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!