Editing Potsdam Agreement (section)

==Overview==
After the [[end of World War II in Europe]] (1939–1945), and the decisions of the earlier [[Tehran Conference|Tehran]], [[Casablanca Conference|Casablanca]] and [[Yalta Conference]]s, the Allies assumed supreme authority over Germany by the [[Berlin Declaration (1945)|Berlin Declaration]] of June 5, 1945. 

At the [[Potsdam Conference]] the Western Allies were presented with [[Stalin]]'s ''fait accompli'' awarding Soviet-occupied Poland the river [[Oder]] as its western border,<ref>''Speaking Frankly'' by James F. Byrnes, New York & London, 1947, p.79-81. Byrnes, a Judge and former State Governor, served as a close adviser to President Truman and became US Secretary of State in July 1945. In that capacity, Byrnes attended the Potsdam Conference and the Paris Conference.</ref><ref>''Meeting at Potsdam'' by Charles L. Mee, New York, 1975.</ref> placing the entire Soviet Occupation Zone east of it (with the exception of the [[Konigsberg|Kaliningrad]] enclave), including [[Pomerania]], most of [[East Prussia]], and [[Danzig]], under Polish administration. The German population who had not fled were expelled and their properties acquisitioned by the state.<ref>Schnieder, Professor Theodor, ''et al'', ''The Expulsion of the German Population from the Territories East of the Oder-Neisse-Line'', FDR Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, [[Bonn]], West Germany, 1954.</ref><ref>Krokow, Count Christian von, ''Hour of the Women'', Germany 1988, USA 1991, London 1992, ISBN 0-571-14320-2</ref><ref>''Orderly and Humane'' by Professor R. J. Douglas, Yale University Press, 2012, ISBN 9-780300-198201</ref><ref>''A Terrible Revenge'' by Professor Alfred Maurice de Zayas, Palgrave-Macmillan, New York, 1993/4, reprint 2006, ISBN 978-1-4039-7308-5</ref><ref>''Weeds Like Us'' by Gunter Nitsch, Author House, Bloomington, IN., USA, ISBN 978-3-4389-3312-2</ref>  President Truman and the British delegations protested at these actions. 

The Three Power Conference took place from 17 July to 2 August 1945, in which they adopted the ''Protocol of the Proceedings, August 1, 1945'', signed at [[Cecilienhof]] Palace in [[Potsdam]]. The signatories were General Secretary [[Joseph Stalin]], President [[Harry S. Truman]], and Prime Minister [[Clement Attlee]], who, as a result of the [[1945 United Kingdom general election|British general election of 1945]], had replaced [[Winston Churchill]] as the UK's representative. The three powers also agreed to invite [[France]] and [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|China]] to participate as members of the Council of Foreign Ministers established to oversee the agreement. The [[Provisional Government of the French Republic]] accepted the invitation on August 7, with the key reservation that it would not accept ''a priori'' any commitment to the eventual reconstitution of a central government in Germany.

[[James F. Byrnes]] wrote "we specifically refrained from promising to support at the German Peace Conference any particular line as the western frontier of Poland". The Berlin Protocol declared: "The three heads of government reaffirm their opinion that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the [final] peace settlement." Byrnes continues: "In the light of this history, it is difficult to credit with good faith any person who asserts that Poland's western boundary was fixed by the conferences, or that there was a promise that it would be established at some particular place."<ref>Byrnes, 1947, p.81.</ref> Despite this, the [[Oder–Neisse Line]] was set as Poland's provisional (and therefore theoretically subject to change) western frontier in Article 8 of the Agreement but was not finalized as Poland's permanent western frontier until the 1990 [[German–Polish Border Treaty]], having been recognized by East Germany in 1950 (in the [[Treaty of Zgorzelec]]) and acquiesced to by West Germany in 1970 (in the [[Treaty of Moscow (1970)]] and the [[Treaty of Warsaw (1970)]]).