CHAPTER 12
POTSDAM
We call upon the Government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces … The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.
The Potsdam Proclamation, 26 July 1945
AS SZILARD DESCENDED INTO PATHOS, the delegates in Potsdam began the tortuous negotiations that would design the post-war world. The night before the first day of the talks, a cable from Trinity arrived that would transform the mood of the American delegation from gravity to elation. After 7.30pm on 16 July, Berlin time, Truman and Byrnes met Stimson, their roving War Secretary, at the Little White House in Babelsburg. Stimson dutifully carried the news from Alamogordo:
16 JULY 1945
EYES ONLY FROM HARRISON FOR STIMSON
Operated on this morning. Diagnosis not yet complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations … Dr Groves pleased …
The President and Secretary of State were immensely relieved. Stimson shortly withdrew and retired to the comfort of his diary: ‘… Mr Harrison’s first message arrived … President and Byrnes … were delighted with it.’
The next day, Harrison sent further news:
17 JULY 1945
TOP SECRET SECRETARY OF WAR FROM HARRISON
Doctor has just returned most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky as his big brother. The light in his eyes discernible from here to Highhold and I could have heard his screams from here to my farm.
Decoders might have wondered at the virility of the 77-year-old Stimson in producing a baby boy. ‘Doctor’ referred to Groves; the ‘big brother’ was actually the plutonium bomb being tested, and the ‘little boy’ the uranium bomb they were confident about, already on its way by ship to Tinian Island; Highhold, Stimson’s farm on Long Island, 400 kilometres away; and ‘my farm’, Harrison’s, 60 kilometres from the Pentagon.
‘I send my warmest congratulations to the Doctor and the consultant,’ Stimson replied.
Stimson delivered Harrison’s second cable to Truman the next morning. The President looked ‘greatly reinforced’, and Churchill similarly delighted at the ‘earth-shaking news’. The British Prime Minister swiftly drew two conclusions: the invasion of the Japanese homeland would not proceed (Churchill was unaware of the extent to which the invasion plan was already redundant) and, more significantly, the Allies believed they no longer relied on Russia in the Pacific War, as Churchill informed Eden: ‘It is quite clear that the United States does not at the present time desire Russian participation in the war against Japan.’ The President later confided in his journal, ‘We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.’
* * *
Truman first met Stalin at the Little White House at noon on 17 July, the day after Trinity. After handshakes and pleasantries, he told the Generalissimo: ‘I am no diplomat, but usually say yes or no to questions after hearing all the argument.’ Pleased to hear it, Stalin said he had more questions to add to the conference agenda. ‘Fire away,’ Truman replied. Stalin’s questions were ‘dynamite’, Truman noted in his diary, ‘but I have some dynamite too which I am not exploding now’. Stalin casually made clear that he would enter ‘the Jap War on August 15th’. ‘Fini Japs when that comes about…’ Truman later noted in his secret Potsdam journal. It was a tantalising message to posterity, suggesting that the President believed Russia’s intervention would not only end the war with Japan, but completely obviate the American invasion plan.
‘I had gotten what I came for,’ the President wrote to his wife, Bess, the next day: ‘Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it … we’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed.’ With no disrespect to their conjugal relationship, Truman misrepresented his position – a point lost on those who continue to read his correspondence with his wife as ‘evidence’ that Truman’s main priority at Potsdam was to get Stalin into the Pacific. ‘I want the Jap War won and I want ’em both [Britain and Russia] in it,’ he added. In truth, by then, the President, with Byrnes at his ear, was contemplating how best to keep the Russians ‘out of it’: America had borne the brunt of the Pacific War and had effectively defeated the enemy; now Trinity had transformed the stakes in America’s favour. Publicly, Truman continued to welcome Soviet sabre-rattling, as an insurance policy in a widening mix of options. His private feelings on the subject were contingent upon the availability of the atomic bomb, highly receptive to Byrnes’ nimble-minded persuasion, and deeply qualified by his distrust of Moscow. Henceforth the American delegation worked on the assumption that they did not need, nor would they seek, Russian intervention in the Pacific. Of course, he could not divulge that to his wife: Bess was one of millions of Americans necessarily in the dark.
