in place and that the United States cant do. So canons argument and it later becomes known as the containment doctrine. His argument is that what the United States should do is try to limit soviet unfluence as much as the United States can in places where it can do so relatively cheap, contain the soviet union and allow the internal contradictions for the soviet union to work against it. Wait for themselves to realize that it isnt workable and it could take decades to achieve. What hes arguing to truman is patience. Build up the west, in effect, hes arguing for creating a bipolar world and one pole led by the United States and one pole led by the soviet union and he wants to build up the democratic systems of western europe and the postworld war and later to build up the economies of the wrest, as wees and if that means shutting them out of the system thats an outcome perfectly acceptable to kennen. The system is how the soviet comes to pot ois dsdam on polan. What will they want to do with poland . If they push further to the west and if they insist on shutting the democratic polish government in exile a group called the london poles, if they insist on excluding the london poles then those would be indications that the soviets are will position play hard ball. If the soviets are willing to open up poland to free and Fair Elections thats a different case. The difference that kennen asks sherman is if they dont do what they want them to do, what choice does the United States really have on poland. In other words, if poland is a reason for britain and france to go to war in 1939, is there a reason for the United States to go to war in 1945. All four of the men in this photograph had the same answer. No, it is not. One more thing about potsdam that to me was endlessly fascinating and i can talk about itmore in the question and answer if anybody is interested. Im always interested in this question. I was trained as a social historian not to think that individuals individuals are terribly important to the overall course of history and it is larger structures that are more important than individual bits of contingency most of the time. Potsdam offers a fascinating insight here. Truman became president upon fdrs death in april. He brings a new National Security team in with him including a new secretary with james burns and in the middle of the potsdam conference, since the mid 1930s and to everyones tremendous shock, the Labor Party Led by this man clement atly on the left thoroughly defeats. The british go back to london to monitor the route are results of the election and famously in number 10 downing street they take down the battle maps of western europe and they put up the electoral maps to figure out how things are going and atly wins. So the question we really have here is how much do the policies change when atly and truman replace fdr and Winston Churchill . And in my view and in the view of People Living at the time, the answer is really not very much. Anthony eaton who was replaced by the Prime Minister was very attentive to this. Eaton was very worried because devin, the foreign minister had very little experience in Foreign Affairs and eaton was very concerned that theyll flub this up and theyll mess up britains position and at the end he writes in his diary in a very long, detailed and thoughtful explanation that the tone might have been a little bit different, but atly and b bevins had done the same thing because they were in the strategic position of not having any money. The United States will do something different. Truman and roosevelt had already planned on this. Unlike Woodrow Wilson in 1919 who went in trying to win with the power of ideas, truman wanted to come in with a burch of really good cards in his hand. One of them is having the unite nations charter already signed before truman went to pot ois dam. That occurs in late june 1945 and with the United States senate having approved american membership so there will be no fight over the league of nations like there was in 1919. The difference, of course, is that this time the United States would have won five Security Council vetoes so that the u. N. , unlike the league of nations can never do harm to the United States because it it has the u. N. Security council veto. The United States also was careful to make sure that the conference was held in San Francisco and the International Headquarters would be built on the east side of new york city. It created monetary institutions and this is john maynard haines in the middle that are known as the brenton woods agreement and they include the world bank and include currency set by the american dollar so Exchange Rates are fixed and they include really the United States taking control of the Global Economy and moving it from london to new york. John maynard haines in the middle and the most famous economist of his age called this system a swindle. That is he knew that the United States was using its military power and its diplomatic power to undercut britains economic power and he was perfectly aware that britain had no choice. Britain could not possibly police the world while remaining in debt to the other half. Officials at brenton woods said it was the only thing worse than losing the war. Under the system, all of the British Empire, india, singapore, all of it would have to be open to the United States on fair and equal trade terms which in effect meant the end of the British Empire at some point. The irony here is that britain being the least powerful of the big three ended up making similar arguments when france made them in 1919. In effect we know were out of money and we know we dont have the military