“Never in history has such an aggregation of victorious military force been represented at one conference,” wrote The New York Times; “never has there been a meeting which faced graver or more complex issues; and never have three mortal men borne so heavy a responsibility for the welfare of their peoples and mankind.”
No correspondents for the Times were present, however, nor any of the nearly two hundred other reporters who had made their way to Berlin to cover the story and were, as Churchill said, “in a state of furious indignation.” For the “lid was on” at Potsdam, “everything conducted behind a ring of bayonets,” as Stalin had insisted. Even the number of authorized people permitted in the room at any one time was strictly limited. Once when Byrnes’s secretary brought him some papers and had to wait a few minutes, two women from the Russian staff entered immediately and took chairs until she left.
The conference was officially called to order at 5:10 P.M. Stalin spoke first, saying that President Truman, as the only head of state present, should preside. Churchill seconded the proposal. Truman expressed his appreciation. Then, as in his first speech to Congress, he plunged directly into his prepared remarks, moving rapidly down an item-by-item order of business that he thought the conference should follow. He proposed the establishment of a Council of Foreign Ministers to make the necessary preparations for a peace conference. Immediately Stalin was dubious, questioning any participation by China in a European peace settlement. Truman submitted a draft on how the administration of Germany should be handled. Churchill said he had had no opportunity to examine it. Truman read a prepared statement on implementation of the Yalta Declaration, which pledged the three powers to assist the people of all liberated European countries to establish democratic governments through free election. He was wasting no time getting to the sorest of subjects. “Since the Yalta Conference,” he read, “the obligations assumed under this declaration have not been carried out.” Of particular concern were Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece. Again Churchill said he needed time to consider the document.
Truman moved quickly on, calling for a change in policy toward Italy. As soon as possible, Italy must be included in the United Nations. Churchill now protested and to make his point invoked the memory of Roosevelt. They were trying to deal with too many important matters too hastily, said Churchill. He reminded Truman that Italy had attacked Britain at the time France was going down, and that Roosevelt himself had called this a stab in the back. The British had fought the Italians for two years in Africa before American forces ever arrived.
Truman paused, as if brought up short by the mere mention of Roosevelt.
Speaking more slowly now, he said he appreciated the honor of having been made chairman of the meeting. He had come to the conference with certain trepidation, he said. He had to replace a man who was irreplaceable. He knew full well the goodwill and friendship Roosevelt had achieved with the prime minister and the Generalissimo, both for himself and for the United States, and he, Harry Truman, hoped he might merit the same friendship and goodwill as time went on. It was simply and well expressed and what he should have said at the start, and the atmosphere changed at once, as Churchill responded in fulsome, Churchillian fashion. Though no official verbatim record was being kept, Llewellyn Thompson, from the American Embassy in London, and Ben Cohen of Byrnes’s staff were both taking notes:
Churchill [recorded Thompson] said he should like to express on behalf of the British delegation his gratitude to the President for undertaking the Presidency of this momentous Conference and to thank him for presenting so clearly the views of the mighty republic which he heads. The warm and ineffaceable sentiments which they had for President Roosevelt they would renew with the man who had come forward at this historic moment and he wished to express to him his most cordial respect. He trusted that the bonds not only between their countries but also between them personally would increase. The more they came to grips with the world’s momentous problems the closer their association would become.
On behalf of the Russian delegation, said Stalin, he wished to say they “fully shared” the sentiments expressed by the prime minister.
It was a pattern that would prevail, Churchill rumbling on, Stalin being as direct and to-the-point as Truman.
Taking his turn now, his voice very low, Stalin spoke in short segments, leaving ample pauses between, as one practiced in working with an interpreter. He wished to discuss acquisition of the German Navy (which was then in British hands), German reparations, the question of trusteeships for the Soviet Union (by which he meant colonies), the future of Franco Spain, and the future of Poland.
Churchill agreed that the Polish question was foremost, but said the agenda for the next session should be left to the foreign ministers to decide (Eden, Byrnes, and Molotov). Stalin and Truman concurred.
“So tomorrow we will have prepared the points most agreeable,” said Churchill.
“All the same, we will not escape the disagreeable,” countered Stalin.
“We will feel our way up to them,” said Churchill, who was ready to stop for the day.
Stalin turned again to the question of including China in preparations for the peace conference. Churchill thought it a needless complication to bring in China. Perhaps the matter could be referred to the foreign ministers, suggested Stalin, playing Churchill’s game now. If the foreign secretaries decided to leave China out, said Truman, he had no objections.
“As all the questions are to be discussed by the foreign ministers, we shall have nothing to do,” observed Stalin, producing the first laughter at the table.
Churchill thought the foreign ministers ought to provide three or four points for discussion per day, “enough to keep us busy.”
Truman was on edge. This wasn’t at all what he had come for. “I don’t want to discuss,” he said, “I want to decide.”
“You want something in the bag each day,” Churchill responded, as if he were just now beginning to understand the new American President.
Yes, and next time he wished to begin at an earlier hour, Truman said.
