- Why did the conference assert that Poland should receive substantial accessions of territory in the north and west?
Since Stalin stipulated that the Soviet Union would keep the Polish territory annexed in 1939, Poland would be compensated for by substantial accessions of territory in the north and west, at the expense of Germany.
Potsdam Conference
- What factors might have encouraged the members of the Grand Alliance to continue working together at Potsdam despite their differences?
Europe was in disarray following the German surrender and the end of WW2 in Europe. Despite differences, the Allied leaders worked together to settle territorial disputes, issues of ethnic transfers, reparations and payments due from Germany, and other such issues. Neither side would have liked the other to determine the outcome of post-war Europe, and so worked closely together to guarantee a compromise agreement that everyone could work towards.
- Who was assigned supreme authority in occupied Germany? Why was this done?
The Commanders-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States, United Kingdom, USSR, and the French Republic.
- Why were the Soviets so interested in receiving industrial reparations from defeated Germany?
The Soviets wanted to ensure that Germany could never be able to muster the strength to ever oppose the USSR in any way. Germany’s impressive economy was what allowed Germany to fight such a calamitous war. Reparations was a way of ensuring that Germany’s industry and war-capacity would be kept minimal, if not completely annulled, and therefore would secure the USSR’s western borders.
- Why did the Americans insist that the USSR could take reparations only from the Soviet-occupied zone, and not from the rest of Germany?
At first the Allies could not come to an agreement on the reparations that each victory would take from Germany. The USSR proposed the idea of extracting ten billion dollars from Germany (at the time), ten for the USSR, and five equally between the UK and the US. However, the Allies balked at the idea of extracting such a sum from Germany and instead divided Germany into separate zones from which each victor-nation would take reparations from.
- Why did the Western leaders agree to the new Polish-German borders favored by Moscow?
Stalin was adamant in keeping the territorial conquests the USSR had made in the early years of the war before Germany invaded. He believed that he was in a position to dictate terms as Russia had suffered the most out of any other Allied nation during the war. Stalin also believed that the current borders and his establishment of a pro-communist regime in Poland were necessary measures to protect the USSR from a future German threat and that it was a legitimate Soviet sphere of influence.
- Why did they agree to transfer to Germany the German populations remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary?
To avoid problems and ethnic issues, the Allies decided that a transfer of Germans to German territory would be the best solution in ensuring that there is no ethnic tension/rivalry in the future between Europeans. It was also a way of making sure there would be no future border disputes.
- In what ways did the Potsdam agreements set the stage for the future division of Europe into Eastern and Western Blocs?
The agreements reached at Potsdam would eventually divide Europe into what Churchill later infamously labeled: “The Iron Curtain.” First of all, the different zones which Germany was divided into for the purpose of extracting reparations would later come to divide the nation into East and West Germany. Moreover, Stalin never kept his promise to provide “free and unfettered” elections in Poland and in instituting a democratic government in Poland as had been agreed upon at the Yalta Conference several months earlier. Most of Eastern Europe gradually came to be dominated by Soviet-controlled pro-communist puppet governments as the Soviet Union was granted an influential sphere of dominance in Eastern Europe after the Potsdam Conference. The Allied Powers recognized the new pro-communist Polish regime, effectively rendering the previous Polish government-in-exile in London obsolete. In doing so, it solidified the USSR’s claim in Eastern Europe.