power and we sacrificed and bled on the battlefield with you meant something. The United States and the soviets reject it when the british make it in 1945. So keynes is another one of these extremely perceptive people able to look backwards and forwards. He believed that the Economic Conditions that the Second World War had created might well lead to another Great Depression and they are largely averted by the Marshall Plan and good thinking by european economists and he is also aware that this likely m means the end of britain as the great power and as british had known it. The last card in trumans hand that i want to talk about is, of course, the atomic bomb in new mexico as the potsdam conference is going on. The american secretary of war slips truman a note to poorly coded note that lets him know exactly how successful it has been and how far away could the explosion be heard and how far away could the explosion be seen . Truman got that note and he was well aware. They had discussed what they would do and how they would present it to the soviets and how they would open this discussion and the decision they would make is that truman would go up to stalin after the end of one of the sessions and mention it without using the word a tommic and to mention it in as low key a way as it was possible to do. What truman and churchill did not know, and what nobody on the western side knew is that the soviets also knew how close the United States was to an atomic bomb. They too had discussed how stalin should respond if churchill and truman mentioned the atomic bomb and mentioned the success of the alamogordo experiment to him and they had agreed that he would down play it as much as possible and he would make it seem as though he didnt fully understand the consequences of what they were saying and to me this is something that was very interesting. I would have thought that everybody would remember that moment when truman pulled stalin aside because everybody knew that it was coming, and in fact, peoples historical recollections do not overlap terribly well which i find very interesting. The consensus seems to be that truman mentioned the new super weapon that the United States had developed avoiding the term atomic. Stalin saying thats good, well use it against japan. Thats good, thats wonderful and walking away and truman and churchill noted in their recollections of this that stalin had no idea what had just been told to him. We know thats not true and as it turns out the conversation they had just had was a conversation over the future of poland, that it had some pretty tense exchanges. Stalin read that as he told one of his advisors as atomic male so the nuclear age is just about to begin. Truman made the decision that the United States should not drop the bomb over hiroshima until he, truman, was already back at sea on his way back to the United States. He wanted to be literally at sea when it was first used. He wanted to be in a position where he would not have to discuss this with stalin in any way. So what did they decide at potsdam . One thing they decided was on the boundary of germany and they divide three countries here. They break three countries into pieces here. It is an afterthought and almost done by lower level officials and one of these decisions was made by a colonel in washington d. C. , dean risk who later becomes secretary of state. His decision to divide the korean peninsula, and they will divide indochina into two. What they will do here in germany is break germany. First, theyll break it into three occupation zones, the soviet, British American and french zone. You can see by the french zone it is carved out of the american zone. The soviets are okay with them having their own zone of occupation, and the same thing that would happen with berlin. Each side will take out or put into its zone whatever it wants and the represent theyre doing this is the American Fear that if germany is treated as a single unit. If its treated as a single thing for occupation reasons then the soviets will simply take advantage to take everything they can out of germany forcing the United States and Great Britain to put money into germany. The u. S. Will be putting resources into germany while the soviets take them out and this is what burns thought of in 1919 and its the scenario he does not want to see repeated in 1945. They dont envision at this point that this will become two different states and we know now that they do and they put resources into the western zone of germany and the United States is taking everything they can find that isnt nailed down out of the eastern sector and those of you in germany or those who travel to germany will know this remains an issue inside germany where it still lags a bit in many ways behind the west. Nevertheless, the United States gets what it wants. It gets a system where it doesnt want to put money into a reparation scheme while the u. S. Pulls those resources out. The second decision and this is something that the United States has to acquiesce in as its happening. The decision thats made this time is rather than draw lines around countries exclusively, what the red army will do is force people to move into their new ethnic areas. So if you are german living in what would become poland the red army will encourage you to leave and this is going to happen to millions and millions of people. At potsdam, the United States knows the soviet union is doing this and they know in the shaded area that becomes part of poland, they are taking lutheran churches and making them catholic churches and theyre taking down german street signs and putting up polish ones and they are taking those regions