* * *
The Potsdam Conference began 21 hours and 30 minutes after Trinity – a day late due to Stalin’s illness – on 17 July at the Cecilienhof Palace, a mock-Tudor estate built by Kaiser Wilhelm II for his eldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, and daughter-in-law, Duchess Cecilie zu Mecklenburg. Completed in 1917, this Hohenzollern family country manor served as a hospital during the war; by its conclusion the royal owners had exiled themselves, and the Soviet conquerors had commandeered and stripped the palace.
The Union Jack, Star-Spangled Banner and Hammer and Sickle fluttered over the palace’s motley pile of Elizabethan, Victorian and Gothic, sharing the rooftops with a crazy assortment of chimneys and turrets, as if designed ‘by a mad illustrator of children’s books’. Heavy ivy clung to the four wings that enclosed a central courtyard where Russian advance units had planted their signature: a 7-metre Red Star fashioned out of red geraniums, pink roses and blue hydrangeas. Inside the Soviets had hastily refitted the desecrated halls with their plundered arrangements of garish furniture, paintings and sculptures.
The Soviet delegation occupied the Crown Princess’s study, dubbed the ‘Red Salon’, wallpapered in deep red, with mahogany bookcases and, around the fireplace, 18th-century Delft tiles. In the opposite wing, across the Great Hall, the Crown Prince’s Smoking Room, panelled in dark oak and pine, contained the American delegation. Here Truman sat at an elegant mahogany desk beneath a painting of the Mönchgut Peninsula. Next door, the British occupied the Prince’s former library, refurnished in the neo-Gothic style, a Russian attempt to please British taste. His Soviet hosts had considerately hung a painting of the head of a Saint Bernard in recognition of Churchill’s affection for dogs.
The Great Hall that divided the Soviet from the Anglo-American rooms rose through two storeys, lit by a great bay window overlooking the lake. In the centre of the room stood a heavy circular table, 3 metres in diameter and purpose-built in Moscow that year, surrounded by two concentric circles of red-upholstered chairs: the inner circle, consisting of three large armchairs for the leaders, flanked by smaller chairs for their foreign ministers; and, in the outer circle, smaller chairs for their advisers. The Big Three would enter through separate doors heavily guarded by Soviet troops.
The meeting proceeded in the strictest secrecy. Over the next 10 days the world would hear nothing of the debate over the future boundaries of post-war Europe and the fate of the Soviet satellites. Three men and their advisers would decide the destiny of the continent, inside a sealed hunting lodge, ringed by bayonets. To their chagrin, some 200 reporters then in Potsdam were refused entry; there would be no press conferences until the final day. Correspondents were reduced to filing gossip about ‘Who Had Lunch with Whom’ and ‘All Comforts of Home Set for Big Three’. Potsdam, reported the Stars and Stripes, had become a ‘dream community of clipped lawns and super service’, surrounded by ruin and starvation. The Allies made an ostentatious display of victory amid the squalor: fresh strawberries – ‘big, juicy’ ones, insisted a US mess officer – melons, berries, tomatoes and lettuce hearts were flown in. Old-world silver and Bavarian china graced the dining tables. The PX sold luxury cigars, the latest cameras and self-winding shockproof wristwatches; French perfume and Parisian handbags were presented to the attendant wives (Bess Truman was not among them). The maintenance of comfort at the Cecilienhof required 1000 white orderly coats, 500 mosquito bars, 200 fly swatters, 250 shoe brushers and 250 corkscrews.
At the opening of the first meeting Stalin nominated Truman as chairman. The President, dressed in a polka-dot bow tie, dark double-breasted suit and two-tone summer shoes, in his usual jaunty style, accepted, but doubted whether he could fill the shoes of his great predecessor Roosevelt, on whom Churchill lavished praise. Truman then ran through the agenda, after which Churchill insisted they debate the Polish question; Stalin wanted to negotiate the division of the German navy and merchant fleet; Truman had pet ideas about freeing up Europe’s waterways; and so on. For 10 days they argued over the division of Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe. They made little progress; Stalin was abrupt and belligerent; Churchill at his cavalier worst; and Truman’s big guns, which demanded Soviet compromises, were repeatedly plugged. Most issues of substance were referred to the Council of Foreign Ministers, and a future ‘peace conference’, to be thrashed out later.
They rarely mentioned Japan. The Pacific War was not on the official agenda – despite Truman highlighting it as his main priority in coming. In fact, Washington had removed the subject from the official agenda several weeks earlier. The Soviet commitment to the fight against Japan – which Stalin had conditionally agreed to at Yalta – scarcely raised an official murmur. The Americans pointedly avoided the subject.
