Question

Explain how disagreements at the Potsdam conference set up the Cold War.

Answer 1

The short version is that the the West simply couldn't face down the Soviets. They literally gave up on Poland and Eastern Europe realizing that Stalin wasn't going to budge on any of them (he would give them 'democracy' as the Soviets understood it).

Churchill and Truman knew that it would probably take another war to move the Soviets out of the countries their armies had liberated (and now occupied) -- and no one liked that solution. So they had to settle for the concessions that they were able to make on things such as the partition of Germany and what was to be done with the country. For the Soviets, it meant taking whatever they wanted back to the USSR to rebuild their country which was a far different vision than what the West wanted to do by rebuilding Germany with what was there.

These differences would draw down the "Iron Curtain" across Eastern Europe that Churchill had made note of in one of his speeches. And eventually push the East and West further apart.