Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe

results thank you good afternoon I'm David fario the archivist of the United States and it's a pleasure to welcome you to William G McGowan theater here at the National Archives this afternoon and a special welcome to those of you who are joining us on our YouTube channel and a very special welcome to the teachers here from the gills and Laramie Institute it's nice to have you in the audience today s author has researched one of the most important Summit meetings of World War II the Potsdam Conference in Germany just a few months after the Nazi war machine had been defeated it was at Potsdam that President Harry Truman Marshall Joseph Stalin and British prime minister Winston Churchill and his successor clementatley created the boundaries in which the Cold War was fought Potsdam would earn its place in history as the major Allied conference after the war in Europe had ended even as the Japanese were still resisting the successful Allied push toward their home islands in the Pacific Potsdam in a moment but first I'd like to tell you about two programs coming up soon here in the McGowan theater tomorrow evening at seven we'll present our writers and Scholars Roundtable that will explore some of the little known events of the Civil Rights era program will include a panel which includes three Pulitzer prize-winning authors as well as Scholars of the period next Wednesday on July 22nd at noon we'll welcome Arthur Downey author of the book The Creole Affair the slave rebellion that led the U.S and Great Britain to the brink of War Downey writes about the most successful slave rebellion in American history and its effect on diplomacy the domestic slave trade and the definition of slavery itself if you want to know more about these and all of our public programs please refer to our monthly calendar there are copies in the lobby as well as sign up sheets where you can receive it either by regular mail or email and another way to get more involved in the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation the foundation supports all of our Outreach and education activities and their application membership membership applications also in the lobby today's featured book is pot stem the end of World War II and the remaking of Europe by Michael nyberg it was at Potsdam at the United States Great Britain and the Soviet Union agreed on the shape of post of the post-war world including how authority over Germany would be divided among them and France it takes a close look at the Potsdam Conference which began 70 years ago this Friday and its long-range implications and outcomes for this book Michael nyberg did research in at least three National Archives facilities he received a grant from The Truman Library Institute to delve into the Harry S Truman papers including map room files the naval Aid files and Mr Truman's longhand notes he also spent time at the Franklin D Roosevelt Presidential Library looking in Harry Hopkins papers and finally at the National Archives at College Park he used materials in the records of international conferences commissions and expositions the Financial Times Reporter Tony Barber says nyberg Blends narrative verb with analytic analytical insight to bring to life a conference that threw together Truman Stalin and Churchill then Atlee Washington historian James Banner writes in one of his Weekly Standard dispatches that nyberg shows how differing views within and then between delegations gradually made way for the final agreement at Potsdam Michael nyberg is chair of history in the Department of National Security and strategy at the army war College in Carlisle Pennsylvania he's written books about both world wars he holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and his Masters and doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University and he previously taught at the Air Force Academy please welcome Michael nyberg thank you well thank you sir for that introduction and thank you to everybody here at the National Archives it is not possible for me and the people that do what I do to do what we do without the National Archives and I do have my archives readers card here it is expired I am going to fix that before I leave the building so thank you very much what I'd like to do today is introduce some of the themes that appear in this book and what I want to do is talk a little bit about what this book is and what this book is not my interest in this book came from really two things it came first and foremost from the kinds of things I do with the army war College part of which is looking at the transition from periods of War to periods of peace and how States manage that how do you go from a period of conflict to a period of trying to create long-term resolutions of those conflicts and the second thing that I was really interested in was the weight of history on individuals how people respond maybe without even knowing it to the great events that have brought them to where they are people have a vision of history in their minds whether they know it or not whether they quote unquote like history or not whether they study history or not they have a vision in their heads of how you got to where you are and that Vision impacts the way that you see the present and for policy makers it certainly impacts the decisions that you make in the advice that you render what I did not want this book to be is another book that would say and then Truman turned to Stalin and said there are two of those books already out both of which were written in the height of the Cold War so what I wanted to do with this book was to get away from who said what to whom and I wanted to get away from the presumption that a cold war was coming I wanted to see 1945 I wanted to see the environment of Potsdam the way that the leaders themselves saw it they of course didn't know that a cold war was coming most of them left Potsdam confident that although there would be conflict between the three states and conflicts for the world to figure out a cold war that is a conflict between the United States Britain and the Soviet Union was not inevitable in fact most of them left Potsdam believing it wasn't even likely here I want to touch on really three themes for today's talk the first is how did the leaders of 1945 see their role at Potsdam and I'll give you the quick answer up front they saw it not as the start of the Cold War but as the end of 30 years of total war in Europe from 1914 to 1945. what they understood themselves to be doing was fixing the problems not of Pearl Harbor not of Poland in 1939 and not of Munich but of solving the problems of 1914 and specifically solving the problems of the generation before them had created with the Treaty of Versailles the Paris peace Conference of 1919. the second thing I wanted to look at was again the weight of History what these men were seeing what their perspective was what prison they were seeing Europe through and when I say men incidentally they were all men who made the key decisions although there were female reporters this was mostly done by men third individuals and their role in history this provides a strange laboratory for an historian there are two things that happen in the time of Potsdam the first is that President Franklin Roosevelt died in April of 1945 putting Harry Truman instead in the presidency just weeks before Potsdam opens and Truman is a remarkable figure in this regard because Truman had had almost no preparation for dealing with an event this momentous either before he became vice president or after and second in the middle of the Potsdam Conference a remarkable thing happened the British people voted and they voted Winston Churchill's conservative party out of power much to everybody's surprise in his place came clementately a man that so few Americans knew that they misspelled his name in their Diaries and in their