“I will obey your orders,” responded Churchill, and at once Stalin stepped in, his eyes on Churchill.
“If you are in such an obedient mood today, Mr. Prime Minister, I should like to know whether you will share with us the German fleet?”
The fleet should either be shared or destroyed, exclaimed Churchill. Weapons of war were horrible things.
“Let’s divide it,” said Stalin. “If Mr. Churchill wishes, he can sink his share.”
The Foreign Secretary thought the prime minister’s performance had been pathetic. The “P.M.” was “woolly and verbose,” and too much under Stalin’s spell, noted Anthony Eden, and he let others know, which annoyed Truman, who took it as an act of disloyalty to Churchill. Alexander Cadogan, in a letter to his wife, said the P.M. simply talked too much, while Truman was admirably businesslike.
It had made presiding over the Senate seem tame, Truman wrote to Bess, clearly pleased with himself and with the comments of his staff.
The boys say I gave them an earful. I hope so. Admiral Leahy said he’d never seen an abler job and Byrnes and my fellows seemed to be walking on air. I was so scared I didn’t know whether things were going according to Hoyle or not. Anyway a start has been made and I’ve gotten what I came for—Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it…. I’ll say that we’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed! That is the important thing….
Wish you and Margie were here. But it is a forlorn place and would only make you sad.
The letter was written early on July 18 before the day began. To his mother and sister he wrote, “Churchill talks all the time and Stalin just grunts but you know what he means.”
Mamma and Mary Jane had already written six times since he left Washington and he would keep them posted through the entire conference. This morning he had news he knew they would like. Sergeant Harry Truman, Vivian�
�s oldest son, had joined him for breakfast.
He was on the Queen Elizabeth at Glasgow, ready to sail [for New York]. I told them to give him the choice of coming to the conference or going home. He elected to come and see me. I gave him a pass to Berlin signed by Stalin and by me. Will send him home by plane and he’ll get there almost as soon as if he’d gone on the Elizabeth. He sure is a fine looking soldier, stands up, dresses the part and I’m proud of him.
About mid-morning, Henry Stimson came in looking extremely excited. A second cable from George Harrison had arrived during the night:
Doctor had just returned most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky as his big brother. The light in his eyes discernible from here to Highhold and I could have heard his screams from here to my farm.
The decoding officer at the Army message center had been amazed, assuming that the elderly Secretary of War had become a new father. Stimson explained the cable to Truman. The flash at Alamogordo had been visible for 250 miles (the distance from Washington to Highhold, Stimson’s estate on Long Island), the sound carrying 50 miles (the distance to Harrison’s farm in Virginia). Truman appeared extremely pleased and at lunch with Churchill, at Churchill’s house, Number 23 Ringstrasse, he showed him the two telegrams. Stalin ought to be told, Truman offered. Churchill agreed that Stalin should know “the Great New Fact,” but none of “the particulars.” Better to tell him sooner than later, Churchill suggested. But how? In writing or by word of mouth? At a special meeting or informally?
Truman thought it best just to tell him after one of the meetings. He would wait for the right moment, Truman said.
They were dining alone. Churchill lamented the melancholy state of Great Britain, with its staggering debt and declining influence in the world. Truman said the United States owed Britain much for having “held the fort” at the beginning of the war. “If you had gone down like France,” Truman told Churchill, “we might be fighting the Germans on the American coast at the present time.”
They talked of the war in the Pacific and Churchill pondered whether new wording might be devised so that the Japanese could surrender and yet salvage some sense of their military honor. Truman countered by saying he did not think the Japanese had any military honor, not after Pearl Harbor. Churchill said that “at any rate they had something for which they were ready to face certain death in very large numbers, and this might not be so important to us as it was to them.” At this Truman turned “quite sympathetic,” as Churchill recounted, and began talking of “the terrible responsibilities upon him in regard to unlimited effusion of American blood.”
“He invited personal friendship and comradeship,” Churchill wrote. “He seems a man of exceptional character….”
From the Churchill lunch Truman went to pay a return call on Stalin, accompanied now by Byrnes and Bohlen, and to his surprise found a second lunch waiting, an elaborate meal in his honor, which in Russian fashion called for numerous toasts.
Stalin told Truman of the secret Japanese peace feeler and passed the Sato message across the table. It might be best, said Stalin, to “lull the Japanese to sleep,” to say their request for a visit by Prince Konoye was too vague to answer. Truman said nothing to indicate he already knew of the Japanese overtures. He would leave the answer up to Stalin, he said.
Bohlen would remember Stalin’s disclosure of the Japanese proposal making a very great impression on Truman, as a sign the Russians might be ready after all to deal openly with them. To his delight Truman also discovered that Stalin, the supreme Soviet strong-man, was substituting white wine for what was supposedly vodka in his glass. The Generalissimo must visit the United States, Truman said. If Stalin would come, Truman promised, he would send the battleship Missouri for him.
