Potsdam and Its Legends
Author(s): Robert Cecil
Source: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 46, No.
3 (Jul., 1970), pp. 455-465
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs
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POTSDAM AND ITS LEGENDS
Robert Cecil
IN popular estimation Potsdam is not tainted with the obloquy attaching
to the Yalta conference, which took place some five months
earlier. Yalta, in the eyes of some critics on both sides of the Atlantic,
has associations with betrayal and dishonour similar to those evoked
by the 1938 Munich agreement; Potsdam is regarded as no more than
another unsuccessful East-West confrontation.
It is not, at first sight, apparent why this should be so. It is true that
Yalta marked a decisive stage in the process by which Europe east of a
line drawn from the Baltic to the Adriatic passed into the Communist
sphere. On the other hand, it was clear to some observers then-and
must now be clear to nearly all-that, as J. L. Snell puts it, ' the power
vacuum in Eastern Europe was already being filled by the Red Army '.
It would have been unthinkable for the Western Powers to have turned
against their Soviet ally before the war in Europe was ended, to say
nothing of the war in the Far East. However, if we conclude that Eastern
Europe was lost at Yalta, we need not also assume that at Potsdam the
unity of Germany could no longer be saved. The partial loss of Germany
was, indeed, far more serious than that of Eastern Europe, since
Germany was the only country capable of acting as a barrier to Soviet
expansion westward. With the unity of Germany was lost the chance to
re-establish the balance of power in Europe; instead there is East-West
polarity, based on the partition of Germany. In default of European
security, we have only the modalities of co-existence.
* * *
The reasons why the verdict on Yalta has been harsher than on Poitsdam
are to be found in Washington and Paris. Even before his death,
President Roosevelt had been the object of a persistent vendetta on the
part of right-wing Republicans, who were out to destroy the Roosevelt
myth, described as follows by Professor W. H. McNeill: 'The myth was
an optimistic one. Roosevelt repeatedly said, and apparently fully
believed, that when once victory had been won ... an era of international
peace, prosperity, freedom and justice could be inaugurated, and surely
would be, if men of goodwill strove manfully to that end'.2 Striving
1 J. L. Snell, Dilemma over Germany (New Orleans: Hauser. 1959), p. 157.
2 W. H. McNeill, Survey of International Affairs (1941-46)-America, Britain and
Russia (London: Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International
Affairs. 1953), p. 760.
455
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456 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
manfully to keep on good terms with St
war got under way, to look very like app
said after the Yalta conference, 'We rea
this was the dawn of a new day '.3 When th
American public began to look around f
possible to accuse Roosevelt of treason,
much the same object by accusing Alger
of the Yalta delegation. Much of the hy
cold war, when it was better to be dead
neutrality with immorality, has evapora
ing Yalta remains.
General de Gaulle's motives for execrating the memory of Yalta are
different and in some ways simpler: he was not there. Although he was
also absent from Potsdam, this seems to rankle less. At Potsdam, he
tells us in his War Memoirs, 'it was a matter of concluding with Stalin
what had been proposed at Teheran and decided at Yalta in regard to
Germany, Poland, Central Europe and the Balkans. The Americans and
British hoped to recover in practice what they had conceded in principle.
. . '. Yalta may, indeed, have decided the fate of Eastern Europe;
but the fate of Germany remained open. I shall examine later what
degree of responsibility for the end result can be assigned to the General.
For his part, he has continued to wash his hands in public. According
to the statement made at his press conference in September 1968, even
the recent Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia can be traced back to Yalta.
If, with apologies to General de Gaulle and the late Senator Joseph
McCarthy, one may nevertheless consider Yalta as having done little
more than register the conclusions from certain unpalatable facts, the
question arises whether the same should not be said about Potsdam. In
respect of the frontier with Poland, this would probably be a fair judgment.
Sir Winston Churchill in the final pages of Triumph and Tragedy
has tried to convince us that, on the contrary, but for his rude rejection
by the electorate, he might yet have accomplished something better. He
refers to the ' ideas and plans I had in view, namely, to have a showdown
at the end of the Conference and, if necessary, to have a public
break rather than allow anything beyond the Oder and the Eastern
Neisse to be ceded to Poland'.5 It is magnificent, but it is not history.