letters and American photographers had taken no photographs of him prior to the election results those two men take the place of their illustrious predecessors like to do here is set the stage this is what Berlin looked like in 1945. this is just outside the Brandenburg gate this is looking to what is now the Adeline Hotel was then as well the absolute ruin of Germany and of Berlin stunned people even those people whose job it had been to direct this war could not believe what they were seeing of a city like Berlin and I can't prove it but at the very last minute Stalin announced that he would be one day late arriving in Berlin this gave the American and British delegates especially one day to do a very special and very bizarre kind of Tourism through Berlin I think the Russians wanted that to happen in 1919 President Wilson had famously refused to go to the Western Front saying that he didn't want his heart to grow hard by seeing what had been done by the Germans on the Western Front Stalin's delay in coming to Potsdam allowed the Americans and British to see it for themselves it impressed upon them two things one the absolute devastation that Germany had faced unlike anything that anybody had faced at the end of the first world war and second the necessity somehow to rebuild this to somehow bring this back out of the ashes and of course at this point nobody knew exactly how to do that nobody knew exactly even if you did want to do that there were plenty of voices many of them Russian but a few of them American as well who wanted to see Germany remain devastated most famously the outgoing American Secretary of the Treasury Henry morgenthau had argued for something that became known as the morgenthau plan which essentially called for breaking Germany into as many as nine as few as five independent states with no federal government and pastoralizing it meaning taking away its industry forever there was also the fundamental questions of whether the Allies could allow the occupied Germans to live better than the Russians French and polls whom they had victimized and there remained the fundamental question from 1919. what had caused these wars was the problem a fundamental imbalance of power on the European continent was the problem a lack of integration of the European economic and political structures or was the problem something to do with Germany itself and this problem lasted well into the 1950s right A friend of mine from high school wrote a book about this about the state Department's use of Hollywood movies to try to project American values into Germany and one of the things that the Americans did was export a lot of cowboy movies to Germany the Germans asked the question back of State Department officials if you were allowed to kill your Indians why weren't we allowed to kill our Jews that backfired the Germany of 1945 unlike the Germany of 1919 was completely defeated yet the question remained would the German people accept responsibility and guilt for their actions Truman's bodyguard who had four German American grandparents and who spoke German himself was particularly on the lookout in his time in Berlin listening to what he heard on the streets without revealing that he spoke the language and what he heard did not reassure him that the Germans were sorry they had been defeated but they were not willing to accept guilt for what had happened there had to be some way to drive home to Germany its defeat and its guilt without repeating the cycle from 1919. there had to be some way to do it and in this context the final setting of the peace conference Potsdam had a very nice symbolism it's the Russians who choose it and they choose it largely for two reasons one it is relatively intact and two it is the symbol of the two kinds of German aristocracy that they're trying to defeat Potsdam is of course the home of the great palaces of the German aristocracy it's the place where Kaiser Wilhelm II signed the order to mobilize the German Army in 1914 and the conference house itself the Sicilian Hof Palace was built for the German Crown Prince during World War One Potsdam was also the home to the German film industry in the 1920s and 1930s the pro-nazi German film industry it's a the name Potsdam and this in the the adjacent suburb of bubblesburg were code words just like Beverly Hills or or Hollywood would be for the American film industry so the notion here was that you could stop German militarism in the very place where it had begun I wanted to talk about these kind of analogies at peace and I hear I am picking up off of a book called analogies at War written by a brilliant Oxford political scientist named Yuen fungong and Carl argued looking at the American decision to put ground troops into Vietnam in 1965. Kong argued that the single most determining factor of what an individual policy maker would recommend in 1965 was the historical analogy that person Drew to what they were looking at in short if a policymaker saw Munich 1938 that is stop them now before they get too big they were likely to argue for a massive American intervention in 1965. Korean war is an analogy that is expect half victories and expect this to go on a long time they were likely to recommend much less and if they saw as an analogy the French defeated danbianfu in 1954 then they were likely to argue for not committing American resources at all his argument is that the way to understand the way American policy makers reacted was literally to understand their vision of History so I wanted to do this as well what was the dominant analogy that people in 1945 Drew and there were four and I'm going to do them from least like least used to most used the least used was alsas and Lorraine that is the argument that if you take territory away from a people it will only create the desire that they're going to have to take land back therefore you can't change the boundaries of Europe at all behind that is the historical analogy of the Daws and young plans the American plans to restructure German debt in the inner War years the new American Secretary of State James Burns believed that that had been the fundamental problem the United States had taken on responsibility for European debt in a way that was unsound for the Americans and unhelpful for the Europeans above all Burns believed the United States could not do that again the British argument is largely that you are in fact seeing a repeat of Neville Chamberlain and the Munich agreement only this time it's not the Nazis that you're appeasing it's the Soviets but and this shouldn't come as any surprise to most of you the dominant historical analogy is the Paris peace conference in the Treaty of Versailles the men of 1914 understood that what they were doing was fixing the problems of the generation before them they didn't always agree on what the Treaty of Versailles meant they didn't always agree on what the fundamental problems had been but they all agreed that the men of 1919 had made terrible mistakes and that their generation could not afford to make those same mistakes and I want to stress here most of the people who went to Potsdam in 1945 with the exception of the Russians had either been at the Paris peace conference or had been deeply informed it was the event that shaped their lives Harry Truman had not been there but James Burns had been there as an advisor to Woodrow Wilson Winston Churchill had been there for part of it John Maynard Keynes the British economic advisor had been at both conferences so to these men it's not like 1919 when some of the Statesmen of Europe looked back vaguely a century earlier to the concert of Europe in 1815 for vague historical examples these were events from their own lifetime all of them thought in terms of the 1919 problem the 1919 disaster the first words Harry Truman said at the Potsdam Conference were a warning not to repeat the mistakes of Versailles even before the treaty