Potsdam: New World Order

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Aktung Aktung, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, and to part two of our Potsdam con.

We're having our own big three here, aren't we?

Who's who?

Well, you're obviously always Churchill.

Well, I think I shall take the role of Churchill.

I think Giles is bossing this, so he's Stalin.

That needs me to be trimming.

I'm quite happy with that.

You've got the atomic bomb up your sleeve, Jim, but will Stalin be impressed?

That's the question.

Or does he already know?

Let's just quickly recap.

So Roosevelt's dead, of course.

So this is the new big three and he's replaced by Harry Truman, Harry S.

Truman, who doesn't want to go.

I just love him saying, I'm getting ready to see Stalin and Churchill.

It is a chore.

I just think that's quite amazing.

As an attitude very strong, as we said, he's got the atomic bomb, the Trinity test.

And this is one of the things that I think we've got to remember is that the end of the war in the American mind, they've got another two years of this stuff at least and much more bloodshed bloodshed to come.

And obviously, historians have argued about the projected casualty figures since for the invasion of mainland Japan, but let's be honest now, it's going to be a bloodbath if Okinawa's anything to go by.

And people who've listened to those episodes we've just done will know that.

So Churchill's still PM, but his wartime coalition has imploded.

Parliament's been dissolved, general elections called.

But because of everyone overseas, basically, they've got to get the people's votes in.

So they don't quite know the result yet.

These things may be fated to us and result of the Cold War, but they don't know if the bomb's going to to work.

Churchill doesn't know if he's going to be PM.

But what Stalin knows is that he's the winner at this stage.

He's conquered countries that weren't even in his orbit.

He's got new territories that are now part of his empire, if we're frank about it.

And what are the allies, Western allies, going to be able to do about that?

And then, of course, the cherry on the cake is that the French are not invited, which I think Jimmy in the last episode is pretty sympathetic to Stalin saying the French shouldn't be involved.

But there we are.

So we've set the scene.

Just before the conference, as people gather, what happens?

What's going on, Giles?

So they have to get, the Soviets have to get the Sicilianhof Palace ready.

One thing they do is they plant, they get geraniums, red geraniums, and they plant a giant Soviet star in the flower bed outside.

It's a bit like sort of a dog peeing on a lamppost.

It's to mark their territory that this is ours, you know.

And they've shipped in a huge round table.

And actually...

I was there not so long ago.

It's closed at the moment because they're turning the palace into a hotel.

So people will be able to stay there.

But they've kept the conference room exactly as it was in the summer of 1945.

And it's very atmospheric, isn't it?

It is an amazing room, yeah, with these sort of Tudor-leaded windows and everything.

Honestly, you feel like you're in a medieval, you know, Elizabethan manor house.

So this is a big brown table.

They've got three big chairs, big heavy armchairs, one for Truman, one for Salin, one for Churchill.

Poor little Clement Attlee is sort of, you know, sitting in a little chair behind Churchill.

And then you have the delegations, the interpreters are there.

So everything is going to take place around this one big table.

They filled the place with everything they need, crystal glasses, you know, plates, porcelain, everything for these grand banquets that they're going to have there.

But one person, I read one account which was fantastic, saying that while they were shipping stuff in for the conference, Soviets, Red Army soldiers were looting the outhouses of the palace and taking still carting stuff away.

So it's kind of quite extraordinary, really.

Each delegation is looking after itself.

And there's a wonderful woman called Joan Bright, or Joan Bright Astley, as she became, who was really really the conference organiser for the British delegation and wrote a wonderful book about her life at the top during the Second World War.

She was PA to Pug Ismay.

She worked alongside Churchill and she organised the British delegation of the Yalta and the Potsdam conferences.

And she describes, you know, they each have the, Churchill has his manor house that he's been given, and likewise for Truman and Stalin.

So they're going to live a life of unparalleled luxury while they're at the conference.

There's going to be banquets, a lot of banquets.

Food's been shipped in.

You know, remember, there's no food in Berlin at the time.

Berlin is a starving city, and yet they're shipping enough food, the Soviets, to have lavish 25 course banquets, you know, fish, chickens, turkeys, whatever, champagne, the works.

And these are going to be quite an important part of the conference because they're not just doing business.

So there is a real sense that it's the Soviets that are hosting it.

That's the vibe.

Yes, as they want, because they, you know, they're showing, we're in control we're masters of this situation we've already said they uh had all the shots really and so yeah so the conference open they they they um truman does meet with churchill uh beforehand they each meet each other to sort of you know get get to know each other as it were but really the conference starts mid-july they're in this room they're sitting around this table and they begin to hammer out all the key things that need to be decided for the planning of the post-war world.

