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Friday, March 15, 2013

Pottsdam what?

Sepia Saturday asks us to look through our old photos to see if we have anything that meets the parameters (any of them) of a picture of the Pottsdam Conference in 1945.  (Click on the name to see all kinds of other postings)


I went to Wikipedia and buzzed through it's long listing...then found this which made me go WHOA!  (remember Truman abruptly had become President in April of that year when three-term Roosevelt died)  I was just a little girl while this conference was going on, being broadcast only on radio news or printed in the daily newspapers at the time.  It certainly was better news than all that had covered during the war years before

On 16 July 1945, the Americans successfully tested an atomic bomb at the Trinity test at Alamogordo in the New Mexico desert, USA. On 21 July, Churchill and Truman agreed that the weapon should be used against Japan. Truman had previously been encouraged by the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, to inform the Soviets of this new development, in order to avoid sowing distrust over keeping the USSR out of the Manhattan Project
 What I didn't know until today follows:
Truman did not tell Stalin of the weapon until 25 July when he advised Stalin that America had "a new weapon of unusually destructive force." According to various eyewitnesses, Stalin appeared uninterested. It later became known that Stalin was actually aware of the atomic bomb before Truman was, as he had multiple spies that had infiltrated the Manhattan Project from very early on (notably Klaus Fuchs, Ted Hall, and David Greenglass), while Truman had only learned about the weapon after Roosevelt's death.(underline by blogger) By the 26th of July, the Potsdam Declaration had been broadcast to Japan, threatening total destruction unless the Imperial Japanese government submitted to unconditional surrender. 

Churchill had been voted out of office during the same conference and Clement Attlee took his place.


Attlee, Truman and Stalin at Pottsdam Conference.

I give you my personal story of someone taking the place of another person.  Not by election, but the way that Truman came into office, by the death of his predecessor.


Albert "Bud" Webb, my mother's father
Albert J. (Bud) Webb (b. July 30, 1891, Huisache, TX, d. 1919)  My mother was 2 years old when he died.




Into my mother's photo album comes the new Daddy in her life.  He had married her mother on March 22, 1924, just before my mother's 7th birthday on the 26th.













My mother, Mataley was a creative scrapbooker, and added the mouse here.  But since she probably didn't write in cursive in 1925 when she was 7 or 8, it's possible the scrapbook/album wasn't created until sometime later.  I'm intrigued by the little mouse, and so glad she wrote the dates with the pictures!

12 comments:

  1. Just think what your mother could have done with a set of decorative scrapbooking scissors! LOL! She knew the important things to include on her scrapbook page long before scrapbooking became the trendy hobby.

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  2. You are so right, and since her mother was a seamstress, there might have been pinking sheers around also. I just noticed the older pictures probably came out of a locket.

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  3. It looks as though the second Daddy was much loved also. How lovely to include them both on her special scrapbook.

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  4. Your ppersonal story is much more interesting than all the talk about war.

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  5. I'm intrigued by the way she trimmed the photographs - I agree, probably not created until some time later. The first photo of "Dady Webb" in particular seems to have been very roughly torn into that shape. A young creative mind at work, no doubt.

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  6. I loved the creative way the pictures were cut out. In some ways it is destructive, but it makes the album more interesting.

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  7. I always enjoy seeing scrapbooking and photo posting from days ago, they were so creative even then!

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  8. What a fascinating inter-mingling of stories, a single thread pulling together the worlds of international politics and family history.

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  9. Wow! Your mother was way ahead of her time for the scrapbooking techiques! It is so important to put dates and if possible the location where the photo was taken. I do that now, but in a folder in my computer. I don't print out my pictures as much as I should. But if I did, I would like to treat them the way your Mom did.

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  10. Very nostalgic photos, and these photos are very preserved!

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  11. The Way the Scrapbook was designed adds a very personal & touching dimension to the photographs.{p.s. hat-tip for the mention of one of Britains better politicians Clement Attlee.}

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  12. In fact scrapbooking in one form or another has been around for many hundreds of years, so your mother was continuing a very old tradition. Her photos are so clear and fresh.

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There is today, more than ever, the need for a compassionate regenerative world civilization.