negotiations had begun the conference negotiations had begun Joseph Solon had said the same thing to Truman's Envoy Joseph Davies and again this is not ancient history this is living history to these guys the Russians were not invited to the Paris peace conference but they too were scarred by it mostly in the creation of an independent Poland that the Russian government opposed and the Versailles treaty put in place this is the map of 1919 Europe in Russian diplomatic correspondence of 1920s and into the 1930s the Russians very often referred to Poland as Western Belarus to deny it even a name on the map and one German Diplomat referred to Poland as the bastard child of Versailles so what were the mistakes that they saw well there are three that largely came up one was the reparations question again this is an American issue in particular although it is also John Maynard keynes's issue that it doesn't make any sense to take resources out of the same country you're going to demand reparations from that's a recipe for disaster for burns there was the additional problem that the United States had taken on some of that debt responsibility second the Americans believe that redrawing the borders of Europe and the British believed this too had created more problems than it had solved that is the effort of the great powers in 1919 to make this map had created more problems than it had solved and third especially a Russian View the problem was inviting small states to participate Stalin himself said a state is not virtuous simply because it is small in Stalin's view Belgium Poland Serbia had been the cause of the two World Wars the great Powers had not gone to war for a fundamental existential problems for themselves but as a result of what their client states did or because of States on their borders as a result unlike the Paris peace conference the Potsdam Conference will feature just three countries the United States Great Britain and the Soviet Union a polished delegation is there for 15 minutes to plead its case the French much to their dismay are not invited no other third parties are invited moreover the diplomats that met in 1919 the British are especially good at excuse me in 1945 the British diplomats are especially good at this we're aware that with one exception the issues they were dealing with in 1945 would have been perfectly familiar to these men in 1919. those issues involved one what to do with Germany in the post-war world two what to do about reparations three how to handle the map of Europe so that it ethnically and politically fits together better four what role should the United States play in the post-war world and five what role should multilateral organizations play all of these issues would have been perfectly familiar in 1919 and the men of 1945 knew it the one exception of course is the secret that Harry Truman thought he and only a couple of other people knew and that was the atomic bomb experiments that were going on in Alamogordo New Mexico what the atomic bomb did of course was raise the stakes make it so that these issues are even more important in 1945 in their minds than they had been in 1919. so three nations are going to run it I like this Photograph this one comes from relatively early in the conference that is of course a smiling Joseph Stalin on the left the brand new American president Harry Truman his brand new secretary of state James Burns arm in armed with the Soviet foreign minister Molotov and I like this photograph for a number of reasons one they're all smiling and again this is important to understand I don't think this is just mugging for the camera they've come to Potsdam having done what they wanted to do they defeated Germany this is a conference of Victors unlike Yalta unlike Tehran unlike Quebec this is a conference of victors the other thing I like about this photograph is Burns and Molotov arm and arm now these two guys didn't really like each other they didn't really trust each other they came from very diverse systems but Burns left Potsdam thinking he had read this man he could work with him Burns famously said they're like politicians everywhere if I build them a post office they'll build me a post office he was wrong but that's okay um the United States had first proposed holding the conference right here in Washington or holding it in Alaska if the Russians wanted to be closer to Russian territory the Russians said the only place that they would meet was Potsdam somewhere in the Berlin suburbs the United States set the timing Truman tried to delay the conference as long as possible hold it in July instead of in June and that was both to give him some time to figure out his new responsibilities and to give the scientists in New Mexico as much time as he possibly could the United Kingdom symbolically only set the code name Winston Churchill came up with a codename terminal for this conference and it's a code name that is immediately broadcast so not much utility in that uh Great Britain is bankrupt and isolated they are aware as the British prime minister Anthony Eden wrote in a memorandum shortly before the conference that the only way Great Britain can achieve its policy objectives is by tying it to the United States as much as possible Winston Churchill tried to do this by constantly using phrases like the way we anglo-americans look at things phrases that drove Harry Truman crazy and in one rather silly event trying to put his chair closer and closer to Truman's during a photo session Truman saw what he was doing and kept moving his chair closer and closer to Stalin uh Stalin in the meantime just sat there laughing the entire time of the three powers it's quite clear that it's Great Britain that is the one that is not only the least powerful but aware of its lack of power and again the issue of the role of personalities Franklin Roosevelt had held the American presidency since 1933 it is remarkable to me that in 1944 when they were selecting a vice president they did not discuss Roosevelt's health and they did not make the choice of Harry Truman based on Roosevelt's Health that is they did not make the decision in 1944 on the basis that the vice president would one day have to become the president they instead made the decision on the basis that whatever you picked in 1944 that person would likely Fade Into Obscurity just as Roosevelt's other vice presidents would go ahead see if you can name them in 1944 the obvious choice would have been James Burns Burns is the only man in American history to have served on the Supreme Court the House of Representatives the United States Senate the cabinet and later a South Carolina governor all without ever having gone to college which is also True by the way of Harry Truman he knew everybody in Washington he knew most of the people overseas the key players overseas and if they thought they were selecting the next President Burns would have been the obvious choice his firm beliefs in segregation and his rather difficult personality notwithstanding instead they picked Truman who was prepared to enter burns his name into the convention you can still see pictures of Roosevelt and burn signs at the Chicago convention in 1944. instead they turned to Truman and tell him that he's been named Truman gave his acceptance speech at the convention 90 seconds with no discussion of policy at all he wasn't prepared to give the speech when he became vice president secretary of War Henry Simpson didn't see the need to brief German even on the atomic bomb project Roosevelt met with him only twice and neither time did they discuss anything substantive when he became president of the United States Harry Truman couldn't even find the official records of what had been agreed to at Yalta it was the first time he had gone into the map room what is today the the rough equivalent of The Situation Room and one of his aides says he stood at the map Truman did having no idea even