Potsdam Conference

The Potsdam Conference was the meeting of the heads of government of the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Kingdom held in and near Berlin from July 17 to August 2, 1945, in the weeks after the surrender of Germany. Its Protocol of the Proceedings, dated August 1, 1945, is the legal record of what the three governments agreed. The Protocol set up a Council of Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and the United States to prepare peace treaties with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland. It laid down principles for treating Germany during the initial control period, under the supreme authority of the Commanders-in-Chief of the occupying forces. It also settled how reparations would be taken: the Soviet Union from its own zone and from German external assets, with a share of industrial equipment from the Western Zones, and the other claimants from the Western Zones. Pending a final peace settlement, former German territory east of the Oder and Western Neisse line was placed under Polish administration, and the Conference accepted the Soviet proposal about the transfer of the city of Koenigsberg and its adjacent area. The Protocol also recorded the three governments' intention to bring major war criminals to trial, which led to the Nuremberg proceedings.