You know, the war in the West has been won.

The war in the East, as you've said, is still ongoing.

And Germany and a lot of Europe, but Germany particularly is in a terrible mess.

And they have to decide what they're going to do and how they're going to run the place.

Yeah.

Churchill and Truman do a sightseeing tour in Berlin, don't they?

So they have a look.

They do.

And are confronted with the destruction of the German capital.

And did they take in Hitler's bunker?

I mean, it seems.

Oh, yeah.

That was the highlight of every tour was all the, you know, GIs, all the British troops, everyone wanted to go into the bunker.

And there's there's some pretty vivid descriptions of the bunker.

So, you know, it had been bombed very, very heavily, both by Allied bombers, but then in the final battle for Berlin as well.

The place is in ruins.

You go down into the sort of bowels of the earth in Berlin.

This magnificent structure, red marble everywhere, chandeliers, vast swastikas, you know, eagles and all everything is there, but it's all in ruins.

Everything's on the ground.

Everything's been smashed.

to pieces.

You know, there have been the last days of the Third Reich.

I've seen, you know, orgies taking place there.

There are discarded champagne bottles everywhere.

It's a real mess.

And Churchill, he comes, he writes his own description of the place.

He comes there and he's terribly depressed suddenly.

And I think, and Truman as well, that they just see the utter destruction.

You know, of course, Churchill's seen, you know, London through the Blitz.

London's been very badly damaged through the Blitz.

And this is on a completely different scale, isn't it?

They can't quite believe the scale of destruction in Berlin.

This is a city in absolute ruins, you know.

And so, and

hence, they're in Potsdam, leafy Potsdam outside, which has been much less damaged.

The Soviets first enter the city, they have to, the first thing they have to do is clear some thoroughfares through the city.

Who do they use to do that?

There are no men in Berlin, you know, at this time.

It's a city of women and children.

And so, women are put to work.

They become known as the rubble women, and their job is to clear the streets of bricks and rubble, you know, and really back-breaking work to try and at least get some sort of of order into the city, at least get the main thoroughfares open.

Now, of course, while you've got them doing that, and of course, there's rape on an unprecedented, horrific scale.

I think 60,000 Berlin women sought medical help, but that number is dwarfed by the actual number.

Some people might know the book by Anonymous called A Woman in Berlin, which we now know was written by Marta Hillers, which sets out the full horror of what women went through.

And so you've got that on one on one side of the equation on the other you've got the allied troops coming into berlin uh in you know end of june beginning of july as victors as well and they're as they are masters of everything they have unprecedented wealth it's all black market they've got cigarettes they've got uh they've got food as well of course so you know they see one guarantee against getting raped is to have a western you know gi or or or soldier boyfriend who can fend off the soviets you know now this is of course completely not allowed by the Allied armies.

They've said that there's to be no fraternization whatsoever.

And there is a $65

fine for any soldier that fraternizes with German women.

And that becomes known as the $65 question.

You know, expression we're probably familiar with is whether you're going to go and proposition a German women.

The other quip was that copulation without conversation is not fraternization, they would say.

So you've got these Allied soldiers, they are masters of everything.

There are two completely different universes taking place in Berlin: starving Berliners, mainly women and children, and the Allied soldiers.

About 25,000 Brits in Berlin, about 25,000 Americans as well.

The French aren't even in the city yet.

They seem to be on the left on the back foot for absolutely everything.

So, the Americans and Brits are dominating the city.

So, that's the sort of scene in Berlin at the time of the conference.

The rubber women thing is really, really interesting, I think, because obviously, if the Americans were in Berlin, they'd have just brought in a bevy of bulldozers.

You know, Lend-Lease obviously doesn't extend to bulldozers, it only exists and it's subjugation, Jim.

Why use bulldozers when you can make the Germans do it?

It's about rubbing their noses in it.

The Soviet occupation is about, it feels like conquest from another era, doesn't it?

And obviously, they also think, you know, if it was good enough for them when they did it to us, it's good enough for us in return.

Oh, completely.

But I'm just saying that the Americans would come at it from a completely different approach, wouldn't they?

Oh, no, I don't disagree with that.

But how you characterize what the Soviets are doing, you know, they could have the bulldozers if they wanted, but they'd rather rub German noses in it.

The sort of subjugation and oppression is the way they do things rather than steal not flesh or whatever, you know, rather than getting some machines to do it for them.

There's tremendous accounts of it of it all.

There's also a brilliant novel by Joseph Cannon called The Good German.

I don't know if you've ever come across that.

I'd recommend that to anyone if they want a good novel on this subject.

I think one thing we can't stress enough, because it's going to be really, really important

as the years unfold after the conference, is to remember that the western sectors of Berlin are a tiny little island surrounded by a sea of red.

