Eighty years ago new faces at the final "Big Three" summit

 

 

The leaders of the "Big Three" nations - Britain, the Soviet Union and the USA  met for their final summit conference. It was visibly the end of an era. There was a new US president and Churchill's future was in the balance pending the count for the general election which had just taken place. As Churchill had invited the Labour leader Clem Attlee to attend, it was certain that  the prime minister who would be responsible to enacting the conference's decisions would be there, but a question mark hung over who it would be. The previous summits had debated the conduct of the war but now the agenda covered largely the future of defeated Germany.

A further element of unreality was also present at Potsdam. The first test of a nuclear weapon was due to take place; by some accounts President Truman had tried to delay the conference so as to know the result of the Trinity (as the test was codenamed) with the attendant implications for the balance of power. Truman and the British imagined that Stalin was unaware that the bomb was being devloped but he was in fact fully informed through the KGB's network of traitors. Truman was instantly informed that Trinity had succeeded but he left Stalin - as he imagined it - in the dark to begin with.

Following the final  removal of black-out restrictions in London's West End came another symbolic return to peacetime conditions with the abolition of Double British Summer time under which clocks were two hours forward ahead of Greenwich Mean Time during the summer months rather than one hour. By chance this had placed Britain on the same time as continental Europe. Clocks were wound back by one hour, restoring the time gulf to where it has since remained with minor exceptions.