Conspicuous by its absence, the subject of Japan pricked Stalin’s keen antenna. In one of his disarming tangents, during a discussion of the division of the German navy, Stalin suddenly raised the question: ‘Are not the Russians to wage war against Japan?’
‘When Russia was ready to fight Japan,’ Truman replied, ‘she would be taken in the shipping pool the same as the others.’
Stalin, however, was ‘interested in the question of principle’ of entry into the Pacific War – a question that Churchill felicitously deflected on a point of detail. Stalin persisted: did his allies want Russia in the Pacific or not? The dictator detected in their obfuscation the whirr of furious backpedalling.
Instead, most discussion of the Pacific War, and Russia’s role in it, tended to flow over informal exchanges at morning tea, dinner and cocktail parties. These conversations could be startlingly candid: in one meeting on the morning of the 18th, Stalin revealed to Truman and Byrnes – as noted by Byrnes’ assistant – ‘that Japan had asked to send mission to Moscow to talk peace. Said Emperor did not want to continue bloodshed but no way out under unconditional surrender terms.’ To which Byrnes inquired whether Russian policy on unconditional surrender had changed at all? ‘No change,’ Stalin replied. In the absence of any fresh ‘suggestions’ – that is, softer terms – from the United States or Britain, Stalin said he would continue to reject Japanese ‘peace offers’ and ‘be ready to move against Japan’ on 15 August’.
Their agreement with Russia at Yalta obliged the American delegates to welcome this gesture; in the privacy of their rooms, however, feelings were decidedly cooling. Just as the Americans were trying to disentangle themselves from Stalin’s embrace, the Soviet leader was showing himself more than willing to join his comrades in arms in the Pacific War. By now, however, Byrnes had lost all enthusiasm for the idea: he ‘no longer desired Russia’s declaration of war against Japan’, observed Walter Brown, his loyal aide. ‘[Byrnes] thinks United States and United Kingdom will have to issue joint statement giving Japs two weeks to surrender or face destruction. (Secret weapon will be ready by that time).’
* * *
It is unclear exactly when Byrnes put a line through the Soviet Union’s name on the draft copy of the Potsdam Declaration – probably in the days before the conference, or aboard the Augusta. He initialled and wrote ‘Destroy’ beside his amendment (a copy of which survives). At a stroke it removed the name of Japan’s most feared enemy – and Stimson’s ‘additional sanction’ – from the surrender ultimatum. The Russians were not informed of this; they presumed they would be cosignatories to the declaration and were busy drafting a suggested wording of their own. Byrnes defended his editing to Truman and colleagues on the grounds that Russia had no stake in a nation they had not fought. The act gave the lie to Truman’s publicly stated intention to get the Reds into the Pacific. Privately Truman swiftly gravitated to this new ‘unofficial’ policy, which Byrnes had engineered: to force the Japanese to surrender solely to America and deny Stalin what he so dearly sought – to be ‘in on the kill’.
For his part, Stalin was determined to seize – as agreed at Yalta – what he saw as rightfully his: control of Dairen, Port Arthur and the Manchurian railroads, among other assets. Bolshevism demanded a foothold in Asia. Byrnes perceived this danger and quietly considered the possibility, in his talks with Truman, that atomic power would serve a twin role: to end the war with Japan and serve as a diplomatic stick against further Soviet incursions in Asia and Europe. Byrnes’ memoirs make clear his position: that he saw a diplomatic role for the bomb, as drawing a line in the sand to the footscraping of the Soviet Union. Truman relished the prospect of a double victory.
Truman and Churchill lunched alone on 18 July at the British residence in Babelsberg. The President, unable to contain his excitement at the ‘world-shaking news’ of the bomb, showed the Prime Minister the Trinity cables. Awed, Churchill wondered how, and when, to tell Stalin of the discovery – if indeed he should be told? The news might jolt the Russians into the war in a bid to claim their share of territory: ‘The President and I,’ Churchill later wrote, ‘no longer felt we needed [Soviet] aid to conquer Japan.’ They agreed, however, that failing to inform the Russians of the bomb would deepen their nominal ally’s distrust – little realising that the spy Fuchs had kept Stalin abreast of the developments in Los Alamos. The British and American leaders decided to inform Stalin, but not until the bomb was almost ready; then, at an appropriate time, Truman would casually mention to the Soviet leader that America possessed an ‘entirely novel form of bomb … which we think will have decisive effects upon the Japanese will to continue the war’.
