Potsdam Conference. Clement Attlee, Harry Truman, and Joseph Stalin, seated outdoors, August 1, 1945. The Potsdam Conference was held at the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in occupied Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. The three powers were represented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. Stalin, Churchill, and Truman, as well as Attlee, who participated alongside Churchill while awaiting the outcome of the 1945 general election, and then replaced Churchill as Prime Minister after the Labour Party's defeat of the Conservatives, gathered to decide how to administer punishment to the defeated Nazi Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier, on May 8 (V-E Day). The goals of the conference also included the establishment of post-war order, peace treaties issues, and countering the effects of the war.