World War II Day by Day

Potsdam, Germany • July 21, 1945

The “Big Three” Allies opened their victors’ confer­ence on July 17, 1945, in an undamaged suburb 15 miles/­24 kilo­meters from Berlin, the German capi­tal. Two drama­tic uncon­di­tional surren­ders by the heads of Germany’s armed forces a week after the April 30 sui­cide of German dic­ta­tor Adolf Hitler had encour­aged the govern­ment heads of the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union to assem­ble with their polit­i­cal and mili­tary advisers in Pots­dam, Germany as quickly as pos­si­ble. The dele­gates’ weighty task: estab­lish a peace­ful geo­polit­i­cal and eco­no­mic post­war order in the ruins of war-torn Europe. Weighing slightly less on the dele­gates’ minds—yet more so on the minds of Amer­i­cans on the home front and their loved ones assem­bled on war­ships and in island gar­ri­sons off the coast of Japan—was how to end the still-raging war with Germany’s hold-out mili­tary part­ner as expe­di­tiously as pos­si­ble and establish a similar postwar order in the Asia Pacific region.

Exactly how to end the war with Japan gene­rated intense debate. The geo­graphy of the island nation com­pli­cated attempts at a ground inva­sion. Honshū, Japan’s most popu­lous island and the location of its capital, Tokyo, was Japan’s largest city as well as home to the quasi-divine Emperor Hiro­hito (post­humously referred to as Emperor Shōwa). Unlike Hitler, who sur­vived multi­ple of attempts by his mili­tary to assas­si­nate him, Hiro­hito had no such domes­tic foes until the very last hours of the Pacific War. Besides, Hiro­hito had come to viewed by most U.S. mili­tary offi­cials as the only figure with the requi­site credentials to engineer Japan’s surrender.

The emperor and his fire-breathing war­lords needed some­thing out­side the tradi­tional war book to induce them to the peace table. U.S. phys­i­cists and mili­tary planners were busy secretly building a bomb of unknown capa­bil­ity that might or might not end World War II with a bang. At the same time the new Amer­i­can pres­i­dent, Harry S. Truman, was pur­suing a stra­tegy to enlarge the con­flict. Step 1: entice war­time ally Joseph Stalin, head of the Soviet Union, to aban­don his nation’s non­ag­gres­sion pact with Japan. (Agree­ment appeared close at hand in Febru­ary 1945 at a Big Three con­fer­ence at Yalta in the Soviet Crimea.) Step 2: con­vince Stalin to declare war on Japan. On this date, July 21, 1945, stra­tegy-con­firming news reached Truman in Pots­dam. U.S. Sec­re­tary of State James Byrnes handed the pres­i­dent a news sum­mary that showed Amer­i­can press opin­ion strongly sup­ported the Soviets’ entry into the war—a war U.S. mili­tary advi­sers esti­mated might cost the bellig­er­ents hun­dreds of thou­sands more deaths and drag on for upwards of 16 months.

Despite overwhelming public and media sup­port for the Red Army entering the Paci­fic fray, a few voices in the State, War, and Navy depart­ments raised late-term con­cerns. All for naught. Stalin told Truman on Day 1 of the Pots­dam Con­fer­ence that his mili­tary would invade Chi­nese Man­chu­ria (Japa­nese puppet state Man­chu­kuo) by mid‑August 1945. Although Soviet con­di­tions appeared modest to Truman, in real­ity Stalin saw a stra­te­gic oppor­tu­nity to turn the tables on the Japa­nese by regaining Chi­nese assets Czarist Russia had lost following the disastrous Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905.

On August 6, 1945, as diplomatic nego­ti­a­tions dragged on, a single U.S. B‑29 Super­for­tress dropped a fear­some bomb on Hiro­shima that killed 70,000 Japa­nese out­right. Three days later, on August 9, 40,000 resi­dents of Naga­saki died out­right in a second atomic blast. Earlier that day Soviet armed forces invaded Man­chu­ria; Stalin had kept his word. Japan suddenly found itself in a tight spot: Soviet troops making a bee­line for the China coast, Amer­i­can B‑29s swarming over­head loaded for bear. On August 14 Emperor Hiro­hito recorded his uncon­di­tional sur­ren­der rescript, which was broad­cast to the world the next day. The con­flict ended, Japan’s formal sur­ren­der was recorded in a solemn cere­mony on the deck of the U.S. battle­ship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

Potsdam Conference, July 17 to August 2, 1945: Shaping the Future of Europe and Japan