Berlin falls well within the Soviet-occupied part of Germany.

And this is going to, in the future, spell significant, in fact, a major problem for the Americans and Brits in Berlin, because the only access into Berlin is through one autobahn and one railroad that runs through Soviet-occupied Germany into Berlin.

And what no one seems to have realized at the Potsdam Conference, which they really ought to have done, is that if things go wrong, if things go belly up with the Soviets, they only have to cut the railroad and the autobahn.

And bingo, you've got a siege situation where the Western powers are trapped in Berlin without any outside support.

And I mean, this is moving things forward.

But the other factor that comes into play here is that Berlin traditionally traditionally was fed by farmland to the east of the city, which is also controlled by the Soviets.

So essentially from day one, the Soviets control the food supply for Berliners.

Now, the Brits and the Americans and the French are responsible for two and a half million Berliners.

They are responsible for feeding them and they are dependent on the Soviets to do that.

And of course, this will all come to a head at the Berlin airlift, won't it, in June 1948?

Berlin Airlift, which is, you know, an amazing, one of the great achievements of the 20th century, but it's a really significant point that didn't seem to be taken on board at the conference because everyone was assuming the wartime relationship would continue with the Soviet Union.

No one or very few people spoke out loud, said, well, what happens if it breaks down?

We are completely stuffed, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So Churchill and Truman, they meet before the conference, don't they?

I mean, Truman, having tried to avoid Churchill, basically, is now forced into meeting him.

And Churchill tries a number on him, doesn't he?

Basically, gives him praise.

Gushes with charm, you know, just as he tried to do with Roosevelt.

Here's Truman's diary.

I've just got a couple of lines.

He says, he gave me a lot of hooey about how great my country is and how he loved Roosevelt and how he intended to love me.

And then Truman says in his diary, I'm sure we can get along if he doesn't try and give me too much soft soap.

Churchill, you know,

trying to charm him, Mr.

President.

And it's kind of not really working.

Like you already said, Al, you know, Truman doesn't even want to be there.

He wants to get back to America as quickly as possible.

Doesn't particularly want to, you know, make friends with Churchill.

He wants to do the business and get out.

The businessman that he looks like, you know, in his natty suit.

Yeah.

Well, and he wants Europe done because he's got the Pacific to deal with.

And Jim and I have come to this sort of understanding that that's the thing.

It doesn't get talked about because it's so hard, baked in so hard to the American attitude is that the Pacific war has done.

It's Pacific, Pacific, Pacific.

Japan, Japan, Japan.

Their work in Europe is done.

And frankly, they don't really care anymore who has what in Europe.

They've defeated Nazi Germany.

That was always part of their deal.

One thing that does get discussed at the conference, which is going to be absolutely vital not only to Germany, but to really the future of Western Europe, is so at the conference, the decision is, you know, reparations.

Germany is going to be made to pay for the war it's for the destruction it's caused.

And also the German economy is going to be kept at a certain level.

They don't want Germany to be a resurgent power again.

And that's the common feeling between both the Western powers and the Soviet Union that effectively Germany is going to be kept pretty crushed, you know.

And everything is going to change once the Western allies, once Truman realizes that actually Stalin is no longer an ally, that the Soviet Union can no longer be trusted, this is going to bring about a dramatic shift in policy.

You're going to have the Marshall Plan, which many people would be familiar with.

You're going to have the Truman Doctrine.

And this is going to essentially develop into the containment of communism.

And the containment of communism is going to mean rebuilding the economy of Western Germany, of the Western sectors of Germany.

And indeed, you know, rebuilding the economies of the democratic world.

I mean, that's the point.

You know, it is going to be a new world order in the West and a new world order in Eastern Europe in the Soviet sphere, you know, behind the Iron Curtain.

So, yeah, this is a pivotal moment.

And it's Truman makes this great play when he takes over from Roosevelt on the evening of the 12th of April, that he's going to keep the same team, he's going to keep the same thing, he's going to continue with the same policies as Roosevelt.

And he does to an extent, but very quickly there is this big separation.

And the one is no more conciliation towards the Soviet Union.

That there is, as you point out, there is this acceptance that there is now us and there is them.

And we're going to have to create this new world order in the sphere that we can influence.

And the Soviet influence will just, they'll have to be contained, as you say, on their little sphere as well.

The complication with that, though, is that by then the UN's been formed and everyone's tangled up together.

It is, but you mentioned George Kennan earlier.

I think George Kennan is worth just

reminding ourselves that this is a diplomat in Moscow, in the American embassy, knows Stalin well, knows Stalin intimately.

He knows the Soviet system and everything.