where to find some of the places they were talking about on the other hand in Great Britain something similar happens that's clementatley on the left a man that Winston Churchill wants to write it as a sheep in sheep's clothing which is a great line another British wag said that with Atlee replacing Winston Churchill The Big Three would become the big two and a half clementatley is more than he looks clementatley in 1915 was the second to last man off the beaches of Gallipoli clementley the labor party leader was one of the first to stand up to Francisco Franco's regime in Spain there were International brigades named after him nevertheless he didn't quite look like Winston Churchill he didn't act like Winston Churchill he certainly didn't have Winston Churchill's wit or his commanding presence in the middle of this conference to everybody's great surprise including at least by the way the labor party won an overwhelming majority meaning that in the middle of this conference Winston Churchill and his foreign minister Anthony Eden stay home and clementatley comes to Potsdam as the leader of Great Britain Atlee had rented a cottage on the shore on the expectation that the election would return a big majority for Churchill and Churchill would not ask him to come back to Potsdam That's how little he expected to win this at least foreign minister sir Ernest Bevin um was equally surprised Bevin a huge man that made Atlee look even smaller he walked up to Anthony Eden after the election Eden said what cabinet position are you going to go for Bevin said I think I want the chancellor of the ex-chequer and even said why all you'll do there is account for the money we no longer have asked to be foreign minister and that's what he did still what was notable to me and people observed it in 1945 that the fundamental positions of the United States and Great Britain did not change in this case Harry Truman is of the same party but Clement at least even coming from a different political party the labor party rather than the conservative party everybody around them understood it was the circumstance and the structure that was more important than the personality another issue for the Americans this is Truman with his Russia team the most famous man in this picture probably after Truman is the guy second from the right George Cannon who wrote the famous Long Telegram in 1947. as to how to read the Russians what is it that they're up to and there were at least three views there was Chip bolin's view shared by some of the British delegates that what the Russians were really trying to do in 1945 was restore what the Czar had in 1914. in other words ideology didn't matter the Russians are going to do the same thing that they would do regardless of ideology what they're doing is geopolitical they're trying to protect their western border they're trying to secure their control over Eastern Europe chip Owen said on that basis you can expect the Russians to push back if you push them on Eastern Europe on the other hand however you don't have to worry about them reaching for places where they traditionally had had little influence a second View and it's mostly a British view although there are some Americans including notably the American ambassador to the Soviet Union Avro Harriman who argued that you needed to think about the Russians AS Global revolutionaries you needed to think about them as a state that was going to try to export its ideology all over the world and you had to do something at Potsdam to make sure that that didn't happen the third and the view that I think is probably the one that has held up the best was kennen's and of course he'll articulate it later much more fully in the so-called Long Telegram Canon argued that the second world war had exasperated had it had exaggerated all of the worst elements of the Russian system their paranoia Their Fear of security all of the things that made them Russian at the same time however the collapse of Germany meant that even though Russia had suffered so brutally during the second world war it would emerge more powerful what Canon argued was that the United States would face an uphill battle a devastating potentially lethal uphill battle if the United States tried to push the Russians out of any place where they were what the American should do is contain the Russians don't let them expand any further but the way to defeat the Russians was to let the internal contradictions of the Russian system collapse it of its own accord build up your own strength and let the Russian weakness take care of the problem so Truman has in one ear the hardliners who are telling him to take a firm stand they include the secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and they include Harriman the Ambassador he's also got other softliners talking in his other ear he's got people like Joseph Davies telling him no the Russians are still our allies this conference is about settling matters with Germany not Russia we still need the Russians in Asia we need the Russians of any kind of post-war peace is going to last you got to go easy with them and the remarkable thing to me up until this point Harry Truman had never in his life had a conversation with the Russian never once the first one he has is with Molotov who is a tough Russian to deal with this is where the conference happened the Crown Princess Palace cecilianhoff and Potsdam that red star of geraniums the Soviets planted before the conference so when delegates drove up to the Courtyard right there that's the first thing that they saw it's still there if you go to if you go there today to see it it's in the Russian zone of control under the rules of the occupation the Russians evacuated all of the Germans living in Potsdam and babelsberg and filled the houses with whatever furniture they could find whatever they could get the best pieces they could find anywhere in Berlin Potsdam or babbelsburg they just put them in the houses that the delegates would sit in leading to some interesting commentary especially from the British clementatley is very disappointed he says that I can't believe this is what the German middle class prefers this style of of architecture and Furniture um maximum security no British no British or American Press allowed for most of the conference security that confounded the Americans and the British they couldn't believe the extent to which the Russians had gone and although the devastation of Germany the devastation of Berlin and the devastation of Europe was evident for all to see there was nothing left wanting for the delegates when Anthony Eden who was suffering from ulcers complained about the German milk they went back to Britain and got him British milk when Harry Truman didn't like the sheet music that they had for playing the piano he sent a plane to go and get sheet music from Paris the only way that the Press was able to get any access to Potsdam at all was by threatening to publish reports about the luxury within which these men were living while the rest of Europe was starving it's also true that there were very few non-white faces at this conference the United States Navy had brought mess stewards in Filipino mess Stewardson to serve the president in his meals and the Russians had brought men from Central Asia as part of the security teams other than that I think it's safe to argue that Potsdam is the Acme it's the high point of white Europeans believing that they could control the destiny of people from other continents all right what I'd like to do is focus on the United States in the time that I have remaining this is a photograph of Harry Truman taking the oath of office there are two things I would like you to notice in this photograph not a single person is smiling because of course they're still dealing with the immense tragedy of Franklin Roosevelt's death and the second and it's no coincidence Harry Truman is taking the oath