In Potsdam, little has been agreed. The three heads of state and government at the time had many differences of opinion: to remind you of the things that were discussed at each conference, use the Mnemonic PEER The Potsdam conference ended on a dark note. By the end, Truman had become even more convinced that he had to pursue a harsh policy towards the Soviets. Stalin was more convinced that the United States and Great Britain had conspired against the Soviet Union. As for Churchill, he was not present at the closing ceremony. His party lost in the English election and was replaced in the middle of the conference by new Prime Minister Clement Attlee. Potsdam was the last post-war conference of the Big Three. The Potsdam conference took place after the Yalta conference. The Potsdam took place in August 1945. The Potsdam meeting was the third conference of heads of state and government of the three major nations. The Soviet Union was represented by Joseph Stalin, Great Britain by Winston Churchill and the United States by President Harry S. Truman.

It was Truman`s first meeting with the Big Three. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died in April 1945, participated in the first two conferences – in Tehran in 1943 and in Yalta in February 1945. The main objective of the Potsdam conference was to put an end to the post-war period and to put into practice all that had been agreed in Yalta. While the Yalta meeting was rather friendly, the Potsdam conference was marked by differences of opinion that were the result of some important changes since the Yalta conference. The first, the Yalta Conference, took place in February 1945, a few months before the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May. Soviet Prime Minister Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met to conduct serious discussions on Europe during the conference. For some reason, they initially agreed that it would be better to divide Germany into four zones. The Allies met on 17 July of the same year for the Potsdam Conference. The summit, which continued until 2 August, brought together leaders from the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Kingdom.

By that time Roosevelt had died and Churchill had lost the 1945 election, so there were open disagreements over the conduct of the conference. The aim of the meeting was to discuss the best way to punish Nazi Germany and to build on the thought-provoking decisions taken at the Yalta conference. Despite many disagreements, Allied leaders managed to reach some agreements in Potsdam. Negotiators thus confirmed the status of Germany demilitarized and disarmed among the four zones of the Allied occupation. According to the protocol of the conference, there should be “complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany”; all aspects of German industry that could be used for military purposes should be removed; all German military and paramilitary forces should be eliminated; and the manufacture of all military equipment in Germany was prohibited.