and making them polish and theyll do this throughout the map of europe and the soviet expectation here is that this is the way that you will end the problem of what to do with persd what to do with the boundary lines here. The big problem is what to do with the jewish survivors of the concentration camps and this will lead into the decision to see palestine as a solution. But here at potsdam, i was quite surprised by what they dont talk about. And the main thing that they dont talk about is what to do with these jews and what to do with the future of palestine. The key thing, i think, is that for the people of 1945, the problem of germany had been solved as they understood it. The occupation lines had been decided, even if it was believed those would be temporary. That would give them an ability to monitor germany, the size of germany is made smaller mostly as poland grows a little bit more and ill show you that in just a second. And also the ability to make sure that the economics of germany are going to work at least in the western zone the way that the United States and britain want them to work. Now, the people that pay the price, of course, are the follows. This became what known as poland sliding to the west. The map on the left is the dark part of the map is the polish boundary of 1921 at the end of world war i. The light color thats there, you see the line thats built there, is the new poland thats drawn in 1945. And supposedly Winston Churchill demonstrated this with three match sticks rolling to the left. The phrase that has been used ever since is that poland slides to the west. So that part in the east is taken away from poland,come includes the city of lavuv had a large ethnic population of pols and the part of east prussia, the heartland of old germany, becomes part of poland. So the city of posin becomes the city of posnine as poland begin togs move to the west. The americans are aware theres not a heck of a lot they can do about this. They hoped to put some faith in the ability of a democratic government in poland to at least decide what kind of government poland would have. It becomes perfectly obvious at the conference that the soviets had no intention of allowing anything that would even remotely resemble free elections. This is, i think, one with along the atomic bomb one of the two issues that really does begin to create difficulties and suspicions between the United States and the soviet union. Poland pays the price. It remains, of course, under soviet dominance until the late 1980s and early 1990s. I love what George Kennen said about this, i wish instead of mumbling words of official optimism we had the judgment and the good taste to bow our heads in silence before the tragedy of a people who have been our allies, who we have helped to save from our enemies and whom we cannot save from our friends. And the American Ambassador to poland wrote a book with this title you see above there i saw poland betrayed. We can fast forward to a remarkable world in 2020 where both germany and poland are full members of nato and the European Union and full members of a multilateral and International System that if they didnt exactly design it as potsdam, they certainly would not have been terribly surprised and, in fact, i think most people outside the soviet block would have been very pleased with the outcome that you see here. So, this is i think a reminder both that history is always moving. It is always changing. It is always dynamic. It is never done with us. It is always a factor in the way that we have to think about the past, the present and the future. So, if the leaders of 1945 did not yet know the contours of the future that they were trying to create, i would argue, they at least knew the past they very much wanted not to repeat. Thank you very much, and i will be a happy to take any questions that you have. Thank you, michael, for a wonderful presentation. If you have a question and havent added it to the q a feature at the bottom of your screen, please do so now. You can also like a question thats already been submitted that you would like to see answered. All right. And our first question is if truman knew information about yalta, why didnt he go to london and meet with church hill before going to potsdam . I dont think it would have been possible for truman to go to london. There were arguments that simply too much that truman had to do in the United States. Too many people he had to meet. Too many things to organize. There was a question of church hill coming to washington for roosevelts funeral. That would have been an opportunity for the United States and british leaders to sit down. He never did explain it, but one day churchill told his staff im not going to washington. Were not going to do that. And when roosevelt sorry, when churchill decided not to come for the funeral, that opportunity, i this i, for a large gathering of sort of meeting of the minds would not have happened. I also think its true that the new secretary of state who is very close to truman at this point, they have a rupture later, was trying to make sure that whatever truman did he did not get his information from the british. That it should come from american sources. So, burns takes charge burns was at yalta. He was physically there though he did not play an important role. He and roosevelt had a falling out. It was a pattern of burns life. The simple answer is that there was no real opportunity to do that because of churchills decision not to come to washington and i think burns would have frowned upon that. He really takes control and tells truman, like, this is what i remember from yalta. This is what i remember we agreed