of office under a portrait of Woodrow Wilson it is the same room where Franklin Roosevelt worked on his plans for the United Nations again not a coincidence the idea here is to rescue the fundamental principles and ideas of Woodrow Wilson but to put them into action in a way that will work much better and Truman is aware of that Truman's also aware as much as he admired Wilson that Wilson had gone to the Paris peace conference in 1919 largely hoping to win on principles Harry Truman has made the decision that he's not going to do that he's going to keep the wilsonian principles but he's going to bring with him instruments of National Power with which he can put them into play they include a favorable Senate which which Woodrow Wilson never had Harry Truman came out of that body and made sure that before he went to Potsdam he had the Senate vote on both the Bretton Woods International economic agreements which I'll talk about in just a second and a vote on the United Nations so that when he went to Potsdam he had the will and support of the American people through their elected representatives he also knew that he would have in his pocket a number of other instruments of National Power he would have the United Nations which unlike the League of Nations is not going to represent every state equally as you all know it will be have five permanent voting members the United States of course being one of those unlike the League of Nations this one is going to reside in the United States the first meeting is in San Francisco notably in the Opera House in San Francisco built as a memorial for the men who died in the first world war that symbolism was not by accident and it will be headquartered in New York City the United Nations is going to be like the kinds of instruments that the United States wants to build at the end of the second World War they are multilateral institutions that the United States dominates and controls or has an outsized vote in this is the same way the United States is going to deal with the refugee problem in Europe by creating something called unra the United Nations Rehabilitation and something Association um somebody Rehabilitation and anyway um which the United States will also dominate through its outsized money and power but for which the United States is not alone responsible maybe the more important it's based right by my hotel it's the Bretton Woods International economic agreements which create the World Bank they create the international monetary fund and they move the international Reserve currency from the British pound to the American dollar and this is a photograph of John Maynard Keynes the British Economist who called the Bretton Woods agreements A Swindle the bank of England officials said that the only thing worse than signing the Bretton Woods agreement would have been losing the war to the Germans what Keynes understood what the bank of England officials understood is that Bretton Woods was the only choice that the British had but that it would end Great Britain's role as the global reserve and the global economic power it would also likely end the Imperial preference system that is the system by which Britain could keep trade inside the British Empire Hereafter it was possible that two elements of the British Empire say India and Singapore might well conduct their business in American dollars however Keynes himself said that Great Britain could not continue to police half the world while remaining in debt to the other half and John Maynard Keynes left the conference at Bretton Woods went to Ottawa and somehow got from the Canadian government 500 million dollars of emergency aid to Great Britain it's an important thing to remember just how broke Great Britain was Britain remained on food rationing until 1953. there is an irony here that some British officials picked up on the French certainly picked up on it the British were making the same argument in 1945 that the French had made in 1919. that is we're broke but you have to understand the blood that we have sacrificed we're owed something because of how hard we fought and how much we did the British rejected that argument when the French made it in 1919 and the Americans rejected it when the British made it in 1945. the last card in Truman sand of course was the atomic bomb now as a Senator Harry Truman had found the two billion Gap in the federal budget he went to then Secretary of War Henry L Simpson and he asked what that money was for and Henry Simpson told him I can't tell you you have to take my word for it I can't tell you Senator Truman accepted that vice president German same Secretary of War Henry Simpson Simpson did not tell vice president German what that money had been for now as president he has to know he got the note at Potsdam telling him that the Trinity test had succeeded it's a very interesting note it's in the book if you want to read it letting him know that this had actually worked remember the Manhattan Project was a shared British American project so the British are in on this secret as well chairman and Churchill had a long meeting about what they should do about it there at Potsdam they had to tell Stalin something they made the decision not to use the word Atomic and they also made the decision to introduce it to Stalin as casually as possible so at the end of one of the lunchtime sessions Truman went up to Stalin and told him we have a new bomb of extraordinary ability the sources are a little bit contradictory on what Stalin actually said but he appears to have turned to Truman and said wonderful a new bomb wonderful and turned and walked away Truman and Churchill had concluded that that meant that Stalin had no idea what they were telling him of course Stalin knew everything about what they were telling him although there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Harry Truman meant it this way he happened to mention this to Stalin shortly after an intense disagreement over the borders of Poland Stalin thought the timing was anything but accidental he used the word blackmail to one of his translators Truman and James Burns were literally at Sea when the atomic bomb was used over Hiroshima and Burns's personal secretary wrote in his notebook the news was delivered to President Truman and secretary Burns they hit the bourbon bottle pretty hard what he didn't do was write another sentence what I don't know is whether they were hitting the bourbon bottle pretty hard in Celebration or because they were aware as Burns later said that a new history in the Arab a new era in the history of the world had begun Burns believed many British observers believed and I believe it was the explosion over Hiroshima and Nagasaki that truly Begins the path that leads us on the way to the Cold War the Russians simply could not see that device as anything but an existential threat to them let me wrap up and then leave some time to take your questions two major outcomes of this conference that have to be seen in connection with 1919 have to be seen as corrections to what had happened at the Treaty of Versailles the first one is a decision on what to do with borders in 19 in in 1945. in 1919 the great Powers had tried to figure out whereas Winston as Woodrow Wilson wrote where distinguishably Polish people live and then draw a border around them what they figured out in 1919 of course is that you can't do that in 1945 they took a different approach they moved both borders and people most of this is done by the Red Army the estimates now are that as many as 35 million people may have been forcibly relocated by the Russian army people that are ethnically polish will be forcibly moved into the new Poland ethnic Germans of course will be pushed into Germany two things happened as a result one the effort to move people and move borders meant that meant that the humanitarian cost on people was Far higher than anything that happened at the end