Poland was already in occupation of Germany east of the Oder and
Western Neisse; what was done at Potsdam was to register this fact and
to defer legal recognition of it until a peace settlement. An open break
3 R. E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Harper. 1948), p. 870.
4 Charles de Gaulle, War Memoirs-Vol. 3, Salvation (1944-46) (London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson. 1960), p. 199.
5 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War-Vol. 6, Triumph antd Tragedy (London:
Cassell paperback. 1964), p. 303.
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POTSDAM AND ITS LEGENDS 457
would have changed nothing; it would m
onrush of the cold war. No one knew better
remaining bargaining counters had been g
Powets ever got to the conference table
decided to withdraw American troops fr
deep in the Russian Occupied Zone and in
nition of the new Polish government-a
time when the UN was being constituted
before the conference began.
There is also a psychological reason wh
Churchill, even if he had been re-elected,
tion to Stalin to the limit. In the summer
only too likely to occur in a democracy, h
tative political judgment and public opini
in what direction events were moving, o
true in the United States. Mr. Byrnes has
attitude of the people of the U.S. toward
diately following the German surrender
U.S.S.R. then had in the U.S. a deposit of
greater, than that of any other country'*6
means always agreed with his Secretary
on this. It was not until January 1946 t
expressive way, 'I'm tired of babying the
official and public opinion could have
speeches on the lines of that delivered in
souri, by Churchill; but to have made su
summer of 1945 would not only have resu
ing victory for the Labour Party, but would
sification of East-West friction that the W
The great experiment of trying to live with
Besides achieving nothing to the purpo
Churchill and Stalin in the summer of 19
impaired-at least temporarily-the funda
hoped that the post-war world would be
tinuing Anglo-American alliance, as firm
Churchill, unlike Roosevelt and Hull, pla
the UN; it was the solidarity of the Angl
it does not look as if he had much to wo
accustomed to America's predominant ro
implicit in the preponderance of Soviet p
6 James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (London:
7 Harry S. Truman, Memoirs-Vol. 1, Year of
1955), p. 552.
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458 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
in the war-time 'Big Three' conferenc
often as not, mid-way between Britain a
intransigence that put the 'Roosevelt m
the 'unreconstructed ' British die with
May, James Forrestal recorded a conv
shortly before the latter's departure
expressed the view that, 'it was of vital importance that we not be
manoeuvred into a position where Great Britain had us lined up with
them as a bloc against Russia to implement England's European
policy '.8
Truman learnt fast, but in the period immediately before Potsdam
he was still very much under Roosevelt's influence. He opposed a preliminary
meeting with Churchill on the ground that Stalin would regard
this as 'ganging up on him ', and he further tried Churchill's patience by
sending to see him the egregious Joseph E. Davies to expound American
policy and to explain why Truman thought a preliminary meeting with
Stalin would be more profitable. Truman explains in his memoirs that
it would have been a social meeting and it was his 'intent to discuss no
business with either him or with Stalin separately '.9 Churchill succeeded
in dissuading Truman, who found out at Potsdam how difficult it was to
stop Soviet leaders from talking business, if they wanted to. Truman
recounts how on July 29, after Churchill had left the conference,
Molotov came to see Byrnes and himself to explain that Stalin had a
cold and would not be able to attend the scheduled plenary meeting; but
conversation did not stop there, and before long Byrnes had tried out on
Molotov his proposal that the U.S.S.R. should receive as reparations
25 per cent. ' of the total equipment considered available from the
Ruhr'. Truman adds, 'We informed the British of the talk when Prime
Minister Attlee, Mr. Bevin and Sir Alexander Cadogan called . . . later
that day '.7 Nonetheless, it was unusual to have made in a two-sided
conversation outside the Three-Power conference a radical proposal
concerning one of the most contentious issues, especially as the Ruhr
was located in the British zone of occupation.
* * *
Reparati
the frail
deal with
Although
he must
8 Forresta
9 Truman, op. cit., p. 262.
10 Truman, op. cit., p. 402.
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POTSDAM AND ITS LEGENDS 459
indefinitely resist his demand for something approaching 50 per cent. of
the total. American cancellation of Lend-Lease and failure to reply to
the Soviet enquiry about a post-war loan no doubt hardened his determination.