to do. All right. Our next question is from stan and it says president truman later express any regrets about decisions made at potsdam especially in regards to poland . He did. In fact, in his major speech in his agreement to the American People right after he got back to the United States he comes right out and says it. The polish part is the part i was most uncomfortable with. But he in effect says to his advisers, look, theres nothing we could have done. The only way to force the soviets to do anything different on poland would have been to threaten them with military action and thats just not going to happen. Its not in the cards. Those who know from the movie patton this is allegedly what George Patton was threatening. Force them to go back to their side of the polish border, prevent some border like this one from being created. But its, a, unrealistic and, b, not the job of a general to make those decisions. All right. Our next question comes from elaine. It says why did they not address the issue of jewish refugees. So, thats its really hard. You go through truman and churchill briefing books were both in the archives. Its there at the truman library. You can see exactly what he was reading. The same exact book that he was reading. I think theres two reasons. I think one is that palestine was still a british mandate at that point. Its still technically belonged to Great Britain. If youre going to open up the issue of palestine, then you have to open up a whole lot of issues about the internal affairs of the great powers. And i dont think anybody wanted to cross that line at this conference. The second thing, and its curious, when you read the initial reports of the liberation of the camps, the word jewish is not used very often. If you read dorothy thompson, martha gelhorn, the reports they sent back dont specifically refer to jews. So there is a sense and im not sure how much this is getting back to the folks at potsdam that jewish suffering is no different from the suffering of europeans more generally. There isnt something distinct and unique. Truman and churchills great credit they soon woke up to that reality and truman assigned Earl Harrison to come to europe and write a report. The very famous report that harrison writes back to truman were treating the jerksws the e way the nazis did. It was the unwillingness of churchill to open up what they saw internal affairs of the great powers to this conference. Palestine is considered part of the internal affairs of Great Britain. All right. Our next question comes from ian. And it says it seems that the true take away for Great Power Competition from potsdam is that force or the threat of force decides diplomacy. Would you agree . Theres a great old expression that diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggie until you can find a really big rock. In the Army War College war i teach, we use a simplified thing called the dime. And ideally you want all four of those things to function together. So, military forces always there. The official model of where i work is not to not to prepare for war but to promote peace. The ultimate idea of where i work is to teach senior military officers the ways that one can use military force and exactly the way youre articulating. To pursue state entry short of violence. Thats the ideal. It doesnt of course always work out that way. I think what were seeing in the 21st century are states like russia and china who are using information and in the chinese Case Economics in place of the military force to support their diplomacy. And this has been part of the challenge that i think were dealing with in the 21st century many the tools of state craft are different in the 21st century than they were in 1945. This, i think, is the real challenge Going Forward for western societies which i think bad actors around the world have figured out is the way to exploit western societies because of their openness. So, i would say that, you know, all of those four factors, diplomacy, information, military and economics work together. Military force, the folks i work for, will say that it is the ultimate thing that you want to hold back. So without military power, the rest you dont have a plan b with anything. But it should never be plan a. You should always let the others work their way out first. All right. Our next question comes from james and a bit of a long one. You state that the allies at potsdam were optimistic and buoyant and deemed celebratory but surely if this was true the positive and collaborative relationship relations rapidly disappeared, did it not . What specific important agreements were made at potsdam, rather than being differed as they were to the council of Foreign Ministers because they could not agree on much at potsdam . The other thing about potsdam that truman remembered, that truman wanted to avoid, was obviously the very nasty, very bitter fight that wilson had with the senate over the treaty of versailles in the league of nations. Potsdam does not produce a treaty. For that reason while there are aid memoirs and memoranda of each days discussions, they dont produce a formal treaty. Thats by design. Thats 100 by design. So, the council of Foreign Ministers, as you mentioned, theyre there to massage this process Going Forward. The specific points of disagreements for the United States especially are soviet treatment of poland and the general sort of blackout, the inability of american and british officials to move through the soviet zone of germany so that the idea to the americans, the notion is that the soviets arent playing fair. Theyre not letting us come into the zone. Theyre treating it as two countries when