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What’s the context? Opening of the Potsdam Conference, 17 July 1945

Seated in the garden of Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam, Germany, L to R: British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, President Harry S. Truman, and Soviet Prime Minister Josef Stalin. L to R, behind them: Adm. William Leahy, British foreign minister Ernest Bevin, Secretary of State James Byrnes, and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. They are all attending the Potsdam Conference.

On 17 July 1945 the last of the great tripartite wartime conferences between the US, the UK and Russia opened at Potsdam, near Berlin. All the major issues facing the postwar world were discussed there.