In any case, his decision in May to abandon his earlier insistence
on dismemberment of Germany must have been predicated largely
on his hope of receiving reparations from the whole of Germany, and of
sharing in Four-Power control of the Ruhr. Here, again, the July 'Big
Three' meeting disappointed him, without finally demolishing his
expectations. The British and Americans refused to discuss control of
the Ruhr on the ground that the French were not present. They also
refused to agree to a specific amount of reparations, such as Stalin had
requested, and eventually arrived at a percentage formula based on that
put by Byrnes to Molotov on July 29. Of the surplus industrial equipment
of the Western zones 25 per cent. was to be transferred to the
U.S.S.R., of which 15 per cent. was to be bartered against food and raw
materials from the Russian zone. The balance of 10 per cent. was
intended to meet the Soviet demand for 50 per cent. of the whole, since
it was assumed that 40 per cent. of German industrial equipment was
already located in the Russian zone.
There were two jokers in this pack which, as can be seen in retrospect,
were fatal to German unity. The first was the provision that each
occupying Power would take its reparations (or in the Soviet case the
bulk of its reparations) from its own zone. The second was that the
percentages were meaningless until the Four-Power Allied Control Council
had decided what was to be the permitted level of German industry
and therefore how much surplus plant was available for delivery as
reparations. It took until March 1946 for the Control Council to make
up its mind; the cold war was by that date casting its long shadow, and
in May General Clay suspended delivery of reparations from the U.S.
zone in despair at the refusal of the Russians to allow westward movement
of the produce of their zone, or to give any account of eastward
removals. For neither the Russians nor the French had awaited the
decision of the Control Council before beginning to take reparations
from their zones. Indeed, the Russians had begun to remove 'war
booty' long before the Potsdam conference met.
Disparity in the economic treatment of the different zones of occupation
was inherent in the Potsdam decision on reparations. It was aggravated,
but not caused, by the subsequent refusal of the Russians and
French to permit inter-zonal movement of Germans and of goods. It is
fruitless to speculate whether unity could have been maintained if the
Western Powers had agreed to a specific figure for reparations, instead
of percentages of an indeterminate whole, and if the Americans had
continued Lend-Lease to the U.S.S.R. and had granted the large, lowThis
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460 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
interest loan recommended by Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury,
Henry Morgenthau. All that can be said with some assurance is that, in
the long run, the bill paid by the American tax payer would have been
less than the cost of the European Recovery Programme, not to mention
that of maintaining troops in Germany for a quarter of a century. But,
as Truman wrote in his memoirs, 'There was one pitfall I intended to
avoid. We did not intend to pay . . . the reparations bill for Europe'. 1
American insistence on this point and Soviet persistence in demanding
the extravagant amount of $10 billion made the division of Germany
inevitable.
* * *
These flaws in the Potsdam agreement did not become immediately
apparent. On the other side of the ledger were provisions to encourage
advocates of German unity; it was agreed to treat Germany as 'a single
economic unit' and to set up 'certain essential central German administrative
departments . . . particularly in the fields of finance, transport,
communications, foreign trade and industry '.2 It was for the Allied
Control Council to put flesh on these dry bones; but it was in the
Control Council that de Gaulle was able to avenge his exclusion from
Yalta and Potsdam. The French consistently vetoed all proposals
designed to treat Germany as one unit, political or economic, and, in
particular, they refused to agree to the establishment of central departments,
without which uniform administration could not have been
achieved. Stalin seems to have had a premonition of this, when he told
Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta that de Gaulle should be content with
the grant of a French occupation zone and should not be given equal
authority in the Allied Control Council. But, in Hopkins' words,
'Winston and Anthony fought like tigers for France . Their victory
was short-lived. It is conceivable that, if he had been at Potsdam, de
Gaulle could have been brought, by coercion of conciliation, to agree to
economic unity in some form. A firm offer of the Saar, for example,
might have tempted him. Nor were means of coercion lacking; that was
certainly the Soviet view. General Clay recounts how, 'On several
occasions my Soviet colleague suggested to me that France was receiving
too much financial assistance from the U.S. to maintain such strong
opposition unless it was with our acquiescence . French intransigence
thus had the further ill effect of contributing to worsening relations
between the Americans and the Russians, who mistakenly believed they
knew a satellite when they saw one.
