Arriving in Potsdam, we took a drive through the Charlottenburg Palace Gardens, past Charlottenburg Palace from the late 1600's and Belvedere, a lookout point in the park. In the New Garden, the first English landscaped park of the Prussian kings, lies the Cecilienhof Palace. This was the residence of Crown Prince William and his wife Cecilie, and was built around 1915.
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof from 17 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US. The three powers were represented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and, later, Clement Atlee (Churchill lost the election during the conference) and President Harry S. Truman. Stalin, Churchill, and Truman—as well as Attlee, who participated alongside Churchill while awaiting the outcome of the election, gathered to decide how to administer punishment to the defeated Nazi Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier. The goals of the conference also included the establishment of post-war order, peace treaty issues, and countering the effects of the war.
Cecilienhof has preserved the Occupied Germany style in the garden:
After the war, Potsdam was the town next to the pile of rubble that used to be Berlin. Now it's a commuter town for Berlin workers. An archway entrance to the once-walled town of Potsdam:
Next we headed for Sanssouci Park, passing the New Palace, the Orangery Palace, and the Steam Engine Building, built to look like a Mosque. On foot, we walked to the Sanssouci Palace, passing the historic windmill. The windmill was built in the Dutch style around 1788, and the owner refused to sell the land it stood on to Frederick the Great. They decided to be good neighbors, and the windmill stands, and functions, today.
No palace is so closely linked with the personality of Frederick the Great as Sanssouci. It was completed in 1747 and we toured inside and out. Here's out:
We might mention that our day in Potsdam was determined to be one of the hottest days in history in the Berlin area. It was, indeed, sweltering, with temperatures reaching 100 degrees and humidity not far behind. We hoped for cooler weather for the following day since we had an ambitious walk laid out for Berlin.
