ThePotsdam Agreement (German:Potsdamer Abkommen) was the agreement among three of theAllies of World War II: theUnited Kingdom, theUnited States, and theSoviet Union after the war ended in Europe that was signed on 1 August 1945 and published the following day. A product of thePotsdam Conference, it concerned the military occupation and reconstruction ofGermany, itsborder, and the entireEuropean Theatre of War territory. It also addressed Germany'sdemilitarisation,reparations, the prosecution ofwar criminals and themass expulsion of ethnic Germans from various parts of Europe. France was not invited to the conference but formally remained one of the powers occupying Germany.
Executed as a communiqué, the agreement was not apeace treaty according tointernational law, although it created accomplished facts. It was superseded by theTreaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany signed on 12 September 1990.
AsDe Gaulle had not been invited to the Conference, the French resisted implementing the Potsdam Agreement within their occupation zone. In particular, the French refused to resettle any expelled Germans from the east. Moreover, the French did not accept any obligation to abide by the Potsdam Agreement in the proceedings of the Allied Control Council; in particular resisting all proposals to establish common policies and institutions across Germany as a whole (for example, France separated Saarland from Germany to establishits protectorate on 17 December 1947), and anything that they feared might lead to the emergence of an eventual unified German government.[1]
After theend of World War II in Europe (1939–1945), and the decisions of the earlierTehran,Casablanca andYalta Conferences, the Allies assumed supreme authority over Germany by theBerlin Declaration of June 5, 1945.
At thePotsdam Conference the Western Allies were presented withStalin'sfait accompli awarding Soviet-occupied Poland the riverOder as its western border,[2][3] placing the entire Soviet Occupation Zone east of it (with the exception of theKaliningrad enclave), includingPomerania, most ofEast Prussia, andDanzig, under Polish administration. The German population who had not fled were expelled and their properties acquisitioned by the state.[4][5][6][7][8] President Truman and the British delegations protested at these actions.
The Three Power Conference took place from 17 July to 2 August 1945, in which they adopted theProtocol of the Proceedings, August 1, 1945, signed atCecilienhof Palace inPotsdam. The signatories were General SecretaryJoseph Stalin, PresidentHarry S. Truman, and Prime MinisterClement Attlee, who, as a result of theBritish general election of 1945, had replacedWinston Churchill as the UK's representative. The three powers also agreed to inviteFrance andChina to participate as members of the Council of Foreign Ministers established to oversee the agreement. TheProvisional Government of the French Republic accepted the invitation on August 7, with the key reservation that it would not accepta priori any commitment to the eventual reconstitution of a central government in Germany.
James F. Byrnes wrote "we specifically refrained from promising to support at the German Peace Conference any particular line as the western frontier of Poland". The Berlin Protocol declared: "The three heads of government reaffirm their opinion that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the [final] peace settlement." Byrnes continues: "In the light of this history, it is difficult to credit with good faith any person who asserts that Poland's western boundary was fixed by the conferences, or that there was a promise that it would be established at some particular place."[9] Despite this, theOder–Neisse Line was set as Poland's provisional (and therefore theoretically subject to change) western frontier in Article 8 of the Agreement but was not finalized as Poland's permanent western frontier until the 1990German–Polish Border Treaty, having been recognized by East Germany in 1950 (in theTreaty of Zgorzelec) and acquiesced to by West Germany in 1970 (in theTreaty of Moscow (1970) and theTreaty of Warsaw (1970)).
In the Potsdam Agreement (Berlin Conference) the Allies (UK, USSR, US) agreed on the following matters:[10]
The Three Governments have taken note of the discussions which have been proceeding in recent weeks in London between British, United States, Soviet and French representatives with a view to reaching agreement on the methods of trial of those major war criminals whose crimes under theMoscow Declaration of October 1943 have no particular geographical localization. The Three Governments reaffirm their intention to bring these criminals to swift and sure justice. They hope that the negotiations in London will result in speedy agreement being reached for this purpose, and they regard it as a matter of great importance that the trial of these major criminals should begin at the earliest possible date. The first list of defendants will be published before 1st September.