of the first world war with one exception which is the decision that Greece and Turkey made in the early 1920s to exchange populations ethnic Turks to Turkey ethnic Greeks to Greece a model by the way that the British saw is a positive model the Americans knew and the British knew that the Russians were forcibly relocating people all the Americans and British required of the Russians is that they do so in quote a Humane manner the papers of the American Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy make it pretty clear that the Americans understood what was happening understood the human cost and accepted it this is a temporary problem to solve a temporary solution to solve a permanent problem it is Poland of course that paid the price it is the polls above all that ended up with Soviet control over the Polish state in 1945 however the Americans and British believed two things they believed one that they had given Poland much of the best of German territory much of what's in the north of the new Poland is what had been East Prussia the heartland of Germany and second there was still the belief when the two sides left Potsdam that the form of the Polish government had not yet been decided that is it still could be an elected democratic government Truman himself in his speech to the American people identified the agreement over Poland as the one thing of the Potsdam agreement with which he remained uncomfortable nevertheless it remains true that if Poland was a reason for great powers to go to war in 1939 it was not a war reason for great powers to go to war in 1945. the second thing is the division of Germany and I want to highlight this uh here the division of Germany was done in 1945 this map division of Germany was done to settle the reparations question that is it was done to solve another 1919 problem it's James Burns's idea what's happening in Burns's mind is the Russian control what becomes East Germany the Russians had decided to take their reparations in kind in other words just take whatever they could find in Germany they formed what they called Trophy brigades and went around East Germany classifying everything as a military asset and taking it away in the West the Russians wanted cash reparations coming out of the American and British and later the French Zone the way Burns saw this unless the American people were willing to watch the German people starve to death over the winter of 1945-46 it meant that the Russians would be taking assets out of Germany at the same time that the Americans and British were putting Assets in in other words it would repeat the problem of the 1920s of the United States effectively funneling money through Germany into the Soviet Union and burns didn't want to do that Great Britain wasn't even sure that it could afford to do that it also had to deal with the famine in India that had killed three million Indians and it had to deal with the problems that were still existing inside the United Kingdom it's why Clement athlete gets elected uh to the prime Ministry I can talk about that more in the question answer period if you like so it was Burns's idea that each side would take reparations out of the part of Germany that they occupied what that meant was that the Russians could continue doing the removal of the physical plant but they would have no access to the cash reparations from the industrialized zones in the west that burns wanted to protect in Burns's mind Germany would remain one political unit but the reparations would come out of individual sectors this was a way to protect the Western assets and acknowledge what was already happening that the United States could not stop the in-kind removals in 1945 from the Eastern sector in other words the division of Germany itself is a function of trying to create a solution to a problem that had been created in 1919 and burns is upfront about it there was no intention at Potsdam to keep Germany divided for years let alone decades and I want to stress these decisions did solve the problems of 1945 as the men at Potsdam understood them again they believed they were there to solve the problems of Eastern Europe and Germany and they believed that they had done that they also believed that they had fixed the mistakes of 1919 as they understood them therefore it is critical in my mind to understand this moment in history and to understand Potsdam as representing the final paragraph of the chapter of history that began on a street corner in Sarajevo in 1914. in the new chapter of the ongoing story of Europe great powers in the world Berlin Poland and Yugoslavia would appear less as actors in their own right than as Pawns in a new game of superpower rivalry and if the men at Potsdam in the summer of 1945 could not predict the future they at least knew the past that they were desperately trying not to repeat thank you for your attention I'll be happy to take any questions [Applause] Michael questions need to be done at the microphones if you don't mind you want me to go to them no no no they'll come to the Michael there have to be some you're gonna let me get away with this oh could you explain how the Russians the Soviets ended up with kalingrad yeah it's simply by by force it's where it's how they end up with virtually everything um I think it's Stimson that makes the argument that the Russians have 99 and 44 one hundredths of the argument because their forces are sitting there um where where the Soviet forces are is where they're going to control it's important to remember too this is 1945 this is July the United States has the atomic weapon but doesn't know whether it's going to work the American Military strategic problem in 1945 is Japan so there is no desire to leave American forces in Europe the Soviets on the other hand are certainly going to leave forces in Europe yes sir yeah two questions um at least my understanding is that um Churchill obviously before he's removed in the middle of this conference uh had been in conversations with the Soviet Union basically about some type of division of Europe um what did the Americans know about that and did they build on that understanding at this conference in essence you you talk about Poland being somewhat unsettled but I think most people were quite aware that yeah so your children was going to fall much more into the Soviet sphere than in the American sphere that's the first question second question is the important question of the nuclear um weapon right and the way styling uh reacts to it right there's some um historical proof note that he you suggested it that you knew a lot about it and that he wanted to do to the Americans like I don't care you have nuclear weapons you know in essence we will get them quickly and you have to be careful what you're doing here but we know that internally they were tremendously troubled about what is going on so maybe you can talk more about that thank you yeah so I'll deal with the second one uh first I mean the Soviets read the atomic bomb as an existential threat to them um I don't know that Stalin took the approach I mean we know less about Stalin obviously than the other two what we certainly know is that he was determined he believed and so did Molotov that the atomic bomb shifted the balance of power between the former allies far too much for Soviet security interesting the British come to the same conclusion so um Bevin the same foreign minister that said Potsdam later on says Britain needs to have an independent nuclear deterrent it has to have an independent of the Americans he the phrase he uses is there's got to be a bloody Union Jack on that thing so there is an awareness as early as 1945 that that nuclear weapons are something completely different and they're going to set superpowers apart from other powers if you have them you'll be in the club and if you don't have them you won't be in the club um and Alan Brooke the uh the senior soldier in the