Left: Codenamed Terminal, the Potsdam Conference was the third Big Three con­fer­ence between a U.S. Pre­si­dent but the first between Harry S. Tru­man (seated center), British Prime Minis­ters Win­ston Chur­chill (to Truman’s right) and his post­war suc­ces­sor Cle­ment Att­lee (not seen), and Soviet Pre­mier Joseph Stalin. The 17‑day con­fer­ence got under­way on July 17, 1945, in Berlin’s rela­tively undamaged, picture-post­card suburb of Pots­dam and its eastern district of Babels­berg. It ended on August 2, 1945. The discus­sions were inter­rupted three-quarters­way through as the heads of govern­ment awaited late returns of the July 5 British parli­a­men­tary elec­tions. Chur­chill lost by a land­slide and was replaced by his polit­ical oppo­nent, Cle­ment Att­lee, who had been at the con­fer­ence since its opening. The dele­gates resumed their nego­ti­a­tions on July 28. Chief among the agenda items pushed by the con­fer­ees was the estab­lish­ment of a new post­war order in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Asia Pacific area that would rec­tify defects of the past three decades that followed the con­clu­sion of the Ver­sailles Con­ference in Paris (January 18, 1919 to January 21, 1920).

Right: Heads of government, foreign ministers, various advisers, and inter­preters sit around the large oak table that domi­nated the con­fer­ence room in Potsdam’s sprawling Cecilien­hof Palace, named for Cecilia, the wife of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s son, Crown Prince Wilhelm. The photo was taken before Attlee (bald head lower left) suc­ceeded Chur­chill (bottom left of center) as prime minis­ter of Great Britain and head of govern­ment. Truman sits five chairs to the right of Chur­chill. At Stalin’s sug­gestion Truman was made con­fer­ence chair­man. It was on July 17, 1945, during the first of 13 ple­nary ses­sions, that Stalin announced his deci­sion to declare war on Japan “with no strings attached,” as Truman later told his wife, Beth, in a letter home. On another occa­sion Truman bragged to his wife: “I can deal with Stalin . . . He’s honest but smart as hell.” Truman proph­e­sied that with the Soviet Union in the fight against Japan “we’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids [i.e., U.S. service­members] who won’t be killed! That is the important thing.”

Left: The Hiroshima Chamber of Industry and Com­merce Building was the only building remotely close to standing near the epi­center of the atomic bomb blast of August 6, 1945. Known today as the Gen­baku (“Atom Bomb” in Japa­nese) Dome, it was left unre­paired by its citi­zens as a reminder of the unprec­e­dented event that befell their city. It sits in a lush park, the Hiro­shima Peace Memo­rial Park, sur­rounded by a metrop­o­lis of one million people. For many visitors the memo­rial park and museum are hallowed ground.

Right: The still-standing smokestacks of Nagasaki’s sprawling Mitsu­bishi Steel and Arma­ment Works. The plant was located about 2,500 ft/­762 meters down­river from ground zero. Naga­saki’s hilly ter­rain tempered the bomb’s destruc­tive effects, where­as Hiro­shima was flat and open and thus suffered much greater devas­ta­tion. The horri­fic effect of the atomic bombings on two major Japa­nese cities, plus the threat posed by Soviet armies approaching the Chi­nese coast oppo­site the Japa­nese home islands, com­pelled Hiro­hito to order his country’s surrender.

Left: The 11-member Japanese delegation of civilians and mili­tary offi­cers shortly after their arrival on board the USS Missouri, Sunday, Septem­ber 2, 1945. For the first time in its history Japan was sur­ren­dering to both a foreign power and an occupying power. Leading the dele­gation was Foreign Affairs Minis­ter Mamoru Shige­mitsu (top hat and cane). In 1948 Shige­mitsu was sen­tenced to seven years im­pri­son­ment by the Inter­na­tional Mili­tary Tri­bu­nal for the Far East. Paroled in 1950 Shige­mitsu became Deputy Prime Minister of Japan in 1954.

Right: Dressed in khaki and an open-neck shirt, General of the Army Douglas Mac­Arthur, Supreme Allied Com­mander, opened the 20‑minute sur­render cere­mony on the Missouri’s star­board veran­da deck precisely at 9 a.m. Forty-three high-ranking offi­cers from eight Allied powers lined up behind him. Slowly Mac­Arthur intoned, “We are gathered here, repre­sen­ta­tives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agree­ment where­by peace may be restored . . . It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all man­kind that from this solemn occa­sion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and car­nage of the past—a world founded upon faith and under­standing, a world dedi­cated to the dig­nity of man and the ful­fill­ment of his most cherished wish—for freedom, tolerance, and justice.”

Scenes of Postwar Berlin and Arrival of the “Big Three” in Potsdam