Feb. 4-11 - Yalta Conference
- FDR, Churchill, Stalin met in Crimea at the Livadia Palace on the Black Sea for the Yalta Conference
- FDR promised to withdraw all U.S. troops from Europe in 2 years
Harry Truman - HSTL
Trouble spots
James Byrnes
Potsdam
Nagasaki "erased" - new French zone added to occupation zones of Germany, but Stalin allowed $20 billion reparations from East Germany
- Decalaration on Liberated Europe promised "free and unfettered elections", but secret agreement on Curzon boundary
- United Nations to be created, but Stalin to get 2 extra seats for USSR
- trusteeships from former Axis colonies, but not British or French colonies
- Stalin to enter Asian war, and to get S. Sakhalin, Kuriles, control of ports and railroads
- Korea divided at 38th parallel
Mar. 29 - Stalin cable to FDR protests terms of surrender of German troops in Italy
Apr. 11 - Ike stopped 9th Army at Magdeburg on the Elbe
Apr. 12 - death of FDR; Harry S Truman sworn in as President - images
Apr. 23 - Truman spoke harshly to Molotov
- U.S.-Soviet relations will no longer be "on the basis of a one-way street"
- U.S. did not expect to get 100% on important matters, but "we should be able to get 85%"
- "Carry out your agreements and you won't get talked to like that"
May - "trouble spots" appeared - map from Time 1945/05
- Finland under Allied Control Commission, SKDL communists until 1948 Treaty with Russia
- Trieste threatened by Tito, but U.S. believed was Stalin plot, until 1954 cession to Italy
May 8 - VE Day - Victory in Europe
May 11 - Truman stopped Lend-Lease aid
June 28 - Jimmy Byrnes replaced Edward Stettinius as Secretary of State
July 17-Aug. 2 - Potsdam Conference
- Truman, Churchill, Stalin met in a suburb of Berlin for the Potsdam Conference
- no agreement on Poland's western boundary but Lublin government allowed to expel 9 million Germans from eastern Poland
- Germany to be administered as single economic unit by Allied Control Council under Lucius Clay, but Stalin sealed all land access to East Germany
- Stalin allowed to take 25% of West German industry in exchange for food, coal
- Nazi leaders to be tried as war criminals at Nuremberg
- Korea to be divided
- Potsdam Declaration of August 1
- Stalin told on July 24 of A-bomb weapon and the test July 23 at Trinity
- Churchill lost British election July 28 to Labor's Clement Attlee
- Council of Foreign Ministers to draft final peace treaties
- Stalin refused to hold elections in occupied East Europe
Aug. 6 - Hiroshima - 20 kiloton Little Boy uranium bomb killed 80,000
Aug. 8 - Stalin declared war on Japan, sends troops into Manchuria
Aug. 9 - Nagasaki - 22 kiloton Fat Man plutonium bomb killed 70,000
Aug. 15 - Emperor Hirohito made surrender broadcast; VJ Day
Sept. - London Foreign Ministers Conference
- Byrnes recognized Bulgaria, Rumania
Oct. 27 - Truman reviewed returning fleet in NYC - images
Dec. - Moscow Foreign Ministers Conference
- plans made for Paris Peace Conference next April
Dec. 6 - U.S. loan of $3.75 billion to Socialist Labor government of Britain
Dec. 31 - Time magazine made Truman Man of the Year