Jacob " Jake " Geismer ( George Clooney ) , an American war correspondent for '' The New Republic '' , returns to Berlin during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers after World War II was over in Europe ( May 1945 ) but before hostilities ended in Asia ( August 1945 ) . Jacob witnesses his murdered driver , a black-marketeering American soldier named Tully ( Tobey Maguire ) , being fished from a river eddy , suspiciously adjacent to the Potsdam conference grounds . The corpse is discovered to be in possession of 50,000 German reichsmarks — which are later revealed to have been printed by the U.S occupying forces
Potsdam negotiations
Potsdam Conference
The Good German