Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers

Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers PDF Author: United States. Department of State
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Potsdam Conference
Languages : en
Pages : 1846

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Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers

Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers PDF Author: United States. Department of State
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Potsdam Conference
Languages : en
Pages : 1846

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Book Description


Potsdam

Potsdam PDF Author: Michael Neiberg
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465040624
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
The definitive account of the 1945 Potsdam Conference: the historic summit where Truman, Stalin, and Churchill met to determine the fate of post-World War II Europe After Germany's defeat in World War II, Europe lay in tatters. Millions of refugees were dispersed across the continent. Food and fuel were scarce. Britain was bankrupt, while Germany had been reduced to rubble. In July of 1945, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered in a quiet suburb of Berlin to negotiate a lasting peace: a peace that would finally put an end to the conflagration that had started in 1914, a peace under which Europe could be rebuilt. The award-winning historian Michael Neiberg brings the turbulent Potsdam conference to life, vividly capturing the delegates' personalities: Truman, trying to escape from the shadow of Franklin Roosevelt, who had died only months before; Churchill, bombastic and seemingly out of touch; Stalin, cunning and meticulous. For the first week, negotiations progressed relatively smoothly. But when the delegates took a recess for the British elections, Churchill was replaced-both as prime minster and as Britain's representative at the conference-in an unforeseen upset by Clement Attlee, a man Churchill disparagingly described as "a sheep in sheep's clothing." When the conference reconvened, the power dynamic had shifted dramatically, and the delegates struggled to find a new balance. Stalin took advantage of his strong position to demand control of Eastern Europe as recompense for the suffering experienced by the Soviet people and armies. The final resolutions of the Potsdam Conference, notably the division of Germany and the Soviet annexation of Poland, reflected the uneasy geopolitical equilibrium between East and West that would come to dominate the twentieth century. As Neiberg expertly shows, the delegates arrived at Potsdam determined to learn from the mistakes their predecessors made in the Treaty of Versailles. But, riven by tensions and dramatic debates over how to end the most recent war, they only dimly understood that their discussions of peace were giving birth to a new global conflict.

The Conference of Berlin (the Potsdam Conference), 1945

The Conference of Berlin (the Potsdam Conference), 1945 PDF Author: United States. Department of State. Historical Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Government publications
Languages : en
Pages : 1980

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Six Months in 1945

Six Months in 1945 PDF Author: Michael Dobbs
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307960897
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
When Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met in Yalta in February 1945, Hitler’s armies were on the run, and victory was imminent. The Big Three wanted to draft a blueprint for a lasting peace—but instead they set the stage for a forty-four year division of Europe into Soviet and Western spheres of influence. After fighting side by side for nearly four years, their political alliance was beginning to fracture. Although the most dramatic Cold War confrontations such as the Berlin airlift were still to come, a new struggle for global hegemony had got underway by August 1945 when Truman used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Six Months in 1945 brilliantly captures this momentous historical turning point while illuminating the aims and personalities of larger-than-life political giants.

The Potsdam Conference

The Potsdam Conference PDF Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781985760134
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the conference by some of the participants *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "If we can put this tremendous machine of ours, which has made this victory possible, to work for peace, we can look forward to the greatest age in the history of mankind. That's what we propose to do." - President Harry S. Truman at a July 1945 flag-raising ceremony in Berlin Standing in history like a milestone marking the boundary between one era and the next, the Potsdam Conference brought together the leaders of the three major Allied powers - the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom - for the last time at the end of World War II and at the threshold of the Cold War. A follow up to the Yalta Conference just five months earlier, Potsdam attempted to work out the contours of the postwar world. Though it came so shortly after Yalta, the Potsdam Conference also highlighted a turnover of leadership on the world stage. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who gave his nation hope in the darkest days of World War II, had suffered a stunning defeat at the hands of the Labor candidate Clement Attlee, who replaced him towards the end of the Conference. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died prior to the meeting, leading to his replacement by the new president Harry S. Truman, a keen-minded pragmatist whose intense focus on America's advantage contrasted with Roosevelt's internationalism. Only General Secretary Josef Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, remained unchanged from the earlier summit. Destined to continue in power for another 8 years until his death (possibly at the hands of Lavrenty Beria), the Russian strongman found himself confronting a world in which the United States possessed the atomic bomb. Though the countries had often discussed Russia joining America and Britain's fight against the Japanese, it became clear at Potsdam that this was not going to happen. Instead, Stalin pleaded for help for his own country, which had been decimated by the fighting with Germany. Russia had lost more than 30,000 factories and so much farm land that the vast majority of the population was suffering from malnutrition. Stalin was also particularly concerned that the Allies might stage an invasion of Russia and overthrow his regime. While it may have seemed at the time that he was just being paranoid, it is now known that George Patton was already pushing Truman and the other world leaders to go ahead and finish the weakened Soviets off, meaning Stalin might actually have been wise to build up communist governments in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria and elsewhere. The British and Americans didn't see it that way, though. Instead, they assumed that Stalin was expanding the Soviet Union in preparation for invading Europe. The Europeans appealed to the Americans for help and with them would go on to create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. This mutual mistrust among all parties involved marked the beginning of the Cold War. The Potsdam Conference: The History of the Negotiations Between the Allies Near the End of World War II looks at the final major conference of the war and its results. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Potsdam Conference like never before, in no time at all.