Churchill then raised the vexed subject of unconditional surrender, warning of the ‘tremendous cost in American and to a lesser extent in British life’ if they enforced it. Were there not words that ensured victory and gave ‘some assurance’ of Japan’s military honour and national existence’? To which Truman sharply interjected that Japan had no military honour left after Pearl Harbor. ‘At any rate,’ Churchill responded, ‘they had something for which they were ready to face certain death in very large numbers.’ Truman would hear no more talk of compromise, given the terrible resonsibilities upon him in regard to the ‘unlimited effusion of American blood’, Churchill later noted. The terms of ‘unconditional surrender’ would remain.
That afternoon Truman visited Stalin. The Soviet leader handed the President a copy of Hirohito’s message to Moscow which outlined the Konoe peace mission – the contents of which the President was aware, via his Magic diplomatic summaries. Stalin suggested three responses to the cable: ‘to lull the Japanese to sleep’ by asking them to clarify the ‘exact character’ of the message; ‘ignore it completely’; or ‘send back a definite refusal’. Truman preferred the first suggestion: it bought time and was ‘factual’, as Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov agreed, because nobody in truth understood exactly what the Japanese had proposed.
Truman knew Soviet intervention in the Pacific was inevitable – he could not unmake Yalta. But a creeping awareness of Russian designs on Asia heightened his anxiety that Japan should be made to surrender exclusively to America on American terms. The bomb was the ace in his pack, as he confided in his Potsdam diary: ‘Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland. I shall inform Stalin about it at an opportune time.’
* * *
Henry Stimson cut an isolated, shuffling figure in Potsdam. Excluded from the conference, he dropped in for unofficial chats with Truman, Byrnes and Churchill when they deigned to see him. His great age and experience, however, lent him gravitas and his candid advice kept Truman’s choices dimly alive at a time when Byrnes was monopolising the President’s attention. On the 17th, Stimson met Byrnes and recommended two last-ditch actions: to warn the Japanese of the bomb before use; and to assure them of the continuation of the Emperor. Byrnes rejected both: ‘Byrnes was opposed to a prompt and early warning…’ Stimson wrote. ‘He outlined a timetable on the subject … which apparently had been agreed to by the President, so I pressed it no further.’ No statement more poignantly illustrated the War Secretary’s diminishing influence, but he doggedly stuck to his mission.
Indeed, Stimson took to his role as roaming political minstrel; he performed one job that put him in high demand: as the eyes and ears of the events in New Mexico. His dispatches from Trinity opened doors and were a source of great relief to the American party. At 3.30pm on 21 July Stimson arrived at the Little White House brandishing Groves’ ‘immensely powerful’ account of the atomic test, which revealed ‘far greater destructive power than we expected’. Stimson read it aloud: ‘… A massive cloud … reaching the sub-stratosphere … huge concentrations of highly radioactive materials…’ etc. When he finished, Truman and Byrnes looked ‘immensely pleased’, Stimson wrote. It gave the President ‘an entirely new feeling of confidence’. Here was a crystalline moment in the blur of events, the confirmation that the bomb had worked from the very achitect of the Project. It prompted Truman to call in his political and military advisers – Byrnes, Marshall, King, Arnold and Leahy, all of whom were present in Potsdam – to review the military strategy in light of this ‘revolutionary development’.
Later that day George Harrison sent more news from the Pentagon: ‘Patient progressing rapidly, and will be ready for final operation first good break in August…’ – which Stimson relayed to Truman. The President had all the information he needed and arrived at the Cecilienhof on 21 July ‘tremendously pepped up’ and determined to stare down the Soviet steamroller in Eastern Europe. The bomb was the ‘master card’ in his hand, noted Stimson. The Big Three duly launched on a long and complex debate over the location of Poland’s western border and precisely where the Soviet zone of occupation began and ended. Stalin, in his usual obstructive manner, resisted Truman’s demand for a clear definition of the Russian zone of occupation, which was obscured by the Polish presence in East Germany: ‘We have withdrawn our troops to our zones,’ Truman said, ‘but it now appears that another government [Poland’s] has been given a zone of occupation and that has been done without consulting us…’
Truman was stern, uncompromising, and several times forced Stalin on the defensive. He refused ‘in a most emphatic and decisive manner’ Russian demands, Stimson later noted. In reply, Stalin ‘squirmed’ and ‘whined’, according to one account. Truman later told Bess how he had ‘reared up on his hind legs and told ’em [the Russians] where to get off…’. (He neglected to say that the news from Alamogordo had produced this burst of self-confidence.)