11 Truman, op. cit., p. 323.
12 Selected Documents on Germanzy (London: H.M.S.O. Cmnd. 1552 of 1961
13 Sherwood, op. cit., p. 858.
14 L. D. Clay, Decision in Germ-aany (London: Heinemann. 1950), p. 3g.
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POTSDAM AND ITS LEGENDS 461
No less an authority than Charles Bohlen is credited by Clay with the
comment that 'the French saved us by their early veto actions .15 There
is, of course, no doubt that, if central administrative departments had
been set up in Berlin in 1945, as envisaged by the Potsdam agreement,
the Russians would have exploited them in their attempt to create a
Communist Germany. It does not follow, however, that they would have
succeeded. All that can be said with certainty is that, without such
departments, unity could not in practice have been maintained, even if
all four Powers had wished it. That France did not wish it was made so
plain in French reservations immediately after the conference that some
legal authorities express doubt whether France can be regarded as a
party to the agreement; but to have renounced it in toto might have
brought into question the propriety of acceptance by France of her zone
of occupation. In practice, the French took possession of their zone,
whilst rejecting the basis on which the other three occupying Powers had
agreed-at least on paper-to operate. In his War Memoirs de Gaulle
observes that at Potsdam 'Stalin had agreed to no compromises of any
kind'.16 He fails to add that in the Allied Control Council France also
declined to compromise, with results that extinguished the last faint
hope of German unity, even before the full blast of the cold war had
developed. This defiant policy continued for some time after de Gaulle's
retirement from the scene in January 1946.
* *
Potsdam, like Yalta, soon began to acquire its aura of legend. The
Western legend gradually took the form of ignoring early French intransigence
and concentrating on the Soviet refusal to pool the resources of
their zone, and adopt a common export-import policy. It is of some
interest to follow the development of this line as the West, including
France, drew closer together in the blizzards of the cold war. On May
15, 1947, Mr. Bevin was prepared to be frank with the House of Commons:
'We agreed at Potsdam to central administrations in certain
fields, and we have been anxious to operate this agreement ever since....
France, who was not present at Potsdam, could not agree . '. . On
June 30, 1948, with the European Recovery Programme under way and
the blockade of Berlin beginning, this became: 'The Potsdam Agreement
was reached on the assumption that there would be economic and
political unity in Germany, but this was never operated by the Soviet
Union'.:18 By 1952 this negative assessment became a positive one on
the lips of Anthony Eden, introducing the Bonn Conventions to the
15 Ibid., p. 131.
16 De Gaulle, op. cit., p. 200.
17 Selected Documents, op. cit., p. 85.
18 Ibid., p. 110.
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462 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
House: ' The Potsdam Agreement as a whole was never carried out.
They (the Russians) made the economic unity of Germany impossible by
their actions in the Eastern Zone '.1' Afterwards, public and official
references to Potsdam in the West became rare; it was -better to allow the
legend to take over. Indeed, little remained of Potsdam on either side of
the Iron Curtain, except the 'common responsibility for settlement of
the German question and the reunification of Germany', as it was
expressed in the directive of the four Heads of Government to their
Foreign Ministers after the 1955 Summit Conference at Geneva.20
Legends soon acquired currency on the Soviet side also. Some of
these have been examined in a recent book by Jens Hacker,21 which is
particularly useful in that it provides, in German, examples of Soviet,
East German and, in certain instances, Polish comment. One of the
earliest and most persistent legends east of the Elbe was to the effect
that the Polish-German frontier had been finally determined at Potsdam;
a statement to this effect found its way into the preamble of the 1950
Treaty between Poland and the German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.).
