Potsdam Conference

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Cecilienhof, where the conference took place.

The Potsdam Conference was a meeting of representatives of the victorious Allies of World War II from July 17 to August 2, 1945.[1] It took place at the Cecilienhof, the confiscated home of Crown Prince Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, outside ruined Berlin, in the Soviet Zone of occupation.

History

Poster protesting against the illegal Oder border
Loss of German Eastern Territories after WWII

Conference

The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The three nations were represented by General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Harry S. Truman, and their foreign ministers. Following the victory of the socialists in the United Kingdom's July 1945 General Election, Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister at the conference on July 26th.

Soon after the conference it became clear that Stalin had no intension of holding up his end of negotiations. He eventually allowed for elections in Poland, but not before sending in Soviet troops to eliminate any and all opposition to the communist party in control of the provisional government. The 1947 “elections” solidified communist rule in Poland and its place as one of the first Soviet satellite states. A second conference was held from July 17 to August 2, 1945, in Potsdam, Germany. Roosevelt had died in April, so his successor, President Harry Truman, represented the United States. Churchill returned to represent Great Britain, but his government was defeated midway through the conference and newly elected Prime Minister Clement Attlee took over. Stalin returned as well. Stalin’s actions in Poland, and other parts of Eastern Europe were well known by this time, and it was clear that he was not to be trusted to hold his end of the bargain. In light of this, the new representatives from the United States and Great Britain were much more careful with their negotiations with Stalin. Truman in particular believed Roosevelt had been too trusting of Stalin, and became extremely suspicious of Soviet actions and Stalin’s true intensions.[2]

Poland's Borders

The three Allied heads agreed at the Yalta Conference that Poland’s eastern border would be the Curzon Line, as previously laid down in 1919 by the Peace Conference. In addition, at Yalta, there was a general agreement that “Poland must receive substantial accessions of territory in the North and West but the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the Peace Conference."[3]

In the east of Poland 180,000 square kilometres of territory was annexed by the Soviet Union, much of which, however, had historically been part of Lithuania and White Russia.[4] As to the claim to this loss of territory in the east, Poland had flouted international law in 1920 by invading those territories, which were now being recovered by the Soviet Union. They were not legally part of the ‘new’ Poland as laid down at Versailles (1919). Therefore the argument that Poland needed to be compensated in the west for the Russian recovery is superfluous.

At the Potsdam Conference the three heads of state agreed in principle to the transfer to the Soviet Union of the northern part of East Prussia including Königsberg. “The President of the USA and the British Prime Minister declared they would support this proposal at the Peace Settlement."[5]

The plutocratic Western Allies were then presented with Stalin's fait accompli of illegally awarding the "administration" of the eastern German provinces in the Soviet Zone of Occupation to their puppet Communist Government of Poland - being the entire area up to to the Oder and Western Neisse rivers. The Soviets were accused by the Americans of "sharp practice" and Churchill called Stalin's action "a wrong beside which Alsace-Lorraine and the Polish Corridor were trifles".[6][7][8] Poland still claims today that this was agreed at the Potsdam Conference. This is untrue. It was merely noted.

There was no agreement on any new German frontier in the east, which the conference agreed would be set aside and settled when a Peace Treaty was agreed. Byrnes wrote:

  • We specifically refrained from promising to support at the German Peace Conference any particular line as the western frontier of Poland.

The Potsdam Protocol declared: "The three heads of government reaffirm their opinion that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the [final] peace settlement." Byrnes continues:

  • In the light of this history, it is difficult to credit with good faith any person who asserts that Poland's western boundary was fixed by the conferences, or that there was a promise that it would be established at some particular place.

The German population who had their homes and farms in Germany's eastern provinces for up to 900 years and who had not fled, were now often raped, ruthlessly expelled and/or murdered, their entire properties stolen and occupied.[9][10][11][12][13] President Truman and the British delegations protested at these actions, and it was agreed at Potsdam to "suspend the expulsion of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary"[14] but ignored by the Soviets and their puppets.

Appalling murders and atrocities against civilians were being carried out in all the Soviet occupied countries.[15][16]

Until at least the late 1950s, nearly 90 per cent of Germans said "NO!" when asked if their country should recognise the Oder-Neisse line as the new border with Poland.[17]

In addition, the Soviet Union refused to recognize the accession to Germany of the Sudetenland agreed by the Great Powers on 30 September 1938, the pre-war independence of Slovakia, or the reversion of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary and instituted a reversion to the original Czechoslovak borders, illegal in international law, it now becoming a Soviet client state.