The bomb thus performed its first official role, as a tacit diplomatic weapon – and presidential confidence-booster – in negotiations over Eastern Europe. It failed. The President drew no concessions from Stalin; the Soviets would not be told ‘where to get off’: the Lublin Poles would stay where they were, answerable to Moscow, as far as Stalin was concerned. The talks ended in a mute standoff, and the early frost of the Cold War continued its silent ministry.
All was temporarily forgiven that night – the Generalissimo’s turn to host dinner. ‘Was it a dandy,’ Truman wrote to his daughter: caviar and vodka and mare’s milk butter, followed by smoked herring, white fish, venison, duck and chicken; with toasts ‘every five minutes’ to ‘somebody or something’. A quartet of Russian musicians played Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Churchill, who loved words – preferably his own – hated these long musical interludes and meant to get his revenge at the British banquet the next night.
* * *
Stimson was in a foul mood over dinner. That afternoon he had received a cable from Washington, which requested, to his chagrin, that his ‘pet city’ be returned to the atomic target list; Groves wanted it ranked a ‘first choice’ target, as Harrison wrote: ‘All your local military advisors engaged in preparation definitely favour your pet city and would like to feel free to use it as first choice if those on the ride select it out of 4 possible spots in light of local conditions at the time.’
Stimson sent a blunt reply: no new factors had arisen that made Kyoto a target. The bitterness wrung by ‘such a wanton act might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us’. The destruction of Japan’s oldest shrines might prevent a Japan ‘sympathetic’ to the United States ‘in case there should be any aggression by Russia in Manchuria’. However strange his desire for Japanese ‘sympathy’, an eye on post-war political gain partly motivated the saviour of Kyoto; clearly, he had also grown adept at dressing his personal crusade in political gloss.
Stimson received the final target list, via a cable from General Arnold, on the 22nd. Kyoto was not on it. The four chosen cities were all ‘believed to contain large numbers of key Japanese industrialists and political figures who have sought refuge from major destroyed cities’ – adding to their suitability. The strikes would be ‘visual’ (not radar-guided), ‘to ensure accuracy’. The bombardiers would require clear skies, and if weather favoured one city over another, the crews would have to divert in mid-attack to the more visible target. ‘Two tested type [plutonium] bombs are expected to be available in August, one about the 6th and another the 24th.’ There were more bombs in the pipeline, with news of ‘future availabilities’ forthcoming in a few days.
Stimson rose early on the 22nd after a fitful sleep. En route to a meeting with Churchill, he stopped at the Little White House for a chat with Truman. The President mentioned in passing that he did not think the Russians were needed in the Pacific War (as Stimson noted in his diary). The British leader wholeheartedly agreed: having read the Groves report in full, Churchill said he better understood the President’s feisty performance the day before. Truman was a ‘changed man’ who ‘bossed the whole meeting’, he said. Churchill similarly felt the bomb should be used ‘in our favour in the negotiations’. At some point, however, the Soviets should be told that ‘we intended to use it’.
Churchill then leaned forward and, with a flourish of his cigar, declared, ‘Stimson, what was gunpowder? Trivial. What was electricity? Meaningless. This atomic bomb is the Second Coming in wrath.’* Stimson, a devout Christian, never doubted that Christ was on ‘our’ side; he later wondered, however, whether the Son of God would have condoned the use of weapons of mass destruction on a civilian population centre.
In conference that afternoon the Russians were on the warpath again. Having jettisoned their post-war designation as ‘only a continental Power’, they now sought to branch ‘in all directions’. They were not only vigorously working to extend their influence in Poland, Austria, Rumania and Bulgaria, but also desiring bases in Turkey, Italian colonies in the Mediterranean, a firm footing in Asia, and an ‘immediate trusteeship’ over Korea. Most of these demands were bluffs, Truman concluded, and stoutly resisted them.