That the Poles have never really believed it is illustrated by the fact that
they are currently pursuing Oder-Neisse talks with Bonn. Another
myth was that Potsdam had authorised collection of reparations from
current German production. At some point during 1946 it was realised
in the Kremlin that the occupation of Germany would be a long one,
and that it was in any case more efficient to produce in Germany goods
for reparations, instead of dismantling plant in the hope of being able to
re-erect it and operate it in the U.S.S.R. The new policy, sometimes associated
with Mikoyan as Minister of Foreign Trade, found expression in
Molotov's demand at the Paris Council of Foreign Ministers in May
1946 that the permitted level of German industry should be raised. More
tangibly, it led in October 1946 to the establishment in the Russian Zone
of Soviet-German joint companies (SAG). Reparations continued to be
exacted at least until the end of 1953, when the burden was officially
lifted. Estimates of the value of deliveries up to that date vary widely.
Ulbricht, for one, has declared himself in no doubt that the total includes
deliveries on which the Western zones defaulted; he therefore regards
the G.D.R. as having footed the bill for all Germany, and as having a
corresponding claim against the Federal German Republic. This rich
vein of controversy will presumably be exploited at some appropriate
time in the future.
At Geneva in 1955, as we have seen, Khrushchev recommitted himself
to the principle of Four-Power settlement of the German question;
19 Ibid., p. 165.
20 Ibid., p. 221.
21 Jens Hacker, Sowjetunion und DDR zum Potsdamer Abkommen. (Cologne: Verlag
Wissenschaft und Politik. 1969. 176 pp. Bibliog. Index. DM 26.)
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POTSDAM AND ITS LEGENDS 463
but in subsequent years he moved further and further away from the
reality of the Potsdam agreement, whilst frequently invoking it. He
began to separate the signature of a peace treaty, which he continued to
regard as a Four-Power responsibility, from reunification, which had
become, in his view, a matter for the two Germanies. It is clear, however,
that at Potsdam none of the Powers envisaged signing treaties with
two German states; on the contrary, the agreement foresaw acceptance
of the final treaty by a single German 'when a Government adequate
for the purpose is established'*22 Undeterred by this discrepancy,
Khrushchev proceeded to baise himself on the Potsdam agreement in confronting
the West with the most serious German crisis since the end of
the Berlin blockade. In a major speech on November 10, 1958, he accused
the Western Powers of having violated practically every clause of the
agreement and concluded: 'What then is left of the Potsdam agreement?
One thing, in effect: the so-called Four-Power status of Berlin '.23 Later
that month, in Notes to the Western allies, he denounced the agreements
of 1944 and 1945, on which occupation of the Berlin sectors was founded,
and threatened to confer upon the G.D.R. the obligations inherited
under these agreements unless within six months the Four Powers could
reach a solution of the Berlin question on his terms. To follow the
Berlin dispute further would lead us too far from the Potsdam agreement;
it is enough to point out that it makes no mention of Berlin, except
as the seat of the Allied Control Council and other Four-Power organs.
* * *
Se-tting legend aside, what has survived of the Potsdam agreement,
which purported to lay down guide-lines for the administration of
Germany and, through the Council of Foreign Ministers, for the conclusion
of a treaty of peace? The answer is: virtually nothing, except
certain limitations on the sovereignty of the German states set up on
either side of the border between them. The Western Powers, in ending
their occupation regime in the Federal German Republic, reserved their
'rights and responsibilities ' in relation to ' the reunification of Germany
and a peace settlement'. In addition, the Federal Republic has solemnly
undertaken not to seek by force the reunification of Germany or the
alteration of its de facto frontiers. On the G.D'.R. side there is also a
restraining hand. In spite of Khrushchev's threats, when he finally signed
a treaty with the G.D.R. in 1964, he explicitly reserved Soviet rights
under the Potsdam agreement. Otherwise there remains only the search
for European security, to which the 1945 agreement found no answer.
But the search has, since 1945, changed significantly, as compared with
22 Selected Documents, op. cit., p. 49.
23 Ibid., p. 316.
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464 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
that which occupied the years 1919 to 1939. For in 1945, as Ludwig
Dehio has pointed out, 'Events in Europe ceased to be the centre of
world events: on the contrary, the latter began to determine the
former '.24 The threat to Europe lies along the Mekong and the Suez
Canal as much as on the Elbe.