we were supposed to treat it as one, just managed by the four powers. For the soviets it really is the use of the Nuclear Bombs and the timing of the way that truman did it so that theres no opportunity for negotiation, theres no opportunity for discussion about whats going to go forward. And the third issue that is of really great concern to everybody is the chinese civil war thats on going at the same time. So if you think of the world as a bipolar sovietled one pole and americanled over pull, the future of china will be incredibly important as it remains so today. Those are the three issues that emerged very quickly. Others, of course, emerged as well. But i think i would still hold to the fact that they left potsdam, everybody that left a record of it i think at the time, everybody that wrote something down in august, 1945, all wrote, look, we understand this is not going to be all champagne and strawberries, but we think we can work with these guys. We think this can work. And by 47, even 46 that mood is changes. I think we have time for a few more questions. Phillip says how long did it take for president truman to learn of the success of the Nuclear Bomb Test in new mexico and tell stalin and churchill . It was churchill who was with truman at that point. Truman is told one of the first briefings he gets after being sworn in as president , he is fully read into what the Manhattan Project is. Hes told that potsdam, i dont remember the exact date, but its early in the conference, he said in this memo that says, yeah, it worked. Again, the memo is if any soviet saw that memo, they would understand exactly what it said. Its the most poorly coded thing in all the years of working in archives i have ever seen. Its no great surprise. Which tells me that the americans didnt think they really had to encode it all that much because they didnt think the soviets would understand it even if it were encoded. And they made the decision, churchill and truman and couple advisers met quickly and said what should we do about this and decided to go ahead with the plan they had gone with it. It happens very quickly. The key thing to me is that the americans didnt think that the soviets had fully grasped what had happened. The soviets had fully grasped what had happened and it is something that greatly increases that paranoia that George Kennan had talked about. All right. And our last question comes from claire. It says how much influence do you think burns had on trumans immediate thinking at potsdam and in the earliest days of the emerging cold war . I think burns is the second most important person that truman is talking with. The most important i think is probably george marshall. Because he truman revered george marshall. Burns is the james burns is the only man in American History to be on the Supreme Court, the house of representatives, the senate, the cabinet and a governorship, although the governorship comes after the war. Governor of south carolina. So he knows everybody. He knows where the bodies are buried. He knows how to get things moved through the various branchs of government. Everybody in 1944 thought that burns was going to be the vice president. And if that had happened then when roosevelt died burns would have been president. So hes the guy thats really whispering in trumans ear. The legend goes hes the last person in washington to stop calling him harry and start calling him president truman because they knew each other so well. And they needed each other so much that they had this kind of informality between them. And burns assistant talks about the two of them on the trip back from potsdam, just sitting together over a bottle of bourbon everyday and just talking about things every single day. So the relationship is really close. It will break down quickly. So, i think burns is the most important voice talking to truman. He had been at yalta and i think teheran. He had been at the paris peace conference. Hes an unbelievably enormously influential person. I think thes probably the most important person in 20th century history that most americans dont know anything about. Hes just everywhere. And like truman, never went to college. Very much a self made, self taught man. Hes the last Supreme Court Justice Without a law degree. Just and very unpleasant guy, i should say, very accomplished, interesting guy but a die hard segregationist and one of the people who gets the dixie movement going but in 1945, he is someone that truman is listening to as i said along with marshall and with very, very close attention. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan 3, explore our nations past. Cspan 3, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, a look at the 100th anniversary of womens suffrage on august 18th, 1920 tennessee became the 36th and last state needed to radfy the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote. On the eve we host a talk with hillary clinton, library of congress car la hayden followed by a forum on the 19th amendment hosted by all in together which includes remarks by House Speaker nancy pelosi and former secretary of state condoleezza rice. The u. S. Dropped atomic bombs on the japanese cities of hiroshima and nagasaki 75 years ago this august. Japan surrendered shortly afterwards ending world war ii. Up next on the presidency, education director mark adams shows items in the harry s. Truman president ial library and Museum Collection that tell the story of president trumans decision to use the bombs, including white house documents and a sketch of a test explosion. Well also see mr. Trumans recorded announcement of the hiroshima bomb and hear him explain years later why