And in 1946, so we're talking not long after the conference has taken place, he writes his famous long telegram.

His long telegram sets out the fact that the Soviets can't be trusted, this post-war relationship should be shredded immediately, and that the Soviets have to be contained and his telegram contains the one sort of famous line he says soviet power is impervious to the logic of reason and highly sensitive to the logic of force and um i mean one could bring that forward to uh ukraine these days couldn't it you know i mean that sort of rings down the decades that that sentence but of course none of this is known at the potsdam conference they're still trading as allies if you like but this is only a few months afterwards so it's amazing how quickly the whole thing is going to unravel.

So there are seven points as to what's going to happen to Germany and Poland, which we've touched on a bit, but let's rattle through these.

So Germany is going to be demilitarised, denazified, democratised, decentralized, basically pulled to pieces.

And as we've already said, divided up into allied zones.

All Nazi law is to be abolished.

Germany and Austria are to be divided into occupation zones, as agreed at Jalta, but the capital is divided.

Nazi war criminals to be tried.

How that actually pans out,

you get Nuremberg and you do get a fair slice of people being tried, but also it presents you with an enormous problem, which is arrest everyone who was in the Nazi party.

How can you do that?

You know, if you want Germany to continue to exist.

I mean, Germany's eastern border shifted westwards to the Odin-Nies line, which shrinks Germany by 25%, creates an enormous refugee problem.

I mean, 25% of the country gone.

I know.

I know.

It's amazing, isn't it?

And in sharp contrast to Versailles, where there's this sort of, you know, well-meaning attempt to create, you know, self-determination of peoples within Europe, within the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Sod that is Stalin's attitude.

I'm going to decide where the borders are.

This is in his remit, isn't it?

This new border.

And Al, the scale of that, there's a great book, but I don't know if you know Keith Lowe, who wrote a book called Savage Continent.

And it says, you know, I think it was 11 million ethnic Germans were kicked out of their hereditary homes, you know.

And this was, you know, mass sort of movement of populations on an unprecedented scale.

You know, lives absolutely ruined.

Well, a lot of people didn't have much sympathy for these people, but nevertheless, it was a staggering biblical sort of movement of populations.

Yeah, Katya Hoyer has written about, you know, people from Prussia essentially ending up in Western Germany.

And they're like, who are you, people?

You're not welcome here.

Your food's wrong.

You know, you're a reminder of the war, of the disaster that befell Germany, all this, and all this sort of stuff.

That's a thing that, you know, hangs on for the decades that follow, you know, as much as anything else.

People who are strangers in their own country, in a sense.

And then these border shifts are accompanied by orderly and humane.

and i did the magic inverted comma fingers then expulsions of german populations from those eastern sectors this millions of as you said millions of people and then reparations which we talked about in the first episode which are physical reparations for the soviets as far as they're concerned they're actually going to take stuff as well as demand money and i think part of the tone here is versai didn't work that's one of how people understand the nazi rise to power and you know the versa treaty wasn't firm enough didn't put germany in its place enough this is very much characteristic of this isn't it It's to really let them know they've lost, right?

Yeah.

And I think that's part of the thing, you mentioned denazification, which is possibly one of the most absurd things that they tried to do.

Every single German had to fill out this long questionnaire, and then they were ranked according to how Nazi they were.

And if you, if you came out whiter than white, you were no Purcell Shinier because you were as white as Purcell washing powder.

But the problem was, you know, you're managing tens of millions of people and it's being run by Americans and Brits, mostly, you know, who don't speak German.

So, I mean, this was, it was never going to work.

It was a completely absurd.

I mean, you know, maybe the intention was good, but it wasn't going to work.

And it all fell apart quite quickly.

Well, and then the politics overtook things.

But once you need a Western Germany on side, you're going to have to, you know, as the Cold War emerges, you're just going to have to drop this, aren't you?

And the Soviets did that from day one.

The day that literally, when they arrived in Berlin, they thought, well, he was a senior Nazi.

Well, sod that.

We'll take him anyway because he knows what he's doing.

you know yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah and then the plan for poland is a soviet government isn't it let's be honest now yeah i mean a soviet government we've also we've moved borders that's the other really really key point that's massively moved borders yeah and the soviet government uh has been formed by uh stalin in moscow you know he's it's been up and running for some time and you know that the idea or churchill's idea once he realizes the polish government in exile in london is had its day, he then tries to get, well, some of them into this new, you know, Stalin's new Soviet government.

Even that doesn't work, you know.

So you end up with exactly what Stalin wanted and intended, which was, you know, to have a pro-Soviet government in Poland.

And actually, just to rewind, it's worth something, one of the most cynical things that Stalin did, I think, was calling on the population of Warsaw to rise up against their German masters, intimating that the Red Army would go in and help them.