British army writes a phenomenally interesting diary note at Potsdam in which he says look Churchill thinks that because we have this atomic bomb we can now do whatever we want and he writes in this diary entry Churchill doesn't understand this is a weapon that once once the Japanese surrender it's a weapon you can never use again except as a deterrent and Churchill doesn't get it it's a phenomenally interesting note um your other question um there had been agreements before of course at Yalta there had been kind of gentleman agreements about dividing about where the Soviet forces would go where American forces would go where British forces would go there are two problems though the first is and this is true um when Truman became president they could not find the official minutes of Yalta they could not show them to German so Truman is quite literally walking to cabinet members and people that have been at Yalta and saying do you know what we agreed to do what was your recollection So based on that Truman is unwilling to put American Authority behind agreements that he thinks maybe somebody made but he's not sure and that's true they couldn't find the minutes the second thing is that very early on in the conference uh Burns and Molotov have this discussion is what we agreed to at Yalta still on the table and the Russians say no because our suffering between Yalta and now had been so much greater 300 000 casualties to take Berlin were now owed more and burns for his part says look we don't want to follow what's gone on at yalte either because it's a different Administration so yes those Agreements are in place no those Agreements are not unchangeable sir it was a marvelous speech thank you I have to see it again on YouTube many times you'll be the only one but thank you to absorb a lot of it but two small points you've said that uh um Stalin knew everything when they said we have a a new Bible Well he knew of the atomic because of Klaus Fuchs um I don't know exactly uh it's barrier that's running his spy Network for him into New Mexico um I don't know exactly who was doing the reporting back to him but he's certainly referring that he knew about the absolutely okay the other small thing is you said that the situation room is where the map room used to be no no no it it if I said that I misspoke the the map room is what we would today call The Situation Room it's the secret room where the president and his advisors met because the map room as I understand it uh where Clinton was deposed um it's where Franklin Roosevelt watched the map of Europe the Nazi Advance above the fireplace uh is is that still the map no it is still but was it I'm not a specialist I've never even been in the white house um but um one of the things that Truman oversaw was a complete overhaul of the White House there's these wonderful pictures where they they got the entire inside so my guess is that physically it Bears no resemblance uh but but when when Washington officials talk about the map room in 19 the 19 1940s they're referring to what we would refer to as a situation we're referring to the the top secret room that you go to for your discussion thank you I don't know Colonel Arnold have you been in this situation room before or near it can you answer that question can neither confirm nor deny thank you very much thank you it's exactly the answer I would have expected hi John I'm Mike thanks very much that was really a terrific uh talk on an important subject and I'm looking forward to reading the whole book I just wanted to bring a possible clarification to uh what an earlier questioner had had asked I think that what he may have been asking about was not the Yalta Conference but rather the bilateral British Russian British Soviet so-called Tolstoy talks I think in January of 1945 in which Churchill is said to have passed a piece of paper describing a possible division of spheres of influence between Britain and Serbia 75-25 agreement yes and it's often portrayed as a kind of a pathetic sort of ex parte approach on the part of Britain when they were in no position actually to exercise that kind of power anymore yeah I think you're probably right and of course since it's a bilateral the the the the key is that it's between two parties I mean in the United States is not a party to it and it's not obligated of course it's not an official document it's written I don't know quite on a cocktail napkin but pretty close um and I I'm not a specialist in Soviet diplomatic history but um the the sources seem to suggest Stalin checked it knowing that it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what Churchill thinks he's getting and Stalin's descriptions of Churchill are incredibly belittling in private he had absolutely no respect for Churchill so but yeah thanks for that clarification sir thank you very much also um and I know as an historian you'll probably shy away from this but I wanted to see if I could tempt you into um reflecting for us on what President Putin might think I knew that about this um conference and it's aftermath relative to current events so the first thing I have to do in answering that question is say that anything that I say next um is my opinion only does not represent the US Army war College the US Army or the Department of Defense so that's out of the way um you know to the Russians um you know I could go back to this I mean I I think some version of this is still happening trying to figure out what it is that the Russians actually are doing you know are they trying to and I've seen the arguments made are they trying to go back to the 1945 geopolitical situation are they trying to go back to the 1914 geopolitical situation or are they trying to overturn that verdict and grab for more I'm not a specialist in in in Soviet foreign policy um my my supposition is that those debates are happening um as to what the Russians are thinking I mean they were the hardest to read in doing this this this book both because I don't have the languages I'm not at The Archives and you know Russian historians don't agree on what the Russians were trying to accomplish um as to what I would not even Hazard a guess as to what Vladimir Putin might be thinking um except perhaps to note that this was a period when Russia could negotiate out of strength rather than out of weakness which is what the Russians do other than that I'm not going to even try to guess what's going on in Putin's mind I would ask at the beginning of your talk you suggested that uh coming out of Potsdam most of the players basically thought that you know they came out of it in pretty good shape and maybe things weren't so bad for the future the Cold War wasn't imminent so slightly outside the scope of the book as a high school history teacher who frequently our students are told well Potsdam laid the groundwork what would you say then would be then the larger trigger in your mind for what then causes what we know as a cold war so what I can say is what the participants themselves believed um and you know Truman says it as well in the 1948 midterm elections 46 midterm elections he he actually writes a letter I saw it thanks thanks to the National Archives the letter is there though I didn't take notes on it though I did did remark on it Truman says look these people are trying to get elected in the United States by inflating an international threat that isn't there to get elected you need to cool it down like we have this it's under control um in my view the cold war is not inevitable it is the result of policy decisions made in London Washington Moscow other places as well um it's an event that builds I don't know that there is a single trigger you could go back to 1917 and see the origins of the Cold War you can probably go back to Peter the Great and see origins of the Cold War um all I can say with with absolute certainty is people left Potsdam believing a co-op a future of cooperation