The nightly entertainment was a welcome respite from these fraught daily encounters, and Churchill took his revenge for Stalin’s music that evening, subjecting the delegates to loud, interminable renditions of ‘Carry Me Back to Green Pastures’, ‘Serenade Espagnole’ and Irish reels, courtesy of the Royal Air Force Band. Stalin requested quieter songs. Throughout this terrific din, the delegates proposed raucous toasts and exuberantly signed each other’s menu cards. In the midst of the revelry Stalin pointedly rose and drank to the armies of the Big Three, ‘joining forces against Japan’. Truman and Churchill smilingly raised their glasses.
* * *
The ever-loyal Stimson continued his peregrination as Truman’s unofficial messenger. On the 23rd the President asked him to sound out General Marshall on the military role of the bomb, and what to do about the Russians. The general was expansive: America, Marshall told the War Secretary, probably ‘did not need the assistance of the Russians to conquer Japan’. But he warned that Russia would invade Manchuria regardless, and that America should prepare for this. Marshall was not persuaded that the bomb alone would end the war (in fact, he had earlier suggested that several ‘tactical’ atomic bombs should accompany an invasion). Stimson returned to the Little White House to find another telegram from Harrison stating the ‘exact dates as far as possible when they expected to have S-1 ready’. This news, and Stimson’s upbeat version of his encounter with Marshall, greatly cheered the President on his lonely path.
Stimson chose the moment to appeal to the President: the next day, in an act of extraordinary persistence, he made one last tilt at retaining the original wording of the Potsdam Declaration, now moving towards its final draft. Byrnes had cut Stimson’s critical sentence that offered the Japanese people ‘a constitutional monarchy under the present dynasty…’. (In so doing, Byrnes had acted with the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recommended on 17 July that the offending phrase be struck out, lest ‘radical elements in Japan construed [it] as a commitment to continue the institution of the Emperor and Emperor worship’. It remains a mystery why the Chiefs did this, as they had previously stressed the vital role of the Emperor in quelling those very ‘radical elements’ at the surrender. The act smacked of political intervention.)
And so, on 24 July, as Truman awaited Chinese leader Chiang Kaishek’s approval of the text, Stimson requested that the sentence be reinstated: ‘The insertion … might be just the thing that would make or mar their acceptance.’ The President firmly rebuffed him: Truman’s and Byrnes’ minds were made up; the text could not be changed. The timely arrival of a Magic intercept of 21 July helped to clinch the decision: the cable, sent in the Emperor’s name, declared that the Japanese would fight to the last man unless America modified the surrender terms. Truman would not be dictated to by the nation that destroyed Pearl Harbor. As a last resort, Stimson urged Truman to reassure the Japanese ‘through diplomatic channels, if it was found that they were hanging fire on that one point [retention of the Emperor]’. The President glibly replied that he ‘had it in mind, and that he would take care of it’.
In any case, events had moved well beyond Stimson’s weary purview. That day, 24 July, the President formally approved the use of the bomb in a meeting with Churchill and each of their military advisers. Groves had sent a two-page cable seeking approval ‘of our plan of operation’. Truman rubber-stamped the plan; nothing was recorded, no minutes taken, according to witnesses. Later Washington cabled news of a ‘good chance’ that the ‘patient’ (bomb) would be ready on 4 or 5 August. This ‘highly delighted’ the President, who told Stimson: ‘It’s just what I want and gives me the cue for my warning [to Japan].’
Truman jotted down his reflections of these events in his ‘Potsdam diary’, often written with a self-justifying eye on his place in history: ‘Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic,’ Truman wrote at about this time, ‘we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo] … The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.’ This was plainly self-serving and false in spirit and fact: Truman’s humanitarian concern for Tokyo rang hollow given that he knew the city lay in ruins; the bomb would be dropped without warning on a city centre, as he also well knew; nor could he be in any doubt that it would erase from the face of the earth a population centre.
Back at the official conference, the delegates struggled to carve out a future world. That same 24 July day the Polish delegation, ‘helpless victims of the visions and designs of others’, naively presented their case for a socialist state free of Soviet control. Unbeknown to these ‘dreadful people’, as Churchill dismissed them, the Poles’ miserable fate had been decided before they arrived; they faded into the corridors and wallpaper, largely ignored. Potsdam stifled the last gasp of a democratic Poland, whose people would not taste freedom for another 44 years. Stalin’s position was as immovable as his crippled left arm. The day’s session ended with near-breakdown in the negotiations over issues whose legal complexity, at one point, reduced the delegates to helpless mirth and prompted Churchill to wonder – in one of his typically melodramatic versions of events – whether each side had in fact declared war on the other.
