Yalta and Potsdam Conferences

1945

Today we will understand the

decisions made at two key conferences – Yalta

and Potsdam

Lesson starter:

Write a list of the main reasons for tension between the USA and the USSR.

• Just like Versailles after WW1, talks had to be held after WW2 to decide how to secure peace

• These were held in Yalta (USSR) and Potsdam (Germany)

• As these meetings took place, the Red Army was advancing into Eastern Europe and taking over countries to add to the USSR

• Britain and the USA were worried

The Big 3

• Churchill (UK)• Roosevelt (USA)• Stalin (USSR)

Decisions made at Yalta – Feb 1945

1. Divide Germany into four zones of military occupation

2. Give all allies access to Berlin (capital)

3. Make Germany pay reparations4. Bring Nazi war criminals to trial5. Allow free elections in Eastern Europe6. Set up a United Nations

Occupied Berlin

What happened after Yalta?

• Germany was defeated• Churchill out – new PM Clement

Attlee• Roosevelt dies – new President

Truman Attlee

Truman

Potsdam, July 1945• Same decisions from Yalta agreed• Agreement made to occupy Austria

also• Reparations would be taken by each

occupier from their own zone – but they were not allowed to endanger German lives

What happened after Potsdam?

• Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – USSR given few days notice

• Anger, mistrust, suspicion• Leads to major breakdown in

relations with USA/USSR

5 March 1946 Winston Churchill speech in Missouri, USA

• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone - Greece with its immortal glories - is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.

Stalin’s reply..• ‘’The Soviet Union’s loss of

life has been several times greater than that of Great Britain and the United States put together. The Soviet Union cannot forget them. And so what is surprising that the Soviet Union, anxious for its future safety, is trying to ensure that governments loyal to the Soviet Union should exist in these countries?’’

• Churchill’s speech called for the allies to come together against the USSR

• Churchill wanted an Anglo- American anti-Communist alliance

• At first, Truman disagreed

• By 1947 he started to change his mind

• Hiroshima Audio

• Stalin's Dictatorship

• opinions of Stalin in Russia

Independent study

Russia and the USSR textbookRead p40-41 – questions on p41Read p42-43 – questions on p43