this success in talking to Stalin, without specific-
ally mentioning that an atomic bomb would soon
be dropped on Hiroshima. Stalin did not betray
his anxiety that the US had tilted the balance of
power in its favour. Churchill was elated. The
atomic bomb would redress the balance: despite
the strength of the Red Army, Stalin no longer
had all the cards in his hands. After Stalin had
returned to the Kremlin, he ordered Soviet
scientists to redouble their efforts to make a
Soviet atomic bomb. Now that the world knew it
could be done, the basic obstacles were more
industrial than scientific, the difficulty of extract-
ing the fissionable materials. Klaus Fuchs helped
the Soviet scientists to reach their goal in
1949, but they would no doubt have solved the
problems, without him, albeit later.
On the whole Stalin could be well satisfied
with the outcome of the conference at Potsdam.
Churchill did not stay to the end. He returned to
be in London when the outcome of the general
election was announced. He was replaced on 28
July in Potsdam by Clement Attlee and the
redoubtable Ernest Bevin, the new foreign
secretary, who in the last days of the conference
conducted most of the negotiations for Britain.
Truman also left most of the critical bargaining
to his secretary of state James Byrnes. The Polish
issue once more proved highly contentious. There
was much argument about Poland’s western fron-
tier. To the end Stalin insisted on the western
Neisse, facing the West with a fait accompli. Bevin
and Byrnes had to accept this but did so with the
proviso that these German territories were only to
be ‘administered’ by Poland and a final settlement
of the western frontier would have to await the
signature of the peace treaty with Germany. In
fact, the provisional was to prove permanent.
The Polish agreement was part of a deal
whereby the Soviet Union reluctantly accepted
the American proposal on reparations. From a
reparations point of view, Stalin had wanted to
have Germany treated as a whole so that he could
participate in spoils from the West and the indus-
trial Ruhr as well as take away all that could be
moved from the Soviet zone. But he had to be sat-300 THE SECOND WORLD WAR
The Potsdam Conference, 1945. © Bettmann/Corbis