The Potsdam conference was held in July 1945 and was the second allied inference after the defeat of Germany. Roosevelt had died and had been replaced by Truman, who was aggressively anti-communist and Churchill had lost the 1945 election, Stalin being the only leader remaining the same. Harry Truman, the president of USA was much more suspicious of Stalin than his predecessor, Roosevelt. So, at Potsdam, the tensions below the surface at Yalta – about Eastern Europe and reparations – came out into open disagreement as Truman and Attlee had different ideologies to the previous leaders.
America had recently developed the atomic bomb and wanted to impose authority over the USSR, but Truman did not inform Stalin about this, leading Stalin to become furious as he had believed he had been tricked. Britain and France were also not happy with the amount of reparation -? they believed that a prosperous Germany was less likely to want another war than a weak one. Stalin had replaced the mixed communist and non-communist Polish government so that it was entirely communist.
Truman was most angered by the fact that Stalin had replaced the mixed communist and non- unionism polish government so that it was entirely communist. As a result, this meeting was effectively where the problems started because Truman saw this act as posing a threat to capitalism towards the western side and the development of the atomic bomb angered Stalin as USA was effectively the superpower. However, the Truman Doctrine was more important because it was an indirect conflict between capitalism and communism during 1947.
Communism had now spread into more countries in Eastern Europe and as a exult it seems more important in that the Cold War had now developed into a competition between influencing countries with communism or capitalism. The USSR was expanding quickly – much to Britain and America’s distaste. The Truman Doctrine showed that America were committed to containment and that it was deeply keen to play the leading world role – highlighting the role America was willing to play in global affairs, marking a reversal of the Aqua’s traditional policy of ‘isolationism’.
It showed that that Truman was aggressively anti-communist; much more than the Potsdam conference. The aim of it was for USA to support any nation threatened by a communist takeover. For example the USA gave $400 million of aid to Turkey and Greece to try to stop communism spreading. A civil war had started in Greece in 1946 between the Western government and communists – Truman wanted to give the government all the help he could. The Truman doctrine showed the world that communism wasn’t the only option in order to regain a stable economic position and that democratic freedom had benefits too.