And of course, it did absolutely nothing.

Despite beggings and pleadings from the Western powers for the Red Army, which was right there, right by Warsaw, to go in to help the uprising, Stalin did nothing.

Because for Stalin, it was an extremely useful way of getting rid of all the sort of democratic forces, the forces that essentially liked the West.

Well, it was a very good way of getting them killed in advance of him taking control.

of Poland.

It's unbelievably cynical.

And people like Avril Harriman and the British ambassador in utter despair going into Stalin and he would have nothing to do with it.

Well, yeah, I mean, you said right at the very beginning of this series, Giles, that he was the ultimate malevolent negotiator.

We should probably take a break and then when we come back, we can just see how malevolent he was.

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Welcome back to We have Ways to Make You Talk with the big three.

Me, Jim, and Giles.

I'm definitely Churchill because I'm exhausted.

I've had enough.

I don't mind being Stalin, actually, because I know I'm going to win.

You can bug out, Al, and we'll get JR on, and he could be Clement Attlee.

You know, I don't mind handing over to a deputy.

Well, my former deputy.

So, so basically, Stalin's negotiation started, you know, and we've all we have touched on this, mentioning Putin, let's be honest now, is there is a Russian negotiation style, which is a maximalist demand, isn't it?

And then absolutely no concessions.

That's the Russian negotiating style, the Soviet negotiating style.

It's Stalin's, isn't it?

Yeah, you've got it in a nutshell there.

Basically, he knows what he wants.

And the thing is, by 1945, he knows he's going to get it as well.

I mean, he's already got essentially what he wants, which is control of Eastern and Central Europe.

So he doesn't really need to throw his weight around too much because the work's already been done for him.

And I love this line from Anthony Eden saying that if he had to pick a negotiating team, he picks Stalin to lead it.

I mean, there's sort of grudging admiration there, isn't there?

That's very funny.

Avril Harriman, at the end of the war, he wrote an appraisal of the big three wartime leaders.

And he said, without a doubt, Stalin was head and shoulders above Churchill and Roosevelt when it came to negotiating.

He also said, and this will surprise some people, that Stalin in private was the most courteous, the most genteel,

the politest person he'd ever dealt with.

And Avril himself, he said, I found it really difficult, he said, to square this with the fact that I'm sitting opposite a mass murderer who's liquidated millions of his own people.

And yet, to me personally, he was always a model of charm.

And I think that's, it's fascinating because it gets to the heart of Stalin, really, that here's this evil, monstrous dictator who could just switch on the charm whenever he needed to.

That's fascinating.

I mean, no one ever describes Hitler as charming, do they?

No, but do you know what I mean?

No, not even those who love him.

Not even those who love him.

Charm is never never part of the package, is it?

JR just asked on our little chat here, would you say Stalin is a sociopath?

That's a modern term, right?

I think sociopaths are Stalins, aren't they?

I think it's better, we're better off with it that way around, right?

Yeah,

it's so hard.

You know, when I started researching this whole subject and everything, I had the sort of vision of Stalin that I think everyone has, this idea that he was just this, you know, brutal mass murderer, hands dripping in blood and everything.

And actually, it's much more nuanced.

And he's much, you know, he was so intelligent in a very nasty way, you know, so manipulative in a very clever way.

He was so well read.

And, you know, he had a vast library of books and he annotated everything that he read, you know, and if he disagreed with something, he used to write piss off in the margin, which I rather liked.

So this was, this guy who'd been born into this impoverished Georgian family, you know, his father was an alcoholic, he used to beat his wife and everything.

He emerged into something very, very different.

And I think this is what was so misunderstood in the capitals of, you know, in Washington, in Whitehall, they didn't believe the diplomats saying, just be really careful.

You're dealing with a genius in his own way, you know.

They kept saying one Archie Clark Kerr, who was the British ambassador in Moscow, he said, you know, we're treating, he sort of saw the whole situation as a private gentleman's club, you know, and he's saying that we're sort of the doorman not letting Stalin into the club.

And he said, we should be letting him into the club.

We should be sitting down and wining and dining with him.

You know, we've got to treat this guy seriously.

And honestly, time and time again, you get this coming through the memos, the telegrams going back to the capitals.

It's fascinating, though, because to get to the top of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, you're not going to be an idiot, are you?

It requires incredible cunning.

And as you say,

cynicism is really the key to him, isn't it?

And just total ruthlessness.

Yeah, and total ruthlessness.

I read the Soviet diplomats' accounts of the Potsdam Conference as well.

And all of them, it's really interesting, they were united

in their feeling that Stalin had played a blinder.

