Potsdam conference

potsdam conference

By Alexis LaFarge

  • start of the potsdam conference

    start of the potsdam conference
    At the potsdam conference in Germany, top allied leadership set up a control concil to administer occupied Germany.

  • second conference

    second conference
    In Germany, the second plenary session of the potsdam conference was conducted

  • Allies

    Allies
    At Potsdam, Germany, Harry Truman declared that the Allies would demand no territory upon victory.

  • Udder destrustion

    Udder destrustion
    The Potsdam Ultimatum was issued, threatening Japan with "utter destruction" if it did not surrender unconditionally.

  • concludes

    concludes
    The conference failed to settle most of the important issues at hand and thus helped set the stage for the Cold War that would begin shortly after World War II came to an end.

  • Atomic bomb!

    Atomic bomb!
    The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited the Cold War.

  • Accusing of spying

    Accusing of spying
    In hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Whittaker Chambers accuses former State Department official Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union. The accusation set into motion a series of events that eventually resulted in the trial and conviction of Hiss for perjury.

  • "ominous"

    "ominous"
    By 1953, U.S. officials were becoming increasingly concerned with events in Asia and elsewhere in the so-called "Third world" During the early years of the Cold War (1945 to 1950), the focus of America's anticommunist foreign policy was on Europe. With the outbreak of war in Korea in 1950, however, the American government began to shift its focus to other areas of the globe, particularly Asia.

  • Nuclear

    Nuclear
    Representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, underwater, or in the atmosphere.

  • final act signed

    final act signed
    For a brief moment, detente seemed to have been revived, but the CSCE soon became the cause for heated debates between the United States and the Soviet Union, primarily over the issue of human rights in Russia.