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Admin moved page Why did the Allies struggle to resolve any meaningful issues at the Potsdam Conference in 1945? to Why did the Allies struggle to resolve any meaningful issues at the Potsdam Conference in 1945
[[File:Potsdam_conference_1945-8.jpg|thumbnail|300px|left|Seated - British Prime Minister Clement Attlee; U.S. President Harry S. Truman; Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Standing - Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, USN, Truman's Chief of Staff; British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin; U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes; Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov]]__NOTOC__
The last meeting of the "Big Three" occurred at Potsdam in July 1945, where the tension that would erupt into the cold war was evident. Despite the end of the war in Europe and the revelation of the existence of the atomic bomb to the Allies, neither President Harry Truman, Roosevelt's successor, nor Clement Atlee, who mid-way through the conference replaced Churchill, could come to an agreement with Stalin on any but minor issues.
====How should Germany be administered?====
The major issue at Potsdam was the question of how to handle Germany. At Yalta, the Soviets had pressed for heavy postwar reparations from Germany, half of which would go to the Soviet Union. While Roosevelt had acceded to such demands, Truman and his Secretary of State, James Byrnes, were determined to mitigate the treatment of Germany by allowing the occupying nations to exact reparations only from their zone of occupation. Truman and Byrnes encouraged this position because they wanted to avoid a repetition of the situation created by the Treaty of Versailles, which had exacted high reparations payments from Germany following World War One. Many experts agreed that the harsh reparations imposed by the Versailles Treaty had handicapped the German economy and fueled the rise of the NazisHitler.
Despite numerous disagreements, the Allied leaders did manage to conclude some agreements at Potsdam. For example, the negotiators confirmed the status of a demilitarized and disarmed Germany under four zones of Allied occupation. According to the Protocol of the Conference, there was to be "a complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany." All aspects of the German industry that could be utilized for military purposes were to be dismantled. All German military and paramilitary forces were to be eliminated. Finally, the production of all military hardware in Germany was forbidden.
Furthermore, German society was to be remade along democratic lines by the repeal of all discriminatory laws from the Nazi Hitler era and by the arrest and trial of those Germans deemed to be "war criminals." The German educational and judicial systems were to be purged of any authoritarian influences, and democratic political parties would be encouraged to participate in the administration of Germany at the local and state level. The reconstitution of a national German Government was, however, postponed indefinitely. The Allied Control Commission (which was comprised of four occupying powers, the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union) would run the country during the interregnum.
====German-Soviet-Polish border disagreement====
