Potsdam Conference

On 17 July 1945 the „Big Three“ – Kremlin leader Josef Stalin, US President Harry S. Truman, successor of Franklin D. Roosevelt who had died in April, as well as British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, who will be succeeded in late July by Clement R. Attlee – meet in Potsdam for a further conference to confer on the political realignment of Europe and the future fate of Germany.

© Viadrina Der Konferenztisch im Schloss Cecilienhof in Potsdam

In the „Potsdam Accord“, which is signed on 2 August and which France joins conditionally a few days later, the three statesmen agree on the democratisation, demilitarisation and denazification  („re-education“) as well as the decartelisation and decentralisation of Germany. Disagreement still exists over the future of the eastern regions of the German Reich. By his own authority Stalin had already established, before the conference, a Polish, or rather Soviet, administration in the territories east of the Oder and Lausitz Neisse. Ultimately the Western Allies grant de facto recognition to the „Oder-Neisse Line“, although a final determination of German borders is not to be made until a peace treaty ensues.

Especially momentous is the resolution (Article 13) on „relocating“ to Germany the remaining German population still in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary „in an orderly and humane manner“. That has the effect of legalising the already initiated expulsion of over twelve million people.