One episode at Potsdam, which found no place in the agreement,
nonetheless deserves to be mentioned here, if only for its relevance to the
polarisation of the world since 1945. Shortly after Truman's arrival
there he learned of the successful explosion in New Mexico of the first
atomic bomb. This foreshadowed, among many other things, a swift
end to the war in the Far East, so relieving Truman of the need to
bargain for Soviet participation, which had weighed on Roosevelt at
Yalta. Independent confirmation that the Japanese were in any case
close to collapse was forthcoming during the conference from Stalin,
who had been asked by the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow if he
would mediate. This information, already available to Truman and
Churchill from another source, did not influence their decision to use the
new weapon, with all its terrifying power, in order to shorten the war by
a few weeks. Meanwhile they issued from Potsdam a demand for the
immediate and unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces.
The imminent unleashing of the atom bomb raised in an acute form
the question what should be said about it to the Soviet ally. The question
had, of course, been raised before, when an answer was less urgent. Nils
Bohr, for example, had sought meetings with Churchill and Roosevelt in
1944 in the hope of persuading them that agreement with Stalin on postwar
co-operation would remove suspicion. As he put it in his memorandum,
'. . . an initiative, aiming at forestalling a fateful competition,
should serve to uproot any cause of distrust between the powers on whose
harmonious collaboration the fate of coming generations will depend '.25
It should not, of course, be assumed that a concession to Stalin on this
point-or indeed on any other-would necessarily have altered the sorry
course of East-West relations after the war. Nonetheless, the clear intention
of the Western Powers in 1945 to retain their monopoly of this new
instrument of mass destruction became known in the Kremlin at a time
when it must have seemed to opaque Soviet minds that various forms of
financial pressure (cancellation of Lend-Lease, delay on reparations and
refusal of a dollar loan) were also being applied. In the event, the communication
which Truman had braced himself to make seemed to fall
flat. 'On July 24 I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new
weapon of unusual destructive force. The Russian Premier showed no
24 L. Dehio, Germany and World Politics (London: Chatto & Windus. 1959), p. 128.
25 R. Jungk, Brighter than 1000 Suns (London: Gollancz. 1958), Appendix A.
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POTSDAM AND ITS LEGENDS 465
special interest.' 26 There was no reason for Stalin to give his informant
the satisfaction of showing any excitement; Klaus Fuchs had been keeping
him au fait since February 1945 with all that was going on at Los
Alamos.
The explosion over Hiroshima, four days after the end of the Potsdam
conference, was the culmination of the final, technological phase of
the war, which had also been marked by the V. 1 and V. 2 attacks on
London. Political leaders did not yet realise it, but something very disturbing
to them, both as statesmen and as human beings, had happened,
technology, which they had thought of as their servant, had taken over.
Great Power war had become useless for the purpose defined by Clausewitz,
namely, the continuation of politics by other means; but it did not
follow that war would not occur. Man, the would-be master, was in
permanent and inescapable danger of becoming the victim of his own
ruthless ingenuity. No one is better fitted than Albert Speer to write
what may yet become an epitaph for the era of technology: 'The
catastrophe of the war showed how sensitive is the system of modem
civilisation built up over the centuries. We know now that we inhabit a
building which is not proof against earthquakes. The complicated
mechanism of the modem world can irreversibly destroy itself through
the escalation of reciprocal impulsions of a negative kind. No exertion
of human will could arrest this process if progressive automatisation
should carry us a stage further in depersonalising man and depriving
him in ever growing measure of responsibililty for himself. During the
decisive years of my life I was the servant of technology, dazzled by its
potentialities. At the end there is left-mistrust.' 27 It is a word to the
wise, which we would do well to ponder next time we watch a moonlanding,
or listen to a Chinese satellite, emitting the shrill message: 'The
East is Red'.
Robert Cecil is Reader in Contemporary German History at the
University of Reading. He was in the Foreign Service and Foreign
Office from 1936-1967, and this included periods in Washington,
Copenhagen and Bonn. Head of the American Department of the
Foreign Office, 1951-52. Director-General, British Information
Services, New York, 1959-61; Head of the Cultural Relations
Department of the Foreign Office, 1962-67.
26 Truman, op. cit., p. 416.
27 A. Speer, Erinnerungen (Berlin: Propyliaen Verlag. 1969), p. 525.
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