The “Big Three” leaders of the Allied nations — Prime Minister Winston Churchill for Britain, President Harry S. Truman for the U.S. and Joseph Stalin for Russia — frequently communicated with each other during the progression of the second world war, but there was nothing like a face-to-face publicized meeting to discuss strategy, present a united front, and issue a common decree. Three such meetings took place over the course of the war, the last of which was held just a stone’s throw away from Berlin.

On this day, August 2, in 1945, three months after the Allies accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender, Churchill, Truman and Stalin concluded a meeting in Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam, Germany, beside a lawn now decorated with a giant Soviet red star.

The agenda for the meeting included the division of postwar Europe and the Japan situation — the allies called on the emperor to surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction”. It went unsaid that the utter destruction would be in the form of an atomic bomb, but Stalin may have known about it already. As Truman recalled in his memoirs “I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force. The Russian Premier showed no special interest. All he said was he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make “good use of it against the Japanese.”