The term ‘Potsdam Agreement’ refers to the decisions of the Potsdam Conference (17 July to 2 August 1945) that were finally recorded in the protocol on 2 August 1945. As the Potsdam Agreement, in the form of a protocol, was not an agreement in the sense of a treaty under international law, other terms have also come into common use. The ‘Minutes of the Negotiations of the Berlin Conference’ were originally dated 1 August, but had in fact been signed at around 0.30 am on 2 August 1945 at Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam. It was subsequently published as ‘Communications on the Berlin Conference of the Three Powers’. It was not until 24 March 1947 that the text was published as the ‘Minutes of the Negotiations of the Berlin Conference’. This was followed by the publication of the three participating states’ own conference documents.

Potsdam Communiqué; Potsdam Declaration; Potsdam Agreement; English: Potsdam Agreement; Russian: Потсдамское соглашение (Potsdаmskoe soglašenie).

As a rule, only the term ‘Potsdam Conference’ is used; officially, it was initially known as the Berlin Conference of the Three Heads of Government; English: Berlin Conference of the Three Heads of Government of the USSR, the USA and the UK; English: Potsdam Conference; Russian: Потсдамская конференция (Potsdamskaja konferencija); Russian: Берлинская конференция (Berlinskaja konferencija); English: Terminal (Allied code name for the conference).

The Potsdam Conference and the Potsdam Agreement form part of the context of the end of the Second World War in Europe and Asia, as well as the lead-up to the Cold War. Potsdam was the venue for the final war conference of the Allies (the USA, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom) in the fight against Nazi Germany and its allies, primarily Italy and Japan. Over a period of 16 days, a total of 13 meetings of the heads of state took place in Potsdam, following preparatory committee discussions and talks between the foreign ministers. The delegations were led by President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) for the USA; on the Soviet side, by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Marshal Iosif V. Stalin (1878–1953), and for the United Kingdom, initially Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) and, following his defeat at the general election, Clement R. Attlee (1883–1967).

The outcomes of the conference were agreed upon with a view to establishing a provisional arrangement pending a final peace treaty. In addition to the arrangements concerning Germany and Poland, discussions centred generally on Eastern Central and South-Eastern Europe, as well as on the immediate issues surrounding Japan’s imminent withdrawal from China. A detailed programme was agreed upon for the control of defeated Germany under an Allied Control Council. The aim of the occupation was to eliminate National Socialist and militarist organisations, both currently and in the future, and to administer Germany as a single economic entity. The political decision with arguably the greatest impact on the global economy had already been taken in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference. The economic consequences of the Potsdam Conference for Germany were nevertheless enormous, though they were also much more varied in terms of both time and geography. The victorious powers were still acutely aware of the problems caused by the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. The decentralisation of the German economy therefore primarily served to support demilitarisation. In accordance with the economic principles of the Potsdam Agreement, all goods that could be used for the arms industry were to be controlled. Demilitarisation was thus able to target the entirety of Germany’s military and arms-industry potential. From an organisational perspective, this included the dismantling of economic cartels.

Freedom of the press, freedom of religion and the right to form trade unions were granted as a matter of principle. Denazification was to be linked to making it clear to the German people that they themselves had brought about the military defeat and its associated consequences. Members of the former NSDAP and its organisations were to be removed from public office and key private-sector companies and replaced by reliable, untainted personnel. Plans were also made to denazify the education and legal systems. The elite of Nazi officials was to be arrested and temporarily interned. Military tribunals were to be established to investigate war crimes and bring those responsible to justice.

With the end of hostilities in Europe, the USA had halted aid deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease programme without a transitional arrangement. The provisional resolution of reparations issues in favour of the Soviet Union subsequently enabled it to agree to the establishment of the United Nations. Each victorious power was to settle reparations issues independently, primarily within its own occupation zone. This concerned goods and equipment, but also industrial facilities. For the Soviet Union, which had suffered particularly from the consequences of the German occupation and heavy civilian casualties, an additional ten per cent of movable industrial capital was to be paid as a lump-sum payment, and five per cent as compensation in goods from the Western zones. The Western Allies retained sole entitlement to captured gold reserves. During the conference, questions regarding the Soviet Union’s waiver of reparations from the Western zones were also linked to the political recognition of the new borders in Eastern Europe.

