Urgent Summons

07/01/20 • 24 min

In July 1945, representatives of the victorious Allies met in the heart of Germany, in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. It is a new cohort of leaders, while Stalin was still Soviet dictator, the inexperienced Truman and a brand-new British prime minister, Clement Attlee, represented the Anglo-American alliance. Here, in the squalid ruins of a once-great city, the three men lay their plans for their final battle: the conquest of Japan.

Previous Episode

Charter Into Deeds

World War II had been so horrible that the victorious powers decided that nothing like it must ever happen again. President Roosevelt’s dream had been to establish a “United Nations” (UN) organization, in which the peace-loving nations of the world would settle disputes and intervene to punish aggression, but it was Truman who saw it through. On June 26, the UN charter was signed in San Francisco. Would it succeed where previous international organizations had failed and keep the world at peace?

Next Episode

883 Killed

Even with victory in sight, soldiers, sailors, and airmen continued to die in the Pacific theater. The USS Indianapolis, for example, was torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-58 while transporting parts of the atomic bomb “Little Boy” from San Francisco to Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Three hundred men went down with the ship as she sank. For the other nearly 900 sailors in the water, clinging desperately to their life rafts, the ordeal had just begun.