My program took a trip to Potsdam on Friday, a city just an hour southwest of Berlin. Potsdam holds a lot of historical significance for the history of Germany as well as the world.
First, we did a tour of the Cecilienhof where the Potsdam Conferences took place after World War II. Our tour guide took us through the rooms of the complex used during the conferences and explained how the conference took place. Each leader (Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt and later Truman) entered the complex in a respective direction. Stalin from the East, Churchhill from the North and Roosevelt and Truman through the West. We saw Stalin’s personal study which looked over the river and, because Stalin was paranoid someone was going to assassinate him, his study had a personal escape door he could use to exit.
Then we went on a tour of the Sanssouci Palace. It’s a relatively modest palace used by the Prussian royal in the summer and then later the German imperial family. It was modeled on Versailles although its only a small percentage of Versailles’ size.
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