provided this video. we are at the 75th anniversary of the potsdam conference. big numbers like the 75th anniversary or hundred anniversary, are always occasions for looking back and for drawing attention. i think there is another reason to look back at potsdam as we are in our own day and age, re-entering a world of great power competition and reentering a world where geopolitics seems to have come back to the fore of international thinking in international relations thinking. so it is well worth us coming back to this subject. i m especially glad to have a chance to talk to you about it. i wish it was in person again, in kansas city. i wish that we were able to do this face to face, but we will do the very best that we can. the key thing here, that i want to return to throughout this presentation, is shown by this photograph here, of winston churchill, harry truman and joseph stalin smiling and shaking hands. and the point that i really want to reiterate here, is that the
i am glad to have a chance to talk to you about it. i was it was in person in kansas city. i wish that we were able to do this face-to-face, but we will do the very best that we can. the key thing here that i want to return to throughout this presentation is shown by this photograph here of winston churchill, harry truman, and joseph stalin smiling and shaking hands. and the point that i really want to reiterate here is that these three men and most of the advisors around them did not believe that what they were doing at potsdam was laying the seeds of a cold war. we know from the scholarship of the 1960 s, 1970 s and beyond, a lot of historians read potsdam backwards. that is to say they read it as a start of the cold war. but these three men and their staff came to potsdam not to begin a cold war amongst themselves, but celebrate, really, the end of the war with germany, figure out what the post world war was going to look like, and plan for the final victory over japan in
i think there is another reason to look back at potsdam, as we are reentering a world of great power competition and reentering a world where geopolitics seems to have come back to the fore of international relations thinking. so it is well worth us coming back to this subject. i am glad to have a chance to talk to you about it. i wish it was in person in kansas city. i wish that we were able to do this face-to-face, but we will do the very best that we can. the key thing here that i want to return to throughout this presentation is shown by this photograph here of winston churchill, harry truman, and joseph stalin smiling and shaking hands. and the point that i really want to reiterate here is that these three men and most of the advisors around them did not believe that what they were doing at potsdam was laying the seeds of a cold war. we know from the scholarship of the 1960 s, 1970 s, and beyond, a lot of historians read potsdam backwards. that is to say they read it as
conference and they re always occasions for looking back and drawing attention and there s another reason to look back at potsdam as we are re-entering a world of great power competition and re-entering a world where geopolitics seems to have come back to the fore of international thinking and international relations thinking. so it is well worth us coming back to this subject. so i m especially glad to have a chance to talk to you about it. i wish it was in person again in kansas city. i wish that we weraible to do this face to face, but we will do the very best that we can. the key thing here that i want to return to throughout this presentation is shown by this photograph here of winston churchill, joseph stalin and smiling and shaking hands and the point i want to reiterate here is that these three men and most of the advisers around them did not believe that what they were doing at potsdam was laying the seeds of a cold war. we know from the scholarship of the 1960s, 70
welcome to the u.s. holocaust memorial museum. we decided to look closely at americans role in this history. that goes back to our founding charter, which mandated that the museum look closely at the americans role in this history. this museum is not an answer, it s a question. the questions that frame this exhibition are what did americans know and what more could have been done. you will see what they try to do is try to show the context of american history. that context includes our isolationism in the aftermath of world war i, xenophobia, fear of immigrants, racism, jim crow america, anti-semitism in the united states. then we are responding to nazi is him amid the context of the great depression and war. in the exhibition, we are always trying to keep that context front and center. the opening film of the exhibition shows the context of the united states between 1918 and 1932. what you see is americans response to world war i. americans mourning at graves of fall