Books: The Big-Three Follies

MEETING AT POTSDAM by CHARLES L. MEE JR. 370 pages. Evans. $10.95.

Germany was in ruins, the only trace of Hitler was an oil spot on the ground outside his Berlin bunker, Japan was desperately seeking escape from impending disaster, and the atomic bomb was being rushed to completion in the U.S. Harry Truman packed tuxedo, top hat and tails, as he wrote his mother back in Independence, Mo., and set off jauntily for Potsdam in July 1945 for a victors' summit with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill.

Historical attention—partisan and otherwise—has mostly centered onYalta and the deals made there by...

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