The Potsdam Conference, 1945
The Potsdam Conference, held near Berlin, July 17-August 2, 1945, was the last of the Big Three meetings during World War II. It was attended by Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, the new American president, Harry S. Truman, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain (replaced on July 28 by his successor, Clement Attlee). On July 26, the leaders issued a declaration demanding ‘unconditional surrender’ from Japan, concealing the fact that they had privately agreed to let Japan retain its emperor. Otherwise, the conference centered on postwar Europe.
The Potsdam Conference, held near Berlin, July 17-August 2, 1945, was the last of the Big Three meetings during World War II. It was attended by Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, the new American president, Harry S. Truman, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain (replaced on July 28 by his successor, Clement Attlee). On July 26, the leaders issued a declaration demanding ‘unconditional surrender’ from Japan, concealing the fact that they had privately agreed to let Japan retain its emperor. Otherwise, the conference centered on postwar Europe.
Military administration of Germany was established, with a central Allied Control Council. The leaders arrived at various agreements on the German economy, placing primary emphasis on the development of agriculture and nonmilitary industry. The institutions that had controlled the economy under the Nazis were to be decentralized, but all of Germany would be treated as a single economic unit. War criminals would be brought to trial. According to the Protocol of the Conference, there was to be “a complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany”. German society was to be remade along democratic lines by repeal of all discriminatory laws from the Nazi era.
One of the most controversial matters addressed at the Potsdam Conference dealt with the revision of the German-Soviet-Polish borders. In exchange for the territory it lost to the Soviet Union following the readjustment of the Soviet-Polish border, Poland received a large swath of German territory and began to deport the German residents of the territories in question, as did other nations that were host to large German minority populations. The negotiators at Potsdam were well-aware of the situation, and even though the British and Americans feared that a mass exodus of Germans into the western occupation zones would destabilize them, they took no action other than to declare that “any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner” and to request that the Poles, Czechoslovaks and Hungarians temporarily suspend additional deportations.
The Endgame
The atom bombs that were dropped on Japan were developed by an international body of scientists successfully test detonated the first atomic bomb in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Trinity Test was the successful conclusion to one of the largest programs undertaken by the Allies during the war: the Manhattan Project. This project was a three-year, nearly $2 billion program designed to create the first weapon that could harness the immense energy created through the fission, or splitting, of an atom.
The atom bombs that were dropped on Japan were developed by an international body of scientists successfully test detonated the first atomic bomb in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Trinity Test was the successful conclusion to one of the largest programs undertaken by the Allies during the war: the Manhattan Project. This project was a three-year, nearly $2 billion program designed to create the first weapon that could harness the immense energy created through the fission, or splitting, of an atom.
The project was placed under the authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and was run by Brigadier General Leslie Groves, However, it was J. Robert Oppenheimer, an eccentric but brilliant physicist, who provided the leadership among the civilian scientists and who would be the key figure in successfully getting the various parts of the scientific community to come together to solve the problem of constructing an atomic bomb.
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On July 27, Truman gave his final approval for the first use of the atomic bomb against a Japanese city. The target selected was the city of Hiroshima, chosen because it had some military value, including serving as a stockpile for military materials and serving as a key assembling point for Japanese troops. On August 6, three B-29s appeared in the sky over Hiroshima. One, the Enola Gay, carried the weapon, codenamed - while the other planes recorded the event. The bomb detonated close to 1,900 feet above the city, just over the Aioi Bridge, which had served as the central bombing point. A bright flash of light followed by an immense shockwave decimated the square mile of the city center under the blast, and the resulting fires caused by the bomb burned an additional 4.5 square miles of the city. An estimated 140,000 people were killed. (This estimate includes both immediate and near-term deaths resulting from the bomb.)
When Japan continued to refuse surrender and militarist influences in the Japanese vowed to fight on, a second atomic bomb, codenamed Fat Man, was dropped on the city of Nagasaki on August 9. Approximately 74,000 people were killed. (Again, this estimate includes both immediate and near term deaths resulting from the bomb.
The Imperial Cabinet, which had begun meeting prior to the bombing of Nagasaki, met to discuss the future of the war on August 9. Of the six men present, three wanted to continue fighting while three wanted to pursue negotiations with the United States. The full cabinet was then brought in, but they too were deadlocked. It was during these debates that word of Nagasaki reached Tokyo. At midnight, another meeting was held, and this time Emperor Hirohito himself was in attendance. It was Hirohito’s decision to intervene in the debate—something that the young emperor had rarely done—that broke the impasse. He told his advisors that surrender was the only option left in order to save the Japanese people. He asked all cabinet officials to sign a response to the Potsdam Declaration in which Japan surrendered, but asked that he be allowed to retain his symbolic position as head of the Japanese people.
This offer reached Washington early on the morning of August 10, and Truman, acting on the advice of those around him, accepted the terms of the surrender. On August 12, the Allies collectively accepted Japan’s surrender, with the restriction that the emperor would be held responsible for cooperative surrender, but that the ultimate political outcome for Japan lay with the will of its people.
The fighting in the Pacific and Asia, and World War II as a whole, officially came to an end on September 2, when Japanese officials signed the official surrender documents aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor. The final cost of the war in the Pacific and Asia was dear. Japanese losses neared 2.5 million while American losses approached 365,000. China much like the Soviets in Europe, suffered the largest losses, with estimates ranging between 20 and 25 million soldiers and civilians during its nearly nine-year-long war with Japan.