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suddenly had the upper hand among the powers who were allies in the war. With a devastating and proven weapon in its armory, the U.S. used the atomic bomb to force Japan’s surrender. ( Subscriber exclusive: For Hiroshima's survivors, memories of the bomb are impossible to forget.) had just successfully tested a weapon of “unusual destructive force.” It was a nuclear weapon capable of destroying entire cities, the most dangerous and powerful armament the world had ever seen. President Harry Truman took aside Soviet premier Joseph Stalin to share some explosive news: The U.S. One of the most important moments at Potsdam was not captured in a memo or proclaimed at a press conference. The talks were meant to forge a lasting peace, but within 18 months, a Cold War began that lasted more than four decades. The great powers split Germany into occupation zones, recognized a Soviet-backed government in Poland, and partitioned Vietnam, monumental decisions that shaped the postwar global order. As World War II dragged to an end in 1945, the leaders of the “Big Three” allied powers-the United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain-met in Potsdam, Germany, to hash out terms to conclude the bloodiest conflict the world had ever seen.
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