Planning for the Defeat of Japan

• How to defeat Japan??– Yalta Conference (Southern Russia)

• February 1945

– Potsdam Conference (Germany)• July1945

Yalta Conference• 3 major allied powers:

– England, US, Soviet Union• Churchill, Roosevelt,

Stalin• Agreements:

– USSR would declare war on Japan

– Create United Nations– Soviet Union wanted

Germany pay some reparations

– Germany will be divided into 4 zones:

• USSR, USA, Britain, and France(Stalin’s request)

– Stalin agreed to “free and unfettered elections” in Poland and other Soviet-occupied Eastern European countries

Potsdam ConferenceJuly 1945

• Meeting between same 3 allied powers– England, US, Soviet Union

• PM Clement Atlee, Harry Truman, Stalin• Tensions:

– Stalin prevented free elections in Poland and other Eastern European occupied areas

– Truman refused Stalin’s demands for Germany to pay reparations

• Agreement:– Japan has an ultimatum to surrender or meet

“prompt and utter destruction”

The Atomic Bomb

• US was testing ABOMB same time that Potsdam conference was going on

Manhattan Project

• Developed 1st Atomic bomb• Began in 1939 (BEFORE US ENTERED WAR!)• At its peak, more than 600,00 Americans were involved in the

project- although few new ultimate purpose. • Truman didn’t learn about until he was President• Los Alamos, New Mexico

Time for decisions….

• Japanese ignored ultimatum given at the Potsdam Conference

• Truman made the decision to drop the bomb– July 25th- he ordered the military to make final plans

for dropping atomic bombs– Day later issued ultimatum discussed at Potsdam– August 6th- “Little Boy” dropped on Hiroshima– August 9th- “Fat Man” dropped on Nagasaki– End of year 200,000 people died as a result of

injuries and radiation poisoning

Dropping of the Bomb• Little Boy

– Hiroshima – August 6th, 1945

• Fat Man– Nagasaki– August 9th, 1945

• Japan surrenders six days later (Aug. 15, 1945)

Iron Curtain, 1946

• From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow....Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.

 Winston S. Churchill (Prime Minister of Great Britain)

The Iron Curtain