79 years ago, at the Potsdam conference, the West was supposed to determine the future of the world after the WWII. But Stalin outsmarted everyone. A story about a victory stolen by the Kremlin (yes, weʼre hinting)

On the evening of July 17, 1945, a meeting of the heads of states of the "Big Three" of the anti-Hitler coalition — the USA, Great Britain and the USSR — began in Potsdam, near Berlin. They were supposed to resolve the controversial issues left over from the last meeting in Yalta in February 1945: what to do with defeated Germany, how to finish off the not-yet-defeated Japan as quickly as possible, in short, to finally define the post-war world order. But now the positions of the allies have fundamentally changed. Harry Truman, who entered big politics only half a year ago, replaced the deceased Franklin Roosevelt as the US president. Winston Churchill lost not only Rooseveltʼs friend and associate, but also the position of prime minister just in the midst of negotiations. He was replaced by Laborʼs Clement Attlee, frightened by his victory in the parliamentary elections. France was not invited to the negotiations at all, for which she took offense seriously and for a long time. And only Stalin not just preserved, but improved his positions. He created a social camp with puppet governments from European countries occupied by the Soviet army. Bargained considerable reparations from Germany and grabbed a piece of its territory that still belongs to Russia. It was the last meeting of the "Big Three", and soon Cold War began between yesterdayʼs allies. Babel mentions how the USSR took advantage of the inconsistency of the Western countries during the Potsdam Conference, and hints that it is not necessary to negotiate with the Kremlin.

The new US president, Harry Truman, had no political experience at the international level. He inherited the presidency as vice president after the death of the head of the White House, Franklin Roosevelt, in April 1945. The relationship between Truman and Roosevelt was not close and trusting. Trumanʼs candidacy for the position of vice president was actually imposed by the Democratic Party before the presidential election in the fall of 1944. Roosevelt did not object. After all, he ran for the fourth term in a row anyway, contrary to the unspoken American political tradition.

Truman himself did not really want to be vice president, but he agreed to the partyʼs decision. Roosevelt hardly discussed important issues with Truman, especially foreign policy. During the entire period of joint work, the president and vice president met alone only twice.

On the evening of April 12, 1945, Truman was about to share a drink with several congressmen when he was urgently summoned to the White House. There, the presidentʼs wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, reported that her husband had died of a brain hemorrhage. Truman asked if there was anything he could do for her. To which she replied: "You tell me, can we do something for you? Because now you are in even greater trouble."

In three months, Truman came to the Potsdam Conference to finally define the postwar world order together with Britain and the USSR. Truman treated the Soviet Union and its leader Stalin with more suspicion than his predecessor. He slightly delayed the meetingʼs start date in order to have a trump card up his sleeve, which, however, he found out about only after Rooseveltʼs death. On the day of the scheduled start of the Potsdam Conference, July 16, Truman was informed of the successful testing of the first atomic bomb. But at the same time, despite Churchillʼs warning, he got rid of another trump card — he withdrew American troops from territories that, according to the Yalta Conference, were considered Soviet zones of occupation. After the first meeting with the Soviet dictator, Truman confidently said: "I can deal with Stalin. Heʼs honest, but smart as hell."

Winston Churchill lost his premiership during the conference. He arrived in Potsdam against the background of the first post-war parliamentary elections. At that time, British society demanded new, already peaceful reforms, and Churchill remained the Minister of War. Conservative Party slogans such as "letʼs let Churchill finish what he started" no longer made an impression on voters. However, even their rivals — the Labor Party — were confident of Churchillʼs victory.

If Churchill had good friendly relations with Roosevelt, he only managed to exchange a few letters with the new American president. There was no question of any common position in the negotiations with Stalin. Yes, and according to the recollections of eyewitnesses from the British delegation, Churchill in Potsdam "was simply terrible — unprepared and verbose, he treated the Chinese delegation arrogantly, irritated the Americans, and unexpectedly came to the rescue of Stalin, whom, as everyone expected, he should have actively opposed."

In the midst of the negotiations, on July 26, 1945, the election results came in—Labor won a convincing victory. Churchill left the conference, and the British delegation was headed by the new prime minister, Laborʼs Clement Attlee. For him, the victory in the elections was quite a surprise. When on the same July 26 he arrived at an audience with King George VI to receive the appointment to the post of prime minister, he was embarrassed and could not utter a word for a long time. At last Attlee babbled, "I won the election." "I know, I read about it in the news," answered the king.

Joseph Stalin arrived in Potsdam a day late. And this despite the fact that he himself chose the place of the meeting, and the Soviet side dealt with all organizational issues. Being late for international meetings has already become a political asset of Stalin. Before that, he made him wait for the whole day for the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. And then in Potsdam he told everyone that he had been detained by the Chinese.

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Stalin was ready for Trumanʼs trump card with the atomic bomb. Soviet intelligence received information about the creation of an atomic bomb from the very beginning of the launch of the American nuclear program in the fall of 1941. Instead, Stalin had his own trump card. All the territories of Central and Eastern Europe that the Soviet army "liberated" from the Nazis remained under the control of the USSR. And unlike Truman, the Soviet dictator was in no hurry to withdraw his troops.

