President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill had already agreed in principle to give the city and district of Königsberg, East Prussia, to the Soviet Union, presumably as compensation for its suffering. They accepted Stalin’s spurious claim that he needed an ice-free port. In fact, the Soviets already had three such ports, and ancient Königsberg is well inland and prone to icing. At Potsdam neither Truman nor Churchill raised objections, even though that city, the hometown of the great Immanuel Kant, was as German as Berlin, and even though handing it over violated principles enunciated in the Atlantic Charter. Nothing was said about what might have happened to the former inhabitants of the city, or of East Prussia, which would soon become part of Poland.20 Stalin brushed aside Churchill’s objections about the Polish-German border, and Truman added only that the peace conference would look into the area’s “technical and ethnic details.”21
ATOMIC BOMB AND “IRON FENCE”
The conference moved on to other questions when the Big Three returned to the table on July 24. Stalin argued that if Italy had been recognized and was on the way to being accepted into the United Nations, then the same should happen with Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Finland. The president supported Churchill, who objected that, while Italy was in the process of becoming a democracy, that was not true of the states in Eastern Europe. “An iron fence has come down around them,” the prime minister said, to which Stalin broke in to retort: “All fairy tales.”22
At the end of the session, there occurred one of those rare moments where we can see history at a crossroads. Truman approached Stalin with news about the bomb. The president later recalled casually mentioning “that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force.” He described the reaction he got: “The Russian premier showed no special interest. All he said was that he was glad to hear it, and hoped we would make ‘good use of it against the Japanese.’ ”23 Churchill stood not five paces away, knew the exchange was potentially “momentous,” and afterward, waiting outside, asked what had happened. The president replied, “He never asked a question.”24
Another witness, Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko, recalled that Stalin had said only “thank you for the information.” The ambassador observed in his memoirs that the president “stood there probably waiting for some other kind of response, but none came.” That statement suggests Truman looked as though he expected one or more questions.25 Secretary Byrnes remembered being “surprised” that even the next day Stalin still did not ask for additional information.26
We do not know how much Truman intended to reveal about the bomb, and perhaps he did not know himself. The Kremlin Boss could easily have changed his tone, pointed out how many millions of Soviets had died for the war, and demanded frank and open discussions. Even though he had some information about the bomb from his spies, at that critical juncture, however, he had nothing to say. Maybe Stalin was too much of an ideologue to admit that with the new weapon, the capitalists had regained the momentum in the war of ideas with the Soviet Union.27 Or maybe he was shrewd enough to see a need to neutralize the advantage Truman hoped to wield. Until that moment, history seemed to be with him and the Red Army; they took full credit for stopping Hitler, reaped gains across Eastern Europe, were still making progress in Turkey and Iran, and were poised to pursue the Soviet dream in Asia.
Once Truman told him about the bomb, Stalin turned in expressionless silence and left. The Soviet dictator jumped to the conclusion that the bomb was meant to intimidate him as much as to beat Japan.28 When he returned to his quarters, he mentioned the conversation to Molotov, who was overheard saying, “They are raising the price.” Stalin replied, “Let them. We’ll talk with Kurchatov and get him to speed things up.”29
Igor Kurchatov was the head of the Soviet atomic project. It had made considerable progress itself, and by December 1944 Stalin had been persuaded to devote more resources to the project and to put it under NKVD boss Beria.30 Did he recognize the political significance of the bomb when Truman told him about it? Probably no one really did until they saw the pictures, but he knew enough to telephone Beria and rake him over the coals, as if the NKVD were to blame that the USSR did not yet have an atomic bomb of its own.31
Andrei Gromyko then came in and heard Stalin say that “probably Washington and London now hope we will not soon be able to devise such a bomb. In the meantime Britain and the United States will try to take advantage of the U.S. monopoly to impose their plans on Europe and the wider world. Well, this is not going to happen!”32
Once the bomb was dropped on Japan, Stalin drastically accelerated the program. On August 20, having had enough time to evaluate its impact, he set up a new committee to take charge of all matters pertaining to atomic energy. Thus began the incredibly expensive nuclear arms race that persisted right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union.33
In January 1946 Stalin met with Kurchatov to encourage him to pull out all the stops and not spare any costs. That was at a time when the country was in desperate straits, with hunger in the air and famine around the corner. Scientists were promised the richest personal rewards.34 By August 29, 1949, thanks partly to information supplied by spies inside the Manhattan Project, the Soviet Union succeeded in detonating a first atomic bomb. By 1950 the Central Intelligence Agency estimated that the Soviet project was employing between 330,000 and 460,000 people, from gifted scientists to Gulag slave laborers.35
Another significant outcome of the Potsdam Conference was the temporary settlement of the Polish-German frontier among the foreign ministers. American secretary of state James Byrnes conceded to Molotov on July 29 that the territory up to the Oder and the Western Neisse “shall be under the administration of the Polish State.”36 This was a clear win for Stalin. After supporting the concept of population “transfers” for so long, it was rather late for the West to begin expressing “moral scruples” about the movement of millions and to object that the “economic integrity” of the defeated nation was being undermined. Stalin disputed everything, but his main point was that the Germans were already gone from the eastern part of their former lands. That was a half-truth, for millions remained, and those who had fled were beginning to return. To help iron out the “fairness” issue, representatives of the new Polish government were invited to the conference, and they came with well-honed arguments.
In his diary, Truman called what Poland got nothing less than a “land grab.”37 Although the official conference communiqué stated that the “final delimitation” of the border “should await the peace settlement,” no such treaty was ever drawn up or signed. Only after unification in 1990 did the reunited Germany finally accept those borders.
If Stalin had gotten his way, the outcome for Germany would have been worse again. On July 21 the Soviets had floated the idea of putting the Ruhr, the nation’s industrial heartland, under the international control of the three Potsdam powers plus France. Ten days later the Kremlin Boss returned to the topic, and although he granted that they had all changed their minds about dismembering the country, he wondered aloud whether the Ruhr was “to remain part of Germany.” Here was a last push to carve Germany up even further, but a subtle one. In any case, the new British foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, said he could make no decision on the issue without the presence of the French—and they had never been invited. Truman stated as definitively as anyone could that “the Ruhr is part of Germany and is under the jurisdiction of the Control Council.”38