1945 United Kingdom General Election

The 1945 United Kingdom General Election produced a sudden change in British leadership in the midst of the Potsdam Conference. Its result overturned the expectation that Winston Churchill would return to the conference after attending to the election in London, and prompted Harry S. Truman to consider what the change meant for the postwar order.

The Election Amid the Potsdam Conference

On July 25, 1945, the conference was put on hold as Churchill prepared to leave for London to learn the final election results. Clement Attlee, Churchill’s opponent, was also due to depart with the British delegation. In the summer heat, Attlee wore a three-piece suit and seemed, like those around him, convinced that Churchill would win and return within days. The expectation of continuity made the impending result difficult for the conference participants to anticipate.

An Unexpected Change of Government

The news arrived from London the following day: the Labour Party had won, Churchill was defeated, and Attlee was the new prime minister. The result was hard for many to believe. Vyacheslav Molotov repeatedly questioned how the outcome could have happened without the Russians knowing it in advance. Joseph Stalin postponed the conference for several more days and was seen by no one. The British election thus interrupted the negotiations as well as changing the leadership with which the other powers expected to deal.

Truman’s Reading of the Result

Harry S. Truman privately placed Churchill’s defeat alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death: in his view, the old order was passing. He worried about the possibility that Joseph Stalin might suddenly die and leave a struggle for power in the Soviet Union, since Truman saw no obvious successor among the Russian delegation. His reaction to Churchill’s loss was mixed. He regretted it, despite his regard for Churchill, yet also considered that the change might ultimately benefit the world by allowing him to make better progress with Stalin. The election’s immediate significance for Truman was therefore not only the replacement of one prime minister by another, but the uncertainty it introduced into the leadership and diplomacy of the postwar moment.