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The Potsdam Conference was held in Germany from the 17th of July to the 2nd of August in 1945. The three nations that were there were The Soviet Union, The United Kingdom, and The United States. Joseph Stalin represented The Soviet Union, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee represented The United Kingdom, and President Harry Truman represented The United States. This conference came shortly after Victory in Europe Day and near the end of the war in the Pacific. This conference of great leaders was held to determine how they were going to divide Germany into occupation zones. At the end of the conference, the three leaders agreed to divide Germany into four separate occupation zones, given out to either The Soviet Union, The United Kingdom, or The United States for them to control and restore. The same was to happen to Austria. They also decided upon sending Nazi war criminals to trial. Germany's industrial war-potential was to be completely destroyed or severely controlled, including shipyards and aircraft factories. All of Germany's captured territories or annexes were to be reversed, such as Sudetenland and Austria. It was also required of Germany to move its Western border further East, reducing Germany's size by 25%. The Potsdam Conference also made decisions for Poland. Poles serving in the British military were to be freed back to Poland. The Soviet Union declared that it would reform Poland back to its original state. As a result of The Potsdam Conference, the United States gave Japan an ultimatum to surrender the war in the Pacific. When Japan did not respond to this, American bomber planes dropped the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which quickly after, Japan surrendered to the United States. In Europe, The Soviet Union had established The Peoples Republic of Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, which later lead to the Cold War conflict in the 1950's.

William D. Leahy's Role
One person who was at the Potsdam Conference, but is not mentioned often is William D. Leahy. Leahy was Fleet Admiral in the U.S. Navy and stood as advisor to President Roosevelt during the Yalta Conference and to President Truman during the Potsdam Conference. Leahy had lengthy military background as he served as the senior-most United States military officer on active duty during WWII. He said in his book, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time, that the Potsdam Conference was one of the most frustrating out of all the conferences, due to hostile relations between The Soviet Union and the United Kingdom and The United States. Throughout his work, he refers to the conference as its code name, Terminal. Later in his book he discusses a tour of Berlin which he takes with President Truman, and describes this experience as "I never saw such destruction. I don’t know whether they learned anything from it or not."