Digital Conversation on the 75th Anniversary of the Potsdam Conference

Potsdam Conference, July-August 1945. The “Big Three” at Potsdam, Germany, pose for a formal photograph in garden near the meeting palace. Left to right: Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill; President Harry S. Truman, and Premier Joseph Stalin. Photographed released July 25, 1945. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. (2016/02/23).

The Potsdam Conference in 1945 marked an endpoint to the Second World War, but also the beginning of the Cold War and, with the “Potsdam Agreement” the reshaping of the political and geographical landscape in Europe and beyond. This conversation will explore the significance of the decisions made at the Potsdam Conference until today and explore the changing views in scholarship and public opinion.

The conversation will streamed live on our YouTube channel in the video below:


Participants
Dr. Fredrik Logevall, Harvard University
Dr. Michael Dreyer, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

Dr. Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs and Professor of History at Harvard University. He is the author or editor of numerous books, among them Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (Random House, 2012), which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History and the 2013 Francis Parkman Prize, as well as the 2013 American Library in Paris Book Award and the 2013 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations. His other works include America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (with Campbell Craig; Belknap/Harvard, 2009), and the college-level textbook A People and A Nation: A History of the United States (with Mary Beth Norton et al; 11th ed., 2018). His new book, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, will be published by Random House in September 2020.

Dr. Michael Dreyer is Professor of Political Science at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. Among his numerous publications are the U.S. related publications are the co-edited Die Verfassung der USA. Ursprung, Entwicklung, Gegenwart, Always on the Defensive?: Progressive Bewegung und Progressive Politik in den USA in der Ära Obama (Atlantische Texte, 2015), Amerikaforschung in Deutschland. Themen und Institutionen der Politikwissenschaft nach 1945 (2004) and „Germany and the United States“, in Raimund Seidelmann (ed.), The New Germany. History, Economy, Policies (2011). Dr. Dreyer is an expert in the 19th and 20th century history of ideas in Germany and the U.S. and the Supreme Court.

The event is organized in cooperation with the US Embassy Berlin and the US Consulate General Leipzig.