Attlee, who had been deputy prime minister in Churchill’s wartime coalition government, attended a small luncheon at the Prime Minister’s villa on the afternoon of 17 July. Also present was US Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Churchill lingered at the table bantering with his guests until half an hour before he was scheduled to see Stalin and Truman. With Attlee, he joked about the British general election as if there had not been a harsh word between them during the often exceptionally bitter campaign; and with Stimson, he exchanged light-hearted personal reminiscences about their younger days. In the leisurely course of the meal, Stimson gave no sign that he had anything urgent to convey to his host or that he desired to speak to him privately. Only when Churchill was showing Stimson out did the latter inform him that the world’s first atomic bomb had been successfully tested the day before in New Mexico. Though Britain had been a partner in the secret project to develop the new weapon, deadlier than any yet in existence, Churchill had not known in advance the date of the test. If the bomb worked, it promised to end the Pacific war quickly and to spare a great many Allied soldiers’ lives. In his present predicament, Churchill also sensed that it might be capable of something more. Nothing could be certain for there were no details as yet, but here potentially was the card he needed to persuade Stalin to come to terms in Europe.
Until Churchill had additional information, he was intent that this first bit of news from New Mexico be withheld from Stalin. Truman had already thrown away one bargaining counter, and Churchill wanted to be sure that it did not happen again. Stimson’s insistence that the Soviets really ought to be notified of the test left Churchill to go off to his meeting both excited about the new development and worried that the Americans might be about to squander another opportunity. Churchill, who had met with Truman the previous day, knew that the President had been lunching with Stalin that afternoon. Churchill had no idea whether Truman, who had had the information since the previous evening, might already have told Stalin about the bomb or even agreed to share its secrets with his Soviet ally, as Roosevelt had once been inclined to do. The last-minute timing of Stimson’s disclosure made it impossible for Churchill to talk to the President beforehand.
At the first plenary session at the Cecilienhof Palace – in whose courtyard the Russians had planted masses of geraniums in the form of a 24-foot-wide red star – Churchill played for time. For weeks, he had been pressing Truman to agree to the earliest possible meeting; now, he meant to go as slowly as possible. Previously, he had been insistent that the most contentious issues be addressed without delay; now, he told his fellow leaders, ‘We will feel our way up to them.’ Truman was in a difficult, almost impossible position at Potsdam. In the days before the conference, he had been nervous about facing giants like Churchill and Stalin, and with good reason. Though a dying man, Roosevelt had done nothing to prepare his successor for the presidency. Roosevelt never spoke to Truman confidentially of the war, of foreign affairs, or of what he had in mind for the postwar world. When Truman suddenly landed in the Oval Office after only three months as vice president, he had to struggle to catch up. Devoid of foreign policy experience, he pored over memoranda, briefs, and correspondence on international affairs. He conferred with presidential advisers, who, to his perplexity, offered conflicting advice. On the voyage to Europe, he absorbed as much information as he could from various coaches. At his first meeting with Stalin and Churchill together, he read aloud from prepared statements and thereafter was careful to stick to positions that had been well worked out in advance.
Churchill’s newly unhurried pace irked Truman, who protested, ‘I don’t just want to discuss. I want to decide.’
Churchill came back impishly, ‘You want something in the bag each day.’
Looking ahead to subsequent plenary sessions, Truman went on, ‘I should like to meet at four o’clock instead of five.’
‘I will obey your orders,’ Churchill replied.
Clearly amused, Stalin interjected, ‘If you are in such an obedient mood today, Mr Prime Minister, I should like to know whether you will share with us the German fleet.’ When the meeting concluded, Stalin invited the others to the banquet room, the length of which was filled by a table loaded with caviar, cold meat, turkeys, partridges, and salads, as well as vodkas and wines ‘of all hues’. Truman stayed less than ten minutes. Churchill, though he had previously complained of indigestion, happily ate and drank with Stalin. Pointing out that they had much to talk about privately, Stalin asked Churchill to have dinner with him the following evening. It promised to be a late night. In contrast to Truman, who preferred to go to bed early, Churchill and Stalin were both night owls. On the present occasion, Stalin remarked to Churchill that he had grown so accustomed to working late during the war that even though the necessity had passed, he could never get to sleep before 4 a.m.
By the time Churchill dined with Stalin on Wednesday, 18 July, he had had a chance to talk to Truman, who assured him that he had not informed the Soviet leader about the bomb. Churchill had concluded overnight that, once they were certain of the test results, it would actually be a very good idea were Stalin to be made aware that the Western allies had a singular new weapon. What continued to worry him, however, was the possibility that Truman would agree to share technical information with Moscow. Truman said he would not, but Churchill remained uneasy. Western possession of the bomb would be of little use in the negotiations if Stalin could count on being able to build one as well.
When Churchill arrived at half past eight, Stalin’s two-storey stone villa was surrounded by machine-gun-toting thugs. A phalanx of seven NKVD – secret police – regiments and nine hundred bodyguards had accompanied the dictator to Potsdam. Stalin had lived a life of violence, fighting off rivals and would-be usurpers with murder and bloodshed, and he was perpetually fearful of being treated in kind. In the present setting, the savage vengeance the Red Army had wreaked on the Germans provided an additional motive for an assassination attempt. Still, once through the numerous layers of security, Churchill was welcomed with friendly informality. Stalin had no other guests. Only the leaders’ interpreters, Birse and Pavlov, were scheduled to join them at dinner.
Though the surviving members of the original Big Three had become antagonists, they were bonded by a sense of themselves as men apart, the last of a superior breed that had included Roosevelt. As Churchill later said, together they had had the world at their feet and commanded many millions of men on land and sea. Churchill’s personal history with Stalin had begun with their written exchanges in 1941 after Germany’s surprise attack on Russia. When they first met, in Moscow in 1942, Stalin’s insults had nearly caused Churchill to break off their talks and fly home at once. The British Ambassador, Archibald Clark Kerr, had worked hard to assuage Churchill’s fury. Kerr urged him to reflect on the relative unimportance of his own wounded feelings weighed against the many young lives that would be sacrificed if he did not swallow his pride and return to the talks. Churchill resolved that in the interest of advancing their shared objective of defeating Hitler he would do what it took to build a relationship with Stalin, even somehow find a way to ‘like’ him. In subsequent meetings – at Tehran, again in Moscow, and at Yalta – Churchill and Stalin had developed a deep fascination with and respect for each other.
Though Churchill had no idea that Stalin’s late arrival at Potsdam had been due to a minor heart attack, he thought his host tonight looked ill and ‘physically rather oppressed’. Stalin’s once black hair was a grizzled mop, as were his shaggy moustache and eyebrows. His narrow, evasive eyes were yellow, his teeth stained and broken. Short and stocky, he had a withered left arm that he held woodenly in his right hand, palms up. War had aged the sixty-seven-year-old Generalissimo prematurely. He had worked too hard, slept too little, and not had a holiday in years. Despite his physical condition, he had made no more effort to moderate his appetites than Churchill had. In the course of the dinner, which extended to the next morning, there was a prodigious amount of smoking, eating, and drinking by both men.
When Churchill and Stalin last saw Roosevelt, at Yalta, the President had been a cadaverous figure with waxen cheeks and trembling hands. At times he had been lucid, but at other moments he sat with his mouth open, staring ahead, unable to follow the discussion. Roosevelt