Like, they said, this was an absolute triumph for Soviet diplomacy, you know, that he got everything he wanted.

And in contrast, Churchill's all over the place, isn't he?

I mean, we touched on this earlier on, that he's drinking too much, he's rambling, he seems exhausted.

But I think it's really interesting that Eden and Cadugan, who are big fans and, you know, have been loyal colleagues and friends of his for a long time, even they're in despair, aren't they?

yeah i mean their letters home you know they would write letters to their wives uh about churchill and so rather than the official documents this is what they really felt you know and they are they're in despair they're just saying oh my god he's just giving everything away and you know stalin's stomping around going i like that great man stalin you know and uh and they're just saying uh they really are in despair at his performance and i think The one person who could have made a difference at this conference is the figure of Ernest Bevin, who in my mind, you know, one of the great foreign secretaries of the 20th century and a rather overlooked figure, I think.

Ernest Bevin, you know, to paint a picture, you have Anthony Eden, the kind of

old Etonian, Oxbridge-educated, you know, always in his three-piece suit and everything, you know, speaks this wonderful sort of eloquent English.

And then you've got Ernest Bevin, former lorry driver, from a very, very impoverished background.

Anyway, he arrived at the conference and his first words were, I'll not have Britain barged about.

And

he was always called a pugnacious heavyweight.

He was a pugnacious heavyweight.

And get this, this is wonderful.

At one point, he so disagreed with Molotov, what Molotov was saying, that he actually stood up and went to punch him in the face.

And he had to be held down by his own team.

And I just think that's sort of wonderful.

That takes gunboat diplomacy to the ultimate limit, you know.

So I think that, you know, had the results of the election come earlier and had the conference, Clement Attlee gone there with Ernest Bevin at the beginning of the conference, I think perhaps they might have made some difference.

But the bottom line was that, as we've said already, the Red Army controls everything that Stalin wants, you know, it's a win-win for the Soviets.

Yep.

And what about Truman then?

Yeah.

What about Truman?

So Truman, we mentioned earlier, Truman has his ace card.

He's received this news that the atomic bomb has worked.

Now, he doesn't know whether he should tell Stalin or not this news.

And

he talks it over with Churchill.

And Churchill says, oh, yeah, I think we should tell him, you know.

And Truman says, okay, I'm going to do it, you know, tomorrow night or whatever.

Churchill is going to be watching to see Stalin's expression when Truman tells him we've got an atomic bomb.

So Truman goes over to Stalin, sidles up to him, doesn't say atomic bomb, he says, we've produced a weapon of unprecedented, you know, destructive force.

And he's expecting some sort of big reaction for Stalin.

And Stalin just goes, oh, that's good.

I hope you use it against the Japanese.

And he's really surprised by this reaction.

Of course, what he doesn't realize is that Stalin knows absolutely everything about the American atomic program.

He's had his spies have infiltrated the whole Trinity preacher.

He's Kercross and everything, isn't it?

Yeah, he knows he knows everything.

He knows everything.

John Keircross is one of the Cambridge spies that's affected.

But Stalin's been playing games with Truman anyway, because he's told him that he thinks Hitler's not dead and has got away and is in Western Germany.

That's the incredibly shocking thing that he says actually if you if you sort of think about it stalin knows for sure that hitler's dead you know he's seen the dental records he's seen the jawbone and everything he knows that hitler is dead and yet he intimates that the that that hitler has escaped and is living in british occupied germany it's a fabulously uh nefarious accusation to make against your kind of allied you know your wartime ally Those things continue, you know, for several years,

you know, and quite often it's just a sort of a means of testing British and American intelligence systems and how they react and all the rest of it.

Well, making them chase their tails.

I mean, waste their time.

We have banquets as the sort of core of the event, don't we?

Banquets with the big three.

As you said before, everything's laid out, there's tables, and it's lavish, even though Berliners are starving.

This is a really fantastic spread that's laid on.

It's caviar, it's champagne, it's all the trimmings, right?

Yeah, I mean, again, Truman says, uh again he writes a letter home he said stalin gave his state dinner it was a wow they had a watermelon champagne smoked fish fresh fish venison chicken duck i mean you know this is in a city like you say that's starving well and i also like the fact that that that truman hosts one the the night before and has uh a pianist and a violinist um and then the following night it's stalingstone and he has two two pianists two violinists

And Truman writes back home and he says,

the musicians that Stalin brought in, they were two female musicians.

He said they're rather fat and none too clean.

Yeah.

And Churchill's is the dud banquet, isn't it?

Churchill's bored by these banquets, but he's particularly bored by Stalin's banquet.

He says to Truman, he tries to get Truman to leave.

He says, should we go now?

