Documents
The sources, not a reading list
The American diplomatic record of Potsdam is a work of the United States Government and carries no copyright. That is why these are here in full rather than merely cited — 8,436 words of primary source that can be read against the narrative that rests on it.
- 26 July 1945The Potsdam DeclarationProclamation Defining Terms for Japanese SurrenderIssued from Potsdam over the names of Truman, Chiang Kai-shek and Churchill, setting out the terms on which Japan could end the war. The Soviet Union, still neutral in the Pacific, was not a signatory. Thirteen clauses, the last of which offers Japan only 'prompt and utter destruction' as the alternative.
- 2 August 1945The Potsdam AgreementProtocol of the Proceedings of the Berlin ConferenceThe conference's signed record, agreed in the small hours of 2 August. It establishes the Council of Foreign Ministers, sets the political and economic principles for the occupation of Germany, settles reparations, transfers Königsberg, moves Poland's western frontier, and authorises the transfer of German populations from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
What is not here, and why
The memoirs the narrative leans on — Truman’s, Byrnes’s, Churchill’s — remain in copyright and are quoted only in short, attributed extracts. The same is true of the scholarship. Nothing on this site reproduces them at length, and no amount of usefulness would justify doing so.
The rest of the record is reachable and free to host: both volumes of Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conference of Berlin, the Truman Library’s papers, and the translated Soviet material held by the Wilson Center. Ingesting them is the next stage of this work, and the pipeline that put these two documents here is the pipeline that will do it.