Meeting at Potsdam

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Compromise, it turned out, had not been a way to find agreement but a way to lure an opponent that extra inch into a trap. Because of the agreements reached at the Potsdam Conference, each side-the U.S., Great Britain, the Soviet Union-was able to show with only a slight change in nuance that the other side had broken an agreement, was now acting in bad faith, was untrustworthy, was deviously working to undermine the generation of peace for which they had all fought and worked so hard.