And Truman says, well, actually, I'm quite enjoying myself.

No, I don't want to leave.

And Stalin, Churchill's, by now, he's furious and he starts plotting his revenge.

And he thinks, right, tomorrow night, it's my turn.

And he gets the RAF brass band to play throughout the banquet no one can hear anything at all you know um and he's just sitting there sniggering thinking well you know i've got i've got one up on them part of this though is the drinking heavy drinking that goes with this the sort of russian style heavy drinking although stalin doesn't drink so keeps himself sober throughout i mean part of churchill's distaste for this he's been humiliated hasn't he in tehran previously with toasts where he he feels the toasts are out of control and that that stalin's sort of snubbing him isn't he so he's got no he a he's got no energy but also he's had a bad experience before hasn't he?

Yeah, you're right to say, by the way, I mean, Stalin didn't drink vodka, so he had always had a vodka shot in front of him, but it was full of water.

He drank Georgian wine, often diluted, so he was very, very happy to watch other people getting completely plastered, particularly if it was Churchill.

But he always remained sober himself.

But yeah, he could always, I mean, Stalin could come out with some fabulously barbed comments, particularly when he was with Churchill.

I mean, one of the ones I really loved, because it was so fantastically rude and Churchill was so offended by it, was he started talking about the Gallipoli landings at one point.

And he said they failed because of stupidities in planning and execution.

You know, said that directly to Winston Churchill, knowing obviously Fulwell Churchill's role in them.

So, you know, he was a master of the barbed comment, and they often came out at these dinners.

One of the most famous ones was Stalin said, at the end of the war, I think this was at Tehran.

It was

at the end of the war, I think we should execute 50,000 German, you know, senior German military guys.

And Churchill is horrified by this and absolutely outrageous.

And he's even more horrified when Roosevelt says, takes that line and he says, maybe not 50,000.

Why don't we do 49,000?

So he plays along with Stalin.

And that's another example of these.

They're playing each other off against each other all the time.

At one point, Roosevelt turns to Stalin and says, you know, I think the two of us can solve the problem of British India, you know, without Winston Churchill.

so i mean it's pretty extraordinary stuff we have this idea often that you know roosevelt and and churchill had a common viewpoint and we're coming to these conferences with a united front not a bit of it they're scoring points of each other all the time yeah but there is this hiatus in the middle which of course is the british election and um churchill and atley go home on the 25th of july and then then churchill stays there atley comes back now obviously with earnest bevan as well rather than anthony eaten so it it's not just the prime minister that's changed it's it's all the people around him is that a big turning point?

I mean, you know,

the conference wraps up on the 2nd of August.

You've also got the Potsdam Declaration on the 26th of July, which is aimed at, of course, at Japan.

But it's kind of done and dusted, really, by the time Churchill goes, isn't it?

I mean, you know, the big issues have been discussed and really there's not much to resolve because, as you say, Stalin's in the driving seat and he's in there, but he's got his Red Army troops throughout much of Eastern eastern europe and what else can the western allies do except suddenly you know realize to their horror that they've got uh um they they're not going to be able to progress into the new world order with the alliance continuing i mean you know this is it this is a start of the cold war isn't it you're right and and joan bright that the lady who helped set up the british delegation and organized the conference and everything she actually writes in her memoirs it's rather sort of touching line she says you know clement attlee and earnest bevin came back to the conference she said but it was not the big three anymore the magic had gone you know know, the big players, I mean, she felt Churchill was one of the big players had gone.

And you're right, all the major decisions had been taken or were going to happen by default because of the Red Army in charge of Eastern Central Europe.

I think Churchill is now in opposition.

And this is where his viewpoint begins to change.

And he begins to view Stalin not as his best buddy and wartime ally, but actually as the guy who is now turning, rapidly turning into the enemy.

And remember,

it's only months after

the end of the Potsdam Conference.

So if we wind forwards to February 1946, Churchill goes to Missouri, the home state of President Truman, and delivers in front of the world's media.

The Iron Curtain speech, isn't it?

Iron Curtain speech from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended over the continent.

This changes, this is a complete U-turn in Churchill's thinking.

You know, the soviet ally has gone first has gone from being the soviet ally to being the soviet monster and yeah this is uh there are a number of things that happen in fact at the very beginning of 1946 the that that is a key thing uh churchill's iron curtain speech we've mentioned the george cannon's long telegram where he says my god we've got to contain this this soviet beast because that's also delivered in 46 as well so

i think that's february yes and because because the iron curtain speech is march isn't it so so um cannon comes in in February.

And there's a third thing that happens in the early spring of 1946, which is really important, is that Igor Guzenko, who's a Soviet cipher clerk in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa in Canada, he defects.