In this atmosphere of anxiety and distrust the American and British leaders decided to reveal the gist of S-1 to Stalin. They chose not to mention that it was an atomic bomb, fearing the Soviet leader would press for technical details and even a nuclear partnership. As the delegates stood about in groups awaiting their chauffeurs, Truman walked around the conference table and nonchalantly told Stalin that America possessed ‘a new weapon of unusual destructive force’. Stalin showed no special interest. He was glad to hear it and hoped that his allies ‘would make good use of it against the Japanese’.
Churchill and Byrnes, standing nearby, closely watched Stalin’s expression during this exchange. ‘He seemed to be delighted!’ Churchill recorded. ‘A new bomb! Of extraordinary power! Probably decisive on the whole Japanese war! What a bit of luck! I was sure that he had no idea of the significance of what he was being told.’
‘He didn’t realise what I was talking about,’ Truman later claimed.
Stalin played a more subtle game. He knew exactly what they were talking about: on 2 June the spy Klaus Fuchs had informed his Soviet contact of the forthcoming Trinity test. Stalin received that intelligence in the middle of June. Hence the Soviet leader’s casual reaction: the first poker-faced gambit of the nuclear age. But the timing of the news surprised him: Stalin had not realised the pace of American progress on the bomb. He returned grimly to his rooms where, according to Soviet sources, he ordered Lavrentiy Beria, the NKVD – Soviet secret police – chief, to ‘speed up the work’ on the Russian bomb; another account has Stalin ordering Molotov to ‘talk it over with Kurchatov’, the head of Russia’s nuclear program. His instructions had the urgency of a race.
* * *
By the end of July the political atmosphere had seriously degenerated. The official conference reached a stalemate. Allies in name, smiling comrades over the canapés, the Soviet and Anglo-American delegations fundamentally disagreed on all major points: the terms of the German settlement, the Polish question, the end of the Pacific War. A darker truth loomed; none dared speak its name. The democratic powers had lost Eastern Europe to Soviet communism; they were determined not to lose Asia. Byrnes was most anxious to ‘get the Japanese affair over with’ before the Russians got into Manchuria and claimed Port Arthur. Once in, he wrote, ‘it would not be easy to get them out’.
To break the impasse, Japan must be made to surrender swiftly. Truman and Churchill acted: at the bracing hour of 7am on 26 July 1945, outside the Cecilienhof Palace, the American and British delegations issued the Potsdam Proclamation [Declaration] – to a ravenous press. The final version enshrined Byrnes’ amendments: it excised any reference to the Emperor or constitutional monarchy; removed the Soviet Union’s name; and made no mention of the atomic bomb.
The time had come, it declared, for Japan, ‘to decide whether she will continue to be controlled by those self-willed militaristic advisers whose unintelligent calculations have brought the Empire of Japan to the threshold of annihilation, or whether she will follow the path of reason. Following are our terms. We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay…’
The Declaration called for the destruction of Japan’s war-making powers; the elimination ‘for all time’ of the authority and influence of those who had misled the Japanese people ‘into embarking on world conquest’; and the complete disarmament of the Japanese forces. Her vanquished armies would be allowed to return home and the Japanese people permitted to pursue peaceful industries, and enjoy freedom of speech, religion and assembly. War criminals would meet stern justice. The occupying forces would be withdrawn only after Japan had established, ‘in accordance with the freely expressed will of the people’, a peaceful, democratic government.
The Declaration’s final words conveyed its lethal intent – without specifying how America might complete the enemy’s annihilation: ‘We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces … The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction’ (see Appendix 3 for full text).
The document was not unreasonable, the terms more lenient than those imposed on Germany. A probing Japanese eye would surely read in the gently nuanced ‘freely expressed will of the people’ the opportunity to retain the Emperor as a constitutional monarch. And ‘unconditional surrender’ referred explicitly to the ‘armed forces’, not the people. Hirohito’s role, however, remained ambiguous, as he was titular head of the armed forces; it was this very ambiguity that left the Declaration open to a slurry of interpretations in Tokyo.