1947

As to the territories now occupied by Poland: USA Secretaries of State Byrnes (in Sept 1946) and Marshall (in April, November and December 1947) declared that while Poland should be compensated for the territories ceded to the Soviet Union, the existing status of the German territory occupied by Poland was (contrary to Soviet Union Foreign Secretary Molotov’s assertion) provisional. Only at the Moscow Meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers (April 1947) was Poland to receive southern East Prussia and Upper Silesia. (This was proposed by USA Secretary George C Marshall.) All other German territories were to be left to the future German Peace Settlement. This did not take place until 1990 (at reunification).

Potsdam Protocol

It was a conference only, and therefore ended with the issuing of a "Protocol of understanding", subject to a future Peace Conference.[18] One of the important agreements in the Protocol was that "The U.S.S.R. undertakes to settle the reparation claims of Poland from its own share of reparations."[19]

The Protocol of the Potsdam Conference suggested continued harmony among the Allies, but the deeply conflicting aims of the Western democracies on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other in fact meant that Potsdam was to be the last Allied summit conference of this kind.

See also

Further reading

  • Schieder, Professor Theodor, et al, The Expulsion of the German Population from the Territories East of the Oder-Neisse-Line, FDR Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, Bonn, West Germany, 1954.
  • Schieder, Professor Theodor, et al, The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia, Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, Bonn, West Germany, 1960, Band IV, 1 and IV, 2.
  • Turnwald, Dr. Wilhelm K., Documents on the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, Munich 1953. (German-language edition 1951)
  • Alfred-Maurice de Zayas: Nemesis at Potsdam – The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans. Background, Execution, Consequences, Revised Edition, London, Boston and Henley 1979

References

  1. ↑ Potsdam Conference, Encyclopaedia Britannica
  2. ↑ The End of WWII and the Division of Europe
  3. ↑ US Dept of State Historical Division’s Agreements Reached at the Cairo, Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences – Implementation and United States Policy, Research project No.80, September 1948, pps:12-13.
  4. ↑ Byrnes, 1947, p.80-1.
  5. ↑ US Dept of State, 1948, p.31.
  6. ↑ Balfour, Michael, Four-Power Control in Germany and Austria 1945-1946, Oxford University Press, U.K., 1956, p.78-9.
  7. ↑ Byrnes, James F., Speaking Frankly, New York & London, 1947, p.79-81. Byrnes, a Judge and former State Governor, served as a close adviser to President Truman and became US Secretary of State in July 1945. In that capacity, Byrnes attended the Potsdam Conference and the Paris Conference.
  8. ↑ Meeting at Potsdam by Charles L. Mee, New York, 1975.
  9. ↑ Schnieder, Professor Theodor, et al, The Expulsion of the German Population from the Territories East of the Oder-Neisse-Line, FDR Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, Bonn, West Germany, 1954.
  10. ↑ Krokow, Count Christian von, Hour of the Women, Germany 1988, USA 1991, London 1992, ISBN 0-571-14320-2
  11. ↑ Orderly and Humane by Professor R. J. Douglas, Yale University Press, 2012, ISBN 9-780300-198201
  12. ↑ A Terrible Revenge by Professor Alfred Maurice de Zayas, Palgrave-Macmillan, New York, 1993/4, reprint 2006, ISBN 978-1-4039-7308-5
  13. ↑ Weeds Like Us by Gunter Nitsch, Author House, Bloomington, IN., USA, ISBN 978-3-4389-3312-2
  14. ↑ US Dept of State, 1948, p/40.)
  15. ↑ Schieder, Professor Theodor, et al, editors, Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern-Central-Europe in 4 volumes, published by the West German Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, and War Victims, Bonn, 1954, 1960, 1961.
  16. ↑ Turnwald, Dr. Wilhelm K., Documents on the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, German edition 1951; English edition 1953, University Press, Munich.
  17. ↑ https://aeon.co/essays/germany-became-a-tolerant-nation-only-by-painful-small-steps
  18. ↑ https://www.cvce.eu/en/obj/protocol_of_proceedings_of_the_potsdam_conference_berlin_1_august_1945-en-a602127f-c124-4053-8db6-cf62ab16846a.html
  19. ↑ Balfour, 1956, p.87.
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