with Russia was certainly possible there were going to be difficulties there were going to be bumps in the road Burns actually writes he's more worried about Britain than he is Russia he thinks Great Britain is going to use its military assets to try to recover India go back to Singapore and and rebuild its Empire um Burns actually makes the incredibly prophetic statement that the best Ally that America can hope for is a rebuilt in Democratic Germany which is a remarkable thing to say in 1945. so again in my view history is not inevitable the weight of History doesn't is not deterministic people made policy choices and they made decisions about the ways they wanted to see things both in Russia and in the United States and again in other places as well there may be a trigger to starting the Cold War potsdam's not it sir great lecture um two questions on borders one first book Poland with the shifting of the borders to the west or why would the Russians Advocate such a thing when they thought Poland did not exist um post-world War one and yet who so basically who's defending the polls interest in moving the borders to the West that's a great question actually no money yeah but yeah so I'm just curious so Poland is a very complicated topic um very briefly put um there are two polish governments leading into Potsdam there is the so-called Lublin polls who are pro-soviet and the so-called London polls who are pro-allied um Churchill is so tired of the London polls that he doesn't even want them coming to Potsdam he's tired of dealing with them he just says look I wash my hands in Poland the issue of borders is an interesting one because the Border there is a border from the 1919 Paris peace conference which is called the kurzon line which is almost exactly the same border as the 1939 division of Poland that becomes known as the riventrop molotov line at Potsdam the Americans decide not to use the molotov ribbon trap line not to use the words because it insults the Soviets so they go back and they use the phrase curzonline it's almost exactly the same line obviously what the polls want is the biggest Poland that they can possibly get I think what's happening is that the Russians are saying it doesn't matter where the borders of Poland actually sit if we control the Polish government we control it so it may say Poland on the map but that doesn't really matter so what they're arguing for is an expanded Poland not for Poland's sake but if you slide Poland to the West Russia's border moves West and Poland's border moves West and that does two things it puts Soviet forces potentially closer into the heart of Europe and if you take a look at the map it eliminates Prussia so today there is no Geographic entity officially recognized as Prussia it's gone and to the Russians that's a great thing to the Americans it's a great thing right it takes that traditional heart of the state that had caused the problems for the past 30 years and it literally wipes it off the map but your point gets it gets to an absolutely important fundamental point there is really nobody arguing the case of the polls and the American ambassador to Poland wrote a book called I saw Poland betrayed he's trying to make the case for Poland and the fundamental fact is as I said if people were interested in going to war over at 1939 there is nobody interested in going to war for it six years later nobody thank you and then the second quick border question is you know the comment about how Germany was divided it sounded like primarily for reparations but at the same time there was another theory in Truman's cabinet if I understood it correctly saying that you know the Soviets the Russians are not going to leave territory that they've taken and you mentioned also that Malta was off the table well the Russians took Berlin and did anybody really think they were going to exit and was it really reparations or was it real estate the Russians already occupied that where the Border ended up so it's really interesting Anthony Eden wrote a memorandum in which he's kind of aware of that right that the Russians are sitting in these places what cards do we have to get them out right what he says is there's no way to force them out there's no way and when Patton makes his silly statement about keeping the bayonet sharp right the unanimous to sit the unanimous opinion that that guy is a general he needs to keep his mouth shut on political issues right no influence at all no one has any stomach for taking on the Russians no one especially since Japan remains undefeated and the cards that Eden sees are actually really weak cards and you know knows they're weak right you can give them some part of the merchant Fleet that they want the German Merchant Fleet that they want you could give them some scientific non-nuclear secrets that the Germans have that are in Allied possessions but there's really no instrument of power you can use to get them out of where they are on the other hand what you could do is agree a policy a mutual occupation and administration policy for Germany in the post-war world that will make all of the great Powers have skin in that game that you could do and then what that would do would keep the Germans excuse me keep the Russians at the negotiating table in other words you could have them on the outside of the inside of the tent rather than on the outside of the tent and that's really what the intent is so when they come up with this plan for reparations the idea is to keep Germany together as one administrative unit this division is done to try to figure out how to handle the reparations question it becomes a political issue after it becomes a reparations issue does that answer your question somewhat yes okay thanks final question yes sir I know the question has caused a total speculation but since pointed out and know what happened with a great change of uh uh people and Roosevelt not being there which what guesses are there as to what would have happened had uh um Roosevelt uh lived in and been in decent enough Health to have uh negotiated there so the best way I can answer that the one person who really talked about it was the guy in the far right Charles chip Bolin who was Truman's and Roosevelt's Russian translator and closest advisor on Russian matters and Bowen himself made the observation he said Truman didn't do anything differently than Roosevelt would have done he said what was different was the language Roosevelt was diplomatic and courteous Truman was much more blunt much more direct um much more willing to say tough things to the Russians but he said in terms of what American political Behavior was Bolin said there was no difference and interestingly he notes that's not because Truman is trying to copy what Roosevelt was doing it's because there were really very few options that the Americans had and to me that was one of the things about Potsdam that was so interesting there is this weight of History a weight of geopolitics over these guys that they may or may not be aware of but that is nevertheless constraining the options that they have and again the same thing is true in Great Britain so my guess is based on what Ballin observed and what some others observed even if Franklin Roosevelt had been there instead of Harry Truman not much would have come out all that differently so there would have been a cold war in either case maybe maybe not Roosevelt might have been able to steer some things in a way I don't know but um you know you're asking for what historians call a counter factual you're asking me to prove something that never happened and as I told the teachers in this institute I'm much happier doing that in a bar than I am in an academic setting thanks for your question [Applause]

Channel: US National Archives

Views: 31,118

Keywords: US National Archives, NARA

Id: aBv8MXw9CrM

Length: 63min 15sec (3795 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2015