The Russians, when they heard, were furious; for once Stalin had been comprehensively outmanoeuvred – and thoroughly deceived. The night before, Molotov had sent a message to Byrnes requesting the Declaration be delayed two or three days; Byrnes claimed the message arrived two hours too late. The furious commissar pressed the Americans: Why had the ultimatum gone out without their joint consent? Why had the Americans ignored the Soviet request to delay it? Why had the Americans ignored the Soviet draft (which even referred to Japan’s ‘treacherous’ attack on Pearl Harbor, ‘the same perfidious surprise attack by which it had attacked Russia forty years ago’)?
What particularly incensed the Soviet leadership was not that the Potsdam Declaration offered ‘proof’ that America hoped to secure Japan’s surrender without Soviet help (Stalin presumed as much); rather that it ostentatiously, publicly, declared the exclusion – and therefore, in Stalin’s eyes – the humiliation of the Soviet Union. It amounted to the craven deceit of an ally. While the Russians had difficulty swallowing a dose of their own medicine, Byrnes made several attempts to mollify his humiliated Soviet counterpart. But Molotov sulked, refusing Byrnes’ three invitations to lunch. Truman was absent, inspecting American troops in Frankfurt.
Byrnes tried to explain the situation to Molotov in conference that day. The Americans had not received Molotov’s request in time, to which the Russian responded that ‘we were not informed until after the press release went out’. Byrnes tried another tack: ‘We did not consult the Soviet government since the latter was not at war with Japan and we did not wish to embarrass them.’ Molotov fell silent; he was ‘not authorised’ to discuss the matter further; Stalin, he ominously implied, would attend to it. Byrnes promptly changed the subject but the note of menace remained.
Later Byrnes persisted. The Declaration had to be sent before Churchill’s resignation, he explained, as it bore the British leader’s signature. Indeed, in a sensational electoral upset, Labour’s Clement Attlee had defeated Churchill at a general election the day before, and the great wartime leader would not be returning to Berlin. This hardly satisfied Molotov, and the episode rankled. For their part, Byrnes and Truman had no faith in Russian fair dealing, not least Molotov’s cynical gesture three days after Truman and Churchill issued the Declaration, calling on America, Britain and their Pacific allies to issue ‘a formal request to the Soviet Government for its entry into the War’.* It was an awkward invitation which Truman dispatched with an empty reference to international treaties that obliged Russia to assist in ‘preserving world peace’ etc. Stalin had resolved to enter the war as soon as possible; the bomb now brought forward his invasion plans – to stake a claim on Asia before Japan succumbed to a nuclear-armed America. A race was on for the spoils.
* * *
It was Sunday, and the Christian members of the American and British delegations, including Truman, attended Morning Worship at an improvised chapel. They read Psalm 106 and sang ‘Holy Holy Holy’, ‘How Firm a Foundation’ and ‘Fairest Lord Jesus’. Chaplain Northen led them in prayer:
… Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord
To the cross where Thou hast died;
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer, blessed Lord
To Thy precious bleeding side.
The conference ended on 2 August. The Big Three – with the new Prime Minister Clement Attlee in Churchill’s place – beamed out of the official photograph with an air of accomplished goodwill. Very little had been achieved. The official communiqué was a travesty of the truth. ‘Important agreements and decisions were reached,’ it stated; ‘views were exchanged on a number of other questions’. The discussions had ‘strengthened the ties between the three governments and extended the scope of their collaboration and understanding’. President Truman, Generalissimo Stalin and Prime Minister Attlee departed ‘with renewed confidence, that their governments and peoples, together with the other United Nations, will ensure the creation of a just and enduring peace’.
Beyond this official feather dusting, the Potsdam Conference had agreed, in effect, that Russia would swallow Poland; Poland digest a slice of Germany; and Germany be carved up, into four zones of occupation. Far from strengthening ties, Potsdam drove America and the Soviet Union into chronic psychological conflict. Had they known what transpired here, the peoples of the world would have gone forth not with renewed confidence but with feelings of dread and despair at the victors’ failure to ease the misery of, or salvage a strong and abiding peace from, the worst clash of arms in history: 50 million people lay dead; their memory deserved at least this. Potsdam split Europe along bitter lines and cast the die for another global conflict. Stalin’s aggression and indifference to the right of self-determination of nations caught in Soviet-occupied territory forced a tougher line from Truman; the bomb raised the President’s volume, little more. The delegates left the conference with premonitions of a future war more terrible than any hitherto imaginable; perhaps understandably, they sought refuge in warm communiqués and one stern ultimatum to their common foe. The Americans sailed home in anticipation of a prompt Japanese reply.