The Cold War: a Very Short Introduction

The Cold War: a Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Robert J. McMahon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198859546
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Vividly written and based on up-to-date scholarship, this title provides an interpretive overview of the international history of the Cold War.

Divided, But Not Disconnected

Divided, But Not Disconnected PDF Author: Tobias Hochscherf
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845456467
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
The Allied agreement after the Second World War did not only partition Germany, it divided the nation along the fault-lines of a new bipolar world order. This inner border made Germany a unique place to experience the Cold War, and the “German question” in this post-1945 variant remained inextricably entwined with the vicissitudes of the Cold War until its end. This volume explores how social and cultural practices in both German states between 1949 and 1989 were shaped by the existence of this inner border, putting them on opposing sides of the ideological divide between the Western and Eastern blocs, as well as stabilizing relations between them. This volume’s interdisciplinary approach addresses important intersections between history, politics, and culture, offering an important new appraisal of the German experiences of the Cold War.

Grand Strategy and Military Alliances

Grand Strategy and Military Alliances PDF Author: Peter R. Mansoor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107136024
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
A broad-ranging study of the relationship between alliances and the conduct of grand strategy, examined through historical case studies.

Eight Days at Yalta

Eight Days at Yalta PDF Author: Diana Preston
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802147666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
The authoritative history of the pivotal conference between Allied leaders at the close of WWII, based on revealing firsthand accounts. Crimea, 1945. As the last battles of WWII were fought, US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—the so-called “Big Three” —met in the Crimean resort town of Yalta. Over eight days of bargaining, bombast, and intermittent bonhomie, they decided on the endgame of the war against Nazi Germany and how the defeated nation should be governed. They also worked out the constitution of the nascent United Nations; the price of Soviet entry into the war against Japan; the new borders of Poland; and spheres of influence across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Greece. Drawing on the lively accounts of those who were there—from the leaders and advisors such as Averell Harriman, Anthony Eden, and Andrei Gromyko, to Churchill’s secretary Marian Holmes and FDR’s daughter Anna Boettiger—Diana Preston has crafted a masterful chronicle of the conference that created the post-war world. Who “won” Yalta has been debated ever since. After Germany’s surrender, Churchill wrote to the new president, Harry Truman, of “an iron curtain” that was now “drawn upon [the Soviets’] front.” Knowing his troops controlled eastern Europe, Stalin’s judgment in April 1945 thus speaks volumes: “Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system.”

The Path to the Berlin Wall

The Path to the Berlin Wall PDF Author: Manfred Wilke
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382895
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
The long path to the Berlin Wall began in 1945, when Josef Stalin instructed the Communist Party to take power in the Soviet occupation zone while the three Western allies secured their areas of influence. When Germany was split into separate states in 1949, Berlin remained divided into four sectors, with West Berlin surrounded by the GDR but lingering as a captivating showcase for Western values and goods. Following a failed Soviet attempt to expel the allies from West Berlin with a blockade in 1948–49, a second crisis ensued from 1958–61, during which the Soviet Union demanded once and for all the withdrawal of the Western powers and the transition of West Berlin to a “Free City.” Ultimately Nikita Khrushchev decided to close the border in hopes of halting the overwhelming exodus of East Germans into the West. Tracing this path from a German perspective, Manfred Wilke draws on recently published conversations between Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German state, in order to reconstruct the coordination process between these two leaders and the events that led to building the Berlin Wall.