He said he wanted to cooperate with U.S. in peace as we had cooperated in war but it would be harder [Truman recorded later]. Said he was grossly misunderstood in U.S. and I was misunderstood in Russia. I told him that we each could remedy that situation in our home countries and that I intended to try with all I had to do my part at home. He gave me a most cordial smile and said he would do as much in Russia.
As the conference resumed that afternoon Churchill again grew extremely long-winded, and though an outward show of friendship continued around the table, an edge of tension could also be felt. In an exchange with Truman, in a single sentence, Stalin hit on the hard reality underlying nearly every issue before them, the crux of so much of the frustration and divisiveness to come:
“We cannot get away from the results of the war,” said Stalin.
The formal business was to be Germany and Truman had suggested they begin at once. Churchill insisted on defining what was meant by Germany. If it meant Germany as geographically constituted before the war, then he agreed to discussion—his obvious point being that the Germany of the moment was one with eastern boundaries being determined by the position of the Red Army.
STALIN: Germany is what has become of her after the war. No other Germany exists….
TRUMAN: Why not say the Germany of 1937?
STALIN: Minus what she has lost. Let us for the time being regard Germany as a geographical section.
TRUMAN: But what geographical section?
STALIN: We cannot get away from the results of the war.
TRUMAN: But we must have a starting point.
Stalin agreed. Churchill agreed. “So it is agreed that the Germany of 1937 should be the starting point,” said Truman, as if they had made a major step forward.
They turned to Poland, a subject that moved Churchill to talk longer even than usual, and so went the remainder of the session.
Truman was exasperated. He could “deal” with Stalin, as he said, but Churchill was another matter. “I’m not going to stay around this terrible place all summer just to listen to speeches,” he wrote that night. To Bess, earlier in the day, he had said Stalin’s agreement to join in defeating Japan was what he came for. Now, his patience low at day’s end, he wrote in his diary, “Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan [the Manhattan Project, S-1] appears over their homeland.”
At session three the day after, there was sharp talk across the table, much of it from Truman. When the subject of the German Navy was raised again, he said he agreed to dividing the ships three ways, but only after the surrender of Japan. Merchant ships especially were needed. “We will need every bomb and every ton of food.” On the future of Franco Spain, a sore subject with Stalin, Truman said he had no love for Franco, nor had he any wish to take part in another civil war in Spain. “There have been enough wars in Europe.” When the Yalta Declaration came up, Stalin insisted such matters be put off until another time.
Truman was impatient for progress of almost any kind. He was homesick, “sick of the whole business,” he confided to Bess.
The day was saved only by the party he gave that night, a banquet for Churchill and Stalin at Number 2 Kaiserstrasse with music provided by a twenty-seven-year-old American concert pianist, Sergeant Eugene List, who was accompanied on the violin by Private First Class Stuart Canin. Stalin was charmed. To the Americans present it would remain the most memorable evening of the conference.
The two musicians, both in uniform, had been flown in from Paris at Truman’s request. The grand piano had been moved onto the back porch overlooking the lake, where, after dinner, in the lingering light of the summer evening, the whole party gathered. At one point Truman himself played Paderewski’s Minuet in G, the piece Paderewski had demonstrated for him in Kansas City forty-five years earlier. But the highlight was Sergeant List’s performance of the Chopin Waltz in A Minor, Opus 42, which Truman had asked for specifically. List had not known the piece nor had there been time to learn it. Later, in a letter to his wife, he described what happened when he asked if someone in the audience would be good enough to turn the pages of the music for him.
A young captain in the party started toward the piano mumbling som
ething about not knowing how to read music but that he would take a stab at it if I would tell him when to turn. Whereupon…the President waved him aside with a sweeping gesture and volunteered to do the job himself! Just imagine! Well, you could have knocked me over with a toothpick!
Thank goodness I was able to get through the waltz in creditable, if not sensational, manner, despite the general excitement and the completely unexpected appearance of President Truman in the role of page-turner. Imagine having the President of the United States turn pages for you!…But that’s the kind of man the President is.
Truman was delighted to see Stalin so obviously enjoying himself. “The old man loves music,” he told Bess. “Our boy was good.”
By Friday the 20th, the week nearly over, there was still no further word on the test explosion in New Mexico. But when Truman invited Generals Eisenhower and Omar Bradley to lunch, the talk, according to Bradley’s later account, focused on strategy in the Pacific and use of the atomic bomb.
Bradley, a fellow Missourian, had never met Truman until now and liked what he saw. “He was direct, unpretentious, clear-thinking and forceful.” To Bradley it seemed that Truman had already made up his mind to use the new weapon. Though neither Bradley nor Eisenhower was asked for an opinion, Eisenhower said he opposed use of the bomb. He thought Japan was already defeated. To Stimson earlier he had expressed the hope that the United States would not be the first to deploy a weapon so horrible. In time, however, Eisenhower would concede that his reaction was personal and based on no analysis of the subject.
Eisenhower also advised Truman not to beg the Russians to come into the war with Japan, though he acknowledged that “no power on earth could keep the Red Army out of that war unless victory came before they could get in.”
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