The Potsdam Conference was held in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which were represented respectively by Premier Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. They gathered to decide how to administer Germany, which had agreed to an unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier, on the 8 May. The goals of the conference also included establishing the postwar order, solving issues on the peace treaty, and countering the effects of the war.
The foreign ministers of the three governments—James F. Byrnes, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Anthony Eden and Ernest Bevin, as well as other advisers, also participated in the Conference. From July 17 to July 25, nine meetings were held, when the Conference was interrupted for two days, as the results of the British general election were announced. By July 28, Attlee had defeated Churchill and replaced him as Britain’s representative, with Britain's new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ernest Bevin, replacing Anthony Eden. Four days of further discussion followed.