Stalin had already asserted his influence over the future Poland at Yalta, following which the Lublin Committee was established in July 1944 and the Provisional Government of National Unity under Soviet auspices in June 1945, whilst relations with the London government-in-exile had been severed by Moscow in April 1943, following the discovery of mass graves of Polish officers, including those at Katyn. A few days before the Potsdam Conference, the USA and Great Britain withdrew their diplomatic recognition of the Polish government-in-exile. Against this backdrop, the territorial configuration of Poland, its borders and inhabitants – as well as, implicitly, Poland’s political self-determination – became a political issue over which the legitimate Polish government-in-exile could exert little influence. Although the declarations of the Potsdam Conference promised Poland ‘free and democratic elections’ and stated that all Poles in exile should soon be able to return, these principles could not be monitored, let alone enforced by the Western Allies, within the Soviet sphere of influence.

It was further agreed that the German population in Poland – which had now been shifted westwards – as well as in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, should be resettled ‘in an orderly and humane manner’ into the four occupation zones of Germany.^[1] The People’s Republic of Poland was awarded the German territories east of the Oder and Neisse rivers up to the southern part of East Prussia, as well as the territory of the Free City of Danzig/Gdańsk, which had existed until 1939. The Soviet Union claimed the northern part of East Prussia, including the city of Königsberg/Kaliningrad, for itself. For Stalin, this was not a matter for negotiation.

The territory of the former Greater German Reich was occupied, though Austria was accorded a special status. The Soviet-British agreements of 1944 on the division of the Balkans into spheres of influence had been exploited by the Soviet Union in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. It was only in Greece that Britain was initially able to assert its influence. A kind of British-Soviet parity emerged in Yugoslavia. In reality, however, wherever Soviet troops were present as an occupying force in the Balkans, the question of power had been settled in Stalin’s favour and was not subject to further negotiation.

The Council of Foreign Ministers was established as a future consultative body to continue resolving issues between the Allies and to prepare the peace treaties to be concluded. However, in 1946, peace treaties were negotiated only for Italy, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary and Romania.^[2] In the process, issues concerning these states’ future membership of the United Nations were also resolved. Initially, it was assumed that the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China would be represented on the Council of Foreign Ministers. However, China took part only once, in the autumn of 1945. The meetings continued until 1947 and, during the Cold War, were resumed in Berlin and Geneva following the Stalin notes of 1952 on matters relating to German policy, continuing until 1959.

Overall, the conference demonstrated that the US, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom were initially still able to act in unison on key issues. Further topics were discussed, including specific issues relating to Iran, the Moroccan city of Tangier, the Middle East and access to the Black Sea, some of which were also recorded in the minutes. The Spanish government under the dictator Francisco Franco (1892–1975) was to be barred from becoming a member of the United Nations in future due to its support for the so-called Axis powers, Germany and Italy, during the war. Issues relating to the war in the Pacific were not explicitly on the conference agenda, but were discussed on the sidelines. One exception was the ‘Potsdam Declaration’ issued by the USA, the United Kingdom and China on 26 July 1945, which briefly dominated coverage of the conference. In it, the Japanese government was called upon either to surrender or to bear the responsibility for total destruction. At that time, Japanese troops in Manchuria still posed an obstacle to a swift end to the war. Even during the talks in Yalta, Stalin had therefore secured a guarantee of future Soviet influence in China and Mongolia as the price for entering the war in Asia. Added to this were planned annexations at Japan’s expense. It was only after the conference had ended and the first atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 that the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 8 August.^[3]

As early as 9 August 1945, US President Truman informed the American public of the results of the Potsdam Conference in a radio address. Truman explained the decision to accept reparations in the form of goods by citing the lessons learnt from the mistakes of the Treaty of Versailles, under which money had been lent to Germany to enable it to pay financial reparations. Truman explained the preferential treatment accorded to the Soviet Union in the reparations by pointing to the sheer scale of German armaments industries in the western occupation zones. Truman justified the transfer of northern East Prussia to the Soviet Union on the basis of an agreement that had already been reached at Yalta, and on the grounds that it provided the Soviet Union with an ice-free harbour at Germany’s expense. He explained the transfer of the German eastern territories to Poland by citing the aim of creating a ‘more homogeneous nation’ and the advantage of a border that would be easier to defend.^[4] However, the associated expulsion of the Germans was not part of the President’s speech.