France was not invited to the conference at all. Despite the fact that according to the Yalta agreements, one of the occupation zones of Germany was to be handed over to the French. Because of such political contempt, the French leader Charles de Gaulle took offense at the British, and even more so at the Americans, seriously and for a long time. Moreover, for so long that it echoed in 1966. Then, at the height of the Cold War, de Gaulle announced that France was withdrawing from NATO, which was created in opposition to the USSR. The French returned to the Alliance after a 42-year break.

The disunity of the West was manifested already on the first question — about the fate of Germany. At the very first meeting, Churchill asked Truman within which boundaries modern Germany should be understood. The American president was taken by surprise, at first he remained silent, and then forwarded the question to the Soviet delegation. "Germany is what it became after the war. Now it is, as we say, a geographical concept," answered Stalin. Later, another phrase was added to the Soviet protocol of the meeting: "Germany does not actually exist now." After disputes, it was agreed to take the German borders as of 1937 as the starting point. But as a result of the negotiations, this territory also decreased by a quarter. For example, Stalin annexed part of the German province of East Prussia, along with its capital Königsberg. The following year, the city was renamed Kaliningrad. These German territories still remain part of Russia.

In place of the occupation zones, two German states later emerged — the capitalist FRG (West Germany) and the socialist GDR (East Germany). And in 1961, the Berlin Wall appeared between them, which divided Germany into East and West for almost thirty years.

The issues of de-Nazification and demilitarization of Germany and the tribunal on Nazi war criminals were dealt with relatively quickly. Then they started reparations. Western leaders did not want to impose heavy reparations on Germany, as after the First World War. They feared that a new Hitler would come to power in the country amid a deep economic crisis. Stalin took advantage of this and managed to get the USSR to receive 50% of the specified amount of reparations of more than $20 billion. Compensation was paid both in money and in industrial equipment — entire German factories were exported to the Soviet Union. Moreover, Stalin levied tribute on both Soviet-controlled East Germany and territories occupied by Western powers.

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In addition, he managed to exclude Poland from the distribution of German reparations. Stalin promised the Poles to allocate part of the compensation that the Soviet Union would receive later. In 1953, the communist Polish government, under pressure from the USSR, gave up money altogether. Poland returned to this issue after the fall of the communist regime, however, its disputes with Germany regarding payments continue to this day.

From the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Stalin created a social camp with puppet regimes. Although according to the plan of the West, these states were supposed to become a kind of buffer zone between the USSR and the rest of Europe. After the war, free elections were to be held there and new democratic governments were to be formed.

But everything turned out the other way around. Before the beginning of the Potsdam Conference, the Soviet army, in addition to East Germany, also occupied Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. Stalin, of course, promised to hold free elections there, but he did not withdraw his soldiers from there. So, of course, pro-Soviet parties won the election.

The example of Poland was classic in this respect. In Potsdam, Stalin managed to get the USA and Britain to recognize the pro-Soviet Government of National Unity of Poland. Large-scale Soviet propaganda was launched in the country, depicting the Red Army as "liberators" and the Western countries as "traitors" who abandoned Poland to the Nazis. The question of Polish borders has remained controversial since the Yalta Conference. Even at the beginning of the Second World War, the USSR seized the territories of Western Ukraine and Belarus, which were then part of Poland. Stalin solved this issue at the expense of Germany. Eastern German territories were handed over to the Poles, establishing a border along the Oder and Neisse rivers. In this way, the Soviet dictator killed two birds with one stone — he compensated the Poles for the loss of territories, and pushed the borders of his buffer social camp further to the west.

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Stalin suggested Truman use a nuclear bomb against the Japanese. During the Yalta Conference, Stalin promised to declare war on Japan. However, he did not do this at the beginning of the Potsdam Conference. Once on the sidelines of Potsdam, Truman hinted that the United States "has a new weapon of extraordinary destructive power." To the surprise of the American president, Stalin did not show much interest. He replied only briefly: "I hope the United States will put these weapons to good use against the Japanese." Truman actually did this four days after the end of Potsdam — on August 6, 1945, the USA dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.

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Two days later, on August 8, the USSR did declare war on Japan, despite the fact that the non-aggression pact between the states was supposed to be in effect until 1946. The next day, August 9, the United States dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Japan capitulated, and the Second World War ended. The USSR joined the international community, which criticized the use of nuclear weapons as an unnecessary show of force. And Truman had to justify it for the rest of his life.

The meeting in Potsdam was the last for the heads of states of the anti-Hitler coalition. After its completion, many disputes, primarily territorial, in different parts of the world remained unresolved. The participants agreed to resolve them at the next meeting, but it never happened. Moreover, the relations between yesterdayʼs allies quickly deteriorated and at the beginning of 1947 turned into the Cold War.

The West hoped that the newly created United Nations would resolve the disputed issues peacefully. But even here Stalin left a loophole for himself. Even at the stage of discussing the charter of the new organization in June 1945, Truman insisted on excluding the clause on the right of veto for the members of the Security Council, the only structure of the UN whose decisions were binding, but they had to be adopted by all members unanimously. However, the Soviet delegation managed to defend this point. Since then, the USSR, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, often abused the right of veto until its collapse. Now his successor, Russia, is practicing the same tactics.

Translated from Ukrainian by Anton Semyzhenko.

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