Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe

After Germany's defeat in World War II, the victorious Allies faced the daunting task of negotiating a lasting peace. On July 17, 1945, Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill gathered in Potsdam, a quiet suburb of Berlin, to discuss, as Churchill put it, "the gravest matters in the world."

Award-winning historian Michael Neiberg vividly captures the delegates' personalities: Truman, eager to escape from the shadow of the recently-deceased FDR; Churchill, bombastic and seemingly out of touch; Stalin, cunning and meticulous; and the introverted Clement Attlee, who replaced Churchill as Prime Minister after a stunning election result midway through the conference. Stalin had the strongest position; having already conquered Eastern Europe, he saw little reason to let it go. Yet Truman had an ace up his sleeve: the success of the atomic bomb test. As Neiberg shows, amid their dramatic debates over how to end the most recent war, the delegates only dimly understood that they were giving birth to a new global conflict.