[t]he three Governments have also charged the Council of Foreign Ministers with the task of preparing peace treaties forBulgaria,Finland,Hungary andRomania. The conclusion of Peace Treaties with recognized democratic governments in these States will also enable the three Governments to support applications from them for membership of the United Nations. The three Governments agree to examine each separately in the near future in the light of the conditions then prevailing, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary to the extent possible prior to the conclusion of peace treaties with those countries.
The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland,Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.
Moreover, towards concluding thePacific Theatre of War, the Potsdam Conference issued thePotsdam Declaration, the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender (26 July 1945) wherein the Western Allies (UK, US, USSR) and theNationalist China of GeneralChiang Kai-shek asked Japan to surrender or be destroyed.
Already during the Potsdam Conference, on 30 July 1945, theAllied Control Council was constituted in Berlin to execute the Allied resolutions (the "Four Ds"):[11][12]
The northern half of the German province ofEast Prussia, occupied by theRed Army during itsEast Prussian Offensive followed by itsevacuation in winter 1945, had already been incorporated into Soviet territory as theKaliningrad Oblast. The Western Allies promised to support the annexation of the territory north of theBraunsberg–Goldap line when a Final German Peace Treaty was held.
The Allies had acknowledged the legitimacy of the PolishProvisional Government of National Unity, which was about to form a Sovietsatellite state. Urged by Stalin, the UK and the US gave in to put the German territories east of theOder–Neisse line from theBaltic coast west ofŚwinoujście up to theCzechoslovak border "under Polish administration"; allegedly confusing theLusatian Neisse and theGlatzer Neisse rivers. The proposal of an Oder–Bober–Queis line was rejected by the Soviet delegation. The cession included the formerFree City of Danzig and the seaport ofStettin on the mouth of theOder River (Szczecin Lagoon), vital for theUpper Silesian Industrial Region.
Post-war, 'Germany as a whole' would consist solely of aggregate territories of the respective zones of occupation. As all former German territories east of the Oder–Neisse line were excluded from the Soviet Occupation Zone, they were consequently excluded from 'Germany as a whole'.
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| Flight and expulsion of Germans during and afterWorld War II |
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| (demographic estimates) |
| Background |
| Wartime flight and evacuation |
| Post-war flight and expulsion |
| Later emigration |
| Other themes |
In the course of the proceedings, and after the German statekilled around 5-6 million Polish citizens during the war,Polish communists had begun to suppress the German population west of the Bóbr river to underline their demand for a border on the Lusatian Neisse. The Allied resolution on the "orderly transfer" of German population became the legitimation of the expulsion of Germans from the nebulous parts ofCentral Europe, if they had not already fled from the advancing Red Army.
The expulsion of ethnic Germans by the Poles concerned, in addition to Germans within areas behind the 1937 Polish border in the West (such as in most of the old Prussian province of West Prussia), the territories placed "under Polish administration" pending a Final German Peace Treaty, i.e. southern East Prussia (Masuria),Farther Pomerania, theNew March region of the formerProvince of Brandenburg, the districts of theGrenzmarkPosen-West Prussia,Lower Silesia and those parts ofUpper Silesia that had remained with Germany after the 1921Upper Silesia plebiscite. It further affected the German minority living within the territory of the formerSecond Polish Republic inGreater Poland, eastern Upper Silesia,Chełmno Land and thePolish Corridor with Danzig.
TheGermans in Czechoslovakia (34% of the population of the territory of what is now the Czech Republic), known asSudeten Germans but alsoCarpathian Germans, were expelled from theSudetenland region where they formed a majority, from linguistic enclaves in centralBohemia andMoravia, as well as from the city ofPrague.
Though the Potsdam Agreement referred only to Poland, Czechoslovakia andHungary, expulsions also occurred inRomania, where theTransylvanian Saxons weredeported and their property seized, and inYugoslavia. In the Soviet territories, Germans were expelled from northern East Prussia (Oblast Kaliningrad) but also from the adjacent LithuanianKlaipėda Region and other lands settled byBaltic Germans.