The outcomes of the Potsdam Conference continue to have an impact well into the 21st century. Despite its provisional nature in 1945, the Potsdam Agreement, viewed in retrospect, became – particularly for Germany and Poland – a virtually constitutive cornerstone of state development throughout the decades of the Cold War. Above all, the territorial status quo of the Potsdam Agreement was further expanded, through the CSCE, to form the basis of a European understanding that continues to have an impact to this day.

For decades, the Potsdam Conference was inextricably linked to questions regarding the finality of the loss of the eastern territories and the nature of the associated forced migration. Whilst the Potsdam Agreement held out the prospect of a final peace settlement, it did not provide for explicit negotiations on borders. Northern East Prussia, including the city of Königsberg, had in fact already been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945, as this dividing line had already been designated in the Potsdam Agreement as the western border of the Soviet Union. This gave the area a special status, which still gave rise to speculation in some media as late as 1990, since the matter had not in fact been negotiated at Potsdam, where it had been presented as a fait accompli by the Soviet Union. Southern East Prussia and the German territories east of the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse, on the other hand, were placed under Polish administration; however, it was evident that this was not intended merely as a temporary measure.

In the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German question was closely linked to the fate of the displaced persons from the eastern territories, which held particular potential for domestic political conflict. For the Germany policy of the respective Federal Governments, the question of the eastern territories also remained an obstacle to rapprochement with the GDR and the Soviet Union right up until the 1970s. Whilst the GDR resolved this issue under Soviet pressure in the Görlitz Border Treaty with Poland of 6 July 1950, it was not until the Eastern Treaties and the ‘Letter on German Unity’ associated with the Moscow Treaty of 1970 that the status quo of the Potsdam Agreement was confirmed as the starting point for new peaceful relations. Together with the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), this formed an important basis for the possibility of a policy of détente. The Two Plus Four Treaty and the 1990 Charter of Paris finally brought an end to the long provisional status of the Potsdam Agreement. The eastward enlargement of the European Union since 2004 has even opened up new possibilities for coexistence under a European umbrella.

The question of the binding nature and inviolability of Poland’s western border shaped political, journalistic and academic controversies for years, with all parties involved invoking the wording of the Potsdam Agreement, albeit drawing different conclusions. The assumption that the Oder–Neisse border had not yet been definitively settled, subject to a future peace treaty, was confirmed, amongst other things, by the Federal Constitutional Court.^[5] However, statements made by the Allies during and, above all, after the Potsdam Agreement, as well as the new realities resulting from the resettlement or expulsion of the German population from Eastern Central Europe and the subsequent resettlement of, for example, Poles and Czechs in those areas, contradicted these views. In this context, it was usually overlooked that the spheres of interest negotiated as early as 1939 between the German Reich and the Soviet Union at the expense of the Republic of Poland and the Baltic states had already created a fait accompli which, after 1945, at the instigation of the Soviet Union, became linked as a package deal to a westward shift of Poland’s borders. Furthermore, in the shadow of these consequences of the war, the Soviet annexations in the Baltic states and on the Black Sea were no longer even discussed. The westward shift of Poland’s borders had also been decided by the Allies not only at Potsdam, but as early as Yalta. From the US perspective, adhering to this decision appears to have been a precondition for the success of the Potsdam Conference: ‘Free Poland was sacrificed as a concession in advance of Potsdam’.^[6] By linking the issues of Poland’s western borders with those of the Soviet Union, not only were future German-Polish relations strained for the foreseeable future, but the Soviet Union was also able to act as Poland’s ‘guarantor power’ right up until the Eastern Treaties were signed. The fact that this could also serve as diplomatic leverage towards the East was demonstrated by the respective treaties concluded by the German states – the Treaty of Görlitz in 1950 and the Treaty of Warsaw in 1970, both of which were also concluded in the interests of the Soviet Union – and, finally, even by the (all-German)-Polish Border Confirmation Treaty of 14 November 1990.

