Wartime Wednesday: The Potsdam Conference

Wartime Wednesday: 

The Potsdam Conference

Who knew there was so much administration involved in a war? The Potsdam Conference, so named because it took place in the city of Potsdam outside of Berlin, Germany, was held between July 17 and August 2, 1945. The “Big Three:” the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union and their entourages met to with three main agenda items:

• How to handle Germany’s defeat;
• To determine Poland fate;
• To pressure Japan to end the war.

In attendance were US President Harry S. Truman, in place for only three months since President Roosevelt’s death; Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who as one source put it, “was abruptly replaced on July 26 by his successor Clement Attlee after result of the British election were announced.”

Tensions were high and gave a hint of the Cold War to come.

Prior to the conference Truman toured the conquered city of Berlin where he witnessed thousands of

homeless civilians, many of them children, living among the bombed-out ruins. He would later describe the city as a “ghost city” during a radio address.

During the sixteen day forum, details that were encapsulated in the Potsdam Agreement, and included plans to disarm and demilitarized German; divide the country into four Allied occupation zones controlled by the US, UK, France, and the Soviet Union; an edict for Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary to expel the ethnic German population within their borders in “an orderly and humane manner;” and the non-negotiable terms for peace with Japan (unconditional surrender). A major part of the discussions involved the heavy postwar reparations demanded by Stalin and agreed to by Roosevelt.

Additionally, the group repealed laws passed by the Nazi regime, removed Nazis from the German education and court systems, and made arrangements for the arrest and trying of Germans who had committed war crimes. Borders were redrawn, and the Council of Foreign Ministers was formed to draft peace treaties with Germany’s former allies.

An intriguing aside is that before the conference Truman received news that the Trinity test of the atomic bomb by the Manhattan Project scientists was successful, and he hoped to use the information as a bargaining chip with Stalin. However, the Soviet leader didn’t seem interested, and Truman would later recall, “He was glad to hear it, and ‘hoped we would make good use of it against the Japanese.’” Unbeknownst to the president the project had at least two Soviet spies within its ranks.

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A Lesson in Love

He thinks he’s too old. She thinks she’s too young. Can these teachers learn that love defies all boundaries?

Born and raised in London, Isobel Turvine knows nothing about farming, but after the students in her school evacuate during Operation Pied Piper, she’s left with little to do. Her friend talks her into joining the Women’s Land Army, and she finds herself working the land at a manor home in Yorkshire that’s been converted to a boys’ school. A teacher at heart, she is drawn to the lads, but the handsome yet stiff-necked headmaster wants her to stick to farming.

Left with an arm that barely works from the last “war to end all wars,” Gavin Emerson agrees to take on the job of headmaster when his school moves from London to Yorkshire, but he’s saddled with the quirky manor owner, bickering among his teachers, and a gaggle of Land Army girls who have turned the grounds into a farm. When the group’s blue-eyed, raven-haired leader nearly runs him down in a car, he admonishes her to stay in the fields, but they are thrown together at every turn. Can he trust her not to break his heart?

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Photo credits:
Table of Delegates: “Scene of Potsdam Conference,” July 19, 1945, National Archives and Records Administration, Office of Presidential Libraries, Harry S. Truman Library.
Trio: “The new Big Three meet for the first time at the Potsdam Conference,” July 29, 1945, National Archives and Records Administration, Office of Presidential Libraries, Harry S. Truman Library.
Map: Google maps, accessed July 7, 2025