Catalogue description Potsdam Conference 1945: United Kingdom Delegates: Records

In the aftermath of the Second World War the heads of government of the United Kingdom (Churchill), the United States (Truman) and the USSR (Stalin) met at Potsdam in Eastern Germany. The Conference was held from 17 July to 2 August 1945, when its results were made known. Following the British General Election in July Attlee replaced Churchill.

The principal decision of the Conference was to leave supreme authority in Germany in the hands of the Allied Control Council, with a charge completely to disarm and demilitarise Germany and eliminate or control her war industries. Power was to be exercised by the Allied Commanders-in-Chief, each in his own zone of occupation and jointly in matters affecting Germany as a whole (through the Control Council). Berlin was to be governed jointly by the four occupying powers. The agreement was to remain in force until a peace treaty should confirm or revise its directives.

The eastern frontier of Germany was provisionally re-drawn (pending final settlement in the peace treaty) to transfer the northern area of East Prussia, including Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), to the USSR and the rest of East Prussia and all the area lying east of the Oder and Western Neisse rivers to Polish control. On 15 October, 1947, the Saar, enlarged at the expense of German territory, voted for economic union with France, but following a plebiscite was incorporated in the Federal Republic of Germany on 1 January 1957.

The Potsdam agreement also laid down that production of goods in Germany should be limited to the amount needed to support a peace time economy and that existing capital equipment surplus to these requirements should be removed as reparations and distributed by the Inter Allied Reparations Agency among the nations who had suffered war damage, in proportion to their losses. (The proportions were fixed by the Paris Conference of November 1945). The agreement further dealt with denazification, democratization, refugees, restitution, decartelization, treatment of war criminals, etc.

The Conference also decided that a Five-Power Council of the Foreign Secretaries of the three Great Powers, France and China should be set up to draw up peace treaties with Italy and Germany's ex-satellite countries in Eastern Europe. Spain was expressly excluded from membership of the United Nations organisation. The Five-Power Council met in London from September 11 to October 2 1945 when it broke up without issuing any report at all or coming to any decision following disagreement between Molotov (USSR) and the other Foreign Secretaries on procedure.