The Potsdam Agreement was long a subject of controversy due to the resettlement and forced migration of millions of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and members of other ethnic groups. The causes of forced resettlements after 1945 were not solely attributable to the Potsdam Conference. However, they were politically legitimised by it and could be attributed to it by the parties involved. Recent research has examined the impact of national population policies in Eastern Europe. For example, Operation Vistula (Polish: Akcja Wisła), involving the resettlement of ethnic Ukrainians, Bojkos (Polish: Bojkowie) and Lemkos (Polish: Łemkowie) to former German eastern territories, revealed dimensions that extended beyond German-Polish relations and the politically pragmatic decisions of the Potsdam Agreement.^[7]

• Wolfgang Benz: Potsdam 1945. Occupation and Reconstruction in Four-Zone Germany. Munich 2012.
• Wolfgang Benz (ed.): The Expulsion of the Germans from the East. Causes, Events, Consequences. Frankfurt am Main 1995.
• Włodzimierz Borodziej: The History of Poland in the 20th Century. Munich 2010.
• Ernst Deuerlein: Rhetoric or a Temporary Truce? The Potsdam Conference of 1945. Stuttgart 1970.
• Richardson Dougall et al. (eds.): The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference). 1945. 2 volumes. Washington D.C. 1960 (= Foreign Relations of the United States. Diplomatic Papers).
• Gerhard Kegel: A Quarter of a Century Onwards. The Potsdam Agreement and What Became of It. East Berlin 1970.
• Jochen Laufer: Pax Sovietica. Stalin, the Western Powers and the German Question 1941–1945. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2009 (= Contemporary Historical Studies, 46).
• Charles L. Mee: Meeting at Potsdam. New York 1975.
• Wilson D. Miscamble: From Roosevelt to Truman. Potsdam, Hiroshima and the Cold War. New York 2007.
• Krzysztof Miszczak: Declarations and Realities: Relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the (People’s) Republic of Poland from the Signing of the Warsaw Treaty to the Agreement on Good Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation (1970–1991). Munich 1993.
• Michael Neiberg: Potsdam. The End of the Second World War and the Remaking of Europe. New York 2015.
• Heiner Timmermann (ed.): Potsdam 1945. Concept, Tactics, Mistake? Berlin 1997 (= Documents and Papers of the European Academy Otzenhausen, 81).
• The Potsdam Conference. Edited by Gisela Biewer. Kriftel 1992 (= Documents on German Policy, Series II/Volume 1).
• The Potsdam Agreement 1945–2015. Legal Significance and Historical Implications. Edited by Christoph Koch, Frankfurt am Main 2017.
• The Potsdam Conference 1945. The Reorganisation of the World. Edited on behalf of the Directorate-General of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg by Jürgen Luh, in collaboration with Truc Vu Minh and Jessica Korschanowski. Potsdam 2020.
• Gregor Schöllgen: A History of World Politics from Hitler to Gorbachev, 1941–1991. Munich 1996.
• David McCullough: *Truman*. New York et al. 1992.

A two-volume collection of documents from the Office of the Historian of the US Department of State on the Potsdam Conference:

Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, The Conference of Berlin. The Potsdam Conference, 1945, Volumes I and II (including the minutes containing the text of the Potsdam Agreement)

URL: history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv01

URL: history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02

URL: history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1383

‘Potsdam Declaration’ by the USA, the United Kingdom and China, 26 July 1945:

Proclamation by the heads of government of the United States, China and the United Kingdom. In: Truman Library Institute. Personal Papers. Rose A. Conway Papers, S. F. 1943–1980. President Truman’s Travel Logs. 1945. Log of President Harry S. Truman’s Trip to the Berlin Conference, C-1–C-2, pp. 177–118.

URL: www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/personal-papers/subject-file-1943-1980/president-trumans-travel-logs-1945?documentid=NA&pagenumber=117 (18 December 2021).

Radio address by US President Harry S. Truman to the American people on the Potsdam Conference, 9 August 1945:

Harry S. Truman, Radio Report to the American People on the Potsdam Conference. In: Truman Library and Institute. Public Papers.

URL: www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/97/radio-report-american-people-potsdam-conference

(18 December 2021).

Heiner Bröckermann: The Potsdam Agreement. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2022. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32743 (accessed 16 February 2022).