I finished Michael Neiberg’s, Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe. The book goes into the period which transition from Franklin Roosevelt to Harry Truman and from Winston Churchill to Clement Atlee and how the decisions reached at The Yalta Conference impacted the decisions reached from this time through Potsdam.

A common theme is drawing comparisons between the post World War I world and The Versailles Treaty and the end of World War II and how the big three in each were trying to deal with the same issues

The major issues were assigning war guilt, dealing with potential reparations, post-war boundaries, and ethnic minority issues, specifically around the creation of Poland and the prior and new boundaries of Poland after both wars.

Truman, Churchill, and Stalin are trying to avoid the failures of Versailles, which are widely believed to have spawned the Second World War, dealing with the displaced persons, e.g., Germans, Poles, and Eastern European minorities

They were also trying to how China, Italy, and France fit into the post-war leadership and European security, specifically in Western Europe.

The other major issues are getting the Soviet Union to fulfill the promise to joining the war effort against Japan, the discussion surrounding the policy of unconditional surrender and to to modify it to hasten the Japanese surrender while allowing them to save face and the impact of the atomic bomb on Japan’s surrender.

It is a great book that I rate as a five-star book and only 292 pages of reading. It is great to read such a focused book on an important subject that is still relevant today. ( )

Much has been written about the Treaty of Versailles ending the First World War, and how its harsh conditions impacted Germany and ultimately led up to the beginning of the Second World War. Fewer books appear to discuss the equally important meetings held in Potsdam which led to allied agreements at the end of WW II. The important Potsdam Conference brought American, British, and Russian leaders together to discuss the end of hostilities as the European Theater of WW II concluded.

In “Potsdam” Michael Neiberg describes the strengths and weaknesses of the personalities and positions of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, as well as end-of-war participants Harry Truman and Clement Attlee. Only Stalin had been his country’s leader throughout the War, and with the sacrifices of his nation and the penetration of his forces into eastern Germany, he was in a strong position to exert his will over eastern Europe. Neiberg describes the distrust of Stalin by Great Britain and the United States, and how that affected their post-war positions. He also provides clarity on Russia’s decision to declare war on Japan at the end of the war, and how and why Eastern Europe ultimately fell under the dominance of Russia. These important decisions had long term impacts on the future of Europe and the lead-up to the Cold War, and Neiberg’s book provides key insights into this important piece of history.
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Generally, this is an informative and quite readable book. It contains more about the diplomatic, military, and political situations in which each of the big three powers found themselves, and less about what was actually said at the conference than one might expect.
One point puzzles me. On page 166, the author makes much of Stalin's advantage of being assured that Hitler was dead and that he kept that fact a secret. But in 1972 or 73 in the auditorium of the University of Chicago Law School, the great English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper told an audience that included this reviewer that he (Trevor-Roper) as a British intelligence officer was one of the first of the Allies to go into Hitler's bunker where the body, partially burned, was still awaiting removal. He assured us that the body was identifiable and anatomically normal. If British intelligence knew, then surely the Americans did as well and Stalin was fooling no one at Potsdam. ( )

Interesting recounting of a postwar episode that has been largely forgotten, namely the Potsdam conference of July 1945, where the Big Three of Stalin, Truman and Churchill (until he was replaced by Atlee), got together and decided the fate of postwar Europe. Neiberg relates the conference very closely to its ill-fated predecessor in WWI, which brought down the disastrous Versailles Treaty that virtually guaranteed the outbreak of WWII. The participants' awareness of this and determination not to repeat the mistakes of history very much coloured the outcome at Potsdam, as Neiberg reveals. He covers in depth all the key issues discussed, including the division of Germany, reparations, the fate of eastern Europe, particularly Poland, war crimes trials, and how to prosecute the continuing war with Japan. He also shows how the Cold war divisions were beginning to open up, although there was a surprising amount of good faith and common endeavour shown between the participants. The personalities of the leaders are also clearly shown, Churchill's moroseness and erratic behaviour, Truman's earnestness and his steep learning curve, and Stalin's cat & mouse game as he endeavoured to get exactly what he wanted. There are also surprising moments of humour, as for example when Truman ordered Chopin i played at dinner because he knew Churchill disliked that composer. All in all, a very interesting book, sometimes dry but never dull. Well worth reading. ( )

Did not keep notes on impressions ( )