And he just must defect, he defects with a whole batch of documents proving that the Soviets have infiltrated the American atomic program.

And this is an electrifying sort of piece of news.

Yes, because it means that the Soviets are going to have an atomic bomb soon, too.

It does mean that as well.

But, you know, this changes everything.

And I think, you know, so where, you know, the question is often asked, when does the Cold War start?

Well, you could argue it starts in Berlin in 1945.

But I think really it begins, the Cold War heats up, if you like, in the very beginning of 1946.

Everything's changed.

The Soviet ally is no longer an ally.

It's now increasingly seen as the enemy.

I mean, are there any positives for the Western allies in this?

I mean, apart from you know the Soviet Stalin promises that in 90 days time he'll get it he'll come to the fight in the Japanese in Manchukuo and he does bang on time Operation August storm starts exactly as promised you know 90 days after the end of the war Europe will deploy and will attack the Japanese and Truman writes in his diary doesn't he I've got him on board for Japan I'm I'm I'm cock a hoop about this doesn't he is that the crumb of comfort and is that because they're the Americans they want out of Europe that's their priority they want to get Japan done.

And if they can get the Soviets to do it for them, particularly so they have equipped the Soviet army after all, with Lend-Lease.

Is that the Western Allied win in all this?

Well, it is in the sort of immediate aftermath of the conference.

But I think really the big win, I would argue, is the Marshall Plan, the massive injection of American finance into Europe, the rebuilding of the German economy, the introduction of a new currency into Germany, which transforms

the economic situation in West Germany.

All of these come in the sort of aftermath of the Potsdam Conference.

And if there's a win for the West, that's it, I would have thought.

Yeah, it is remarkable because it is the first time ever that the victors have economically bailed out the vanquished.

I mean, it is a remarkable thing that happens,

the Marshall Plan.

I mean, really, really extraordinary.

And, of course, one other thing which we have to mention, I think, is out of this chaos is born NATO, you know.

And that's absolutely crucial, you know, with its Article 5, I think it is, which famously states an attack on one is an attack on all.

This will prevent wars for, you know, we're still living through this, you know, for it seems like history.

We're recording this on the eve of the latest NATO conference, so it'll be fascinating to see how that plays out.

Yeah.

And then, of course, the formation of NATO then leads directly to the formation of the Warsaw Pact.

And so there, you know, you have your two, your two blocks, the Cold War.

The stage is set for the onset of the Cold War.

Well, Charles, that's been absolutely brilliant.

Thank you.

That's a tour de force, and brilliant to have you have you back on the show.

And thank you for that because I don't know about you.

That's just absolutely fascinating, isn't it?

And I'm obsessed with all this at the moment because, of course, in the light of what's happening in the world stage at the moment and the shifting of tectonic plates as

we speak.

So, all of this is just fabulous background to that and context.

And also, I think it really, really does underline the sort of, you know, the long arm of the Second World War and how it affects us to this very day.

Well, and also that contingency within an event can then cast great long shadows across the future.

When they arrive with various shopping lists, the general election, the fact it's not Roosevelt, the fact that, you know, all these things and that personality.

And I think it's, there is an irony, isn't there, that the head of the Soviet Union, you know, which espouses an idea that history is not about individuals, it's about mass movements, his personality is key to the outcome of this conference.

And that rather than, yes, it's the mass might of the Soviet Union, but it's him.

He's the immovable object at the head of the irresistible force that is the Soviet Union.

And it's him.

It's Stalin.

It's his personality.

It's absolutely key to this, which sort of rather pulls the rug from...

under some of his thinking perhaps that he might espouse which I think is fascinating.

If I'm allowed, you can edit this out if you want, to plug my book, Checkmate in Berlin.

It covers all of these, this subject, the early years of the Cold War from the Berlin perspective.

Well, Checkmate of Berlin,

also the Stalin affair.

And I also would recommend listeners to your Ministry of Secrets podcast series you did, Jars, which I was completely obsessed with when it came out.

It was completely brilliant about the mystery of the naval diver Buster Crab.

It's just an amazing...

Cold War story, Khrushchev,

Khrushchev

arriving in the south coast and Portsmouth and all sorts of stuff.

I mean, whoever knew?

I mean, just incredible.

Mountbatten's involved, all sorts of secrets and people under the carpets and the floorboards.

It's just incredible.

Come on, Charles.

Did Buster Crab defect?

Come on.

You'll have to listen.

But look, the big question is, why is the current government still refusing to release the Buster Crab papers?

It's all revealed in the podcast.

Fantastic.

Well, thanks very much, Charles.

Thanks, everyone, for listening.

We'll see you again very soon.

Cheerio.

Cheerio.

Bye.

Bye.