Potsdam Agreement Japan

10 By concluding Yalta`s secret agreement with Roosevelt and Churchill at the Yalta Conference, Stalin obtained the concessions he had revealed to Harriman in exchange for his promise to enter the war against Japan three months after the German surrender.12 With regard to subsequent Soviet policy towards Japan, the following factors had to be mentioned. 31Stalin wanted the U.S. pressure on China to be concluded by voluntarily giving information that the Soviets were ready to enter the war. But he was disappointed because, although Byrnes agreed to a secret deal on Yalta, he warned that the United States would not support provisions that go beyond Yalta`s provisions. In addition, Truman and Byrnes insisted on Dairen`s free port status.35 Apparently, the Americans did not play the game as Stalin hoped. 11 At most, Yalta`s secret agreement was a masterpiece of Stalin`s diplomatic maneuver. The article on the Kuril Islands was separated from the article which provided for the restoration of Russia`s earlier rights “violated by the insidious attack on Japan in 1904”. By insisting that this independent article on the Kuril Islands is as important as the others and carefully using the phrase “returned” instead of “restored,” Stalin ruled out the possibility that the Kuril Islands would then be abducted in violation of the Atlantic Charter and the Cairo Declaration. Moreover, after Roosevelt and Churchill promised that these assertions would be “undoubtedly satisfied after Japan`s defeat,” he doubly ensured that these promises would not be ignored.13 30 Divergences between the two versions of the meeting speak volumes about the different expectations each leader had for the other. Stalin felt that Truman should be grateful for his commitment to go to war “by mid-August.” For this promise to go to war, Stalin expected Truman to reward him by pressuring the Chinese to reach an agreement with the USSR. But Truman was ambiguous about The Soviet entry into the war. In his Diary of Potsdam, Truman wrote: “He will be at war in Jap on 15 August.

No more Japs, if it comes. This passage, often taken by historians as convincing evidence that Truman welcomed the Soviet entry into the war, must be counterbalanced by the passage that preceded him: “I asked if he had the agenda of the meeting. He said he had and still had a few questions to ask. I told him to shoot. He did it, and it`s dynamite – but I also have dynamite that I don`t explode now. 33 Truman and Byrnes worked on a “planning” to force Japan`s surrender. They wanted to avoid Soviet entry into the war and were determined to use the atomic bomb for that purpose. Referring to the date of Stalin`s Soviet entry into the war, Truman believed that the Soviets would go to war on August 15,12 to win these war trophies, and to fulfill two important conditions: participation in the war and agreement with the Chinese government on Yalta`s mandate.