The Yalta Conference

The authoritative history of the pivotal conference between Allied leaders at the close of WWII, based on revealing firsthand accounts. Crimea, 1945. As the last battles of WWII were fought, US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—the so-called “Big Three” —met in the Crimean resort town of Yalta. Over eight days of bargaining, bombast, and intermittent bonhomie, they decided on the endgame of the war against Nazi Germany and how the defeated nation should be governed. They also worked out the constitution of the nascent United Nations; the price of Soviet entry into the war against Japan; the new borders of Poland; and spheres of influence across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Greece. Drawing on the lively accounts of those who were there—from the leaders and advisors such as Averell Harriman, Anthony Eden, and Andrei Gromyko, to Churchill’s secretary Marian Holmes and FDR’s daughter Anna Boettiger—Diana Preston has crafted a masterful chronicle of the conference that created the post-war world. Who “won” Yalta has been debated ever since. After Germany’s surrender, Churchill wrote to the new president, Harry Truman, of “an iron curtain” that was now “drawn upon [the Soviets’] front.” Knowing his troops controlled eastern Europe, Stalin’s judgment in April 1945 thus speaks volumes: “Whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system.”

A major new history of the eight days in February 1945 when FDR, Churchill, and Stalin decided the fate of the world Imagine you could eavesdrop on a dinner party with three of the most fascinating historical figures of all time. In this landmark book, a gifted Harvard historian puts you in the room with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as they meet at a climactic turning point in the war to hash out the terms of the peace. The ink wasn't dry when the recriminations began. The conservatives who hated Roosevelt's New Deal accused him of selling out. Was he too sick? Did he give too much in exchange for Stalin's promise to join the war against Japan? Could he have done better in Eastern Europe? Both Left and Right would blame Yalta for beginning the Cold War. Plokhy's conclusions, based on unprecedented archival research, are surprising. He goes against conventional wisdom-cemented during the Cold War- and argues that an ailing Roosevelt did better than we think. Much has been made of FDR's handling of the Depression; here we see him as wartime chief. Yalta is authoritative, original, vividly- written narrative history, and is sure to appeal to fans of Margaret MacMillan's bestseller Paris 1919.

"The story of the fascinating and fateful "daughter diplomacy" of Anna Roosevelt, Sarah Churchill, and Kathleen Harriman, three glamorous young women who accompanied their famous fathers to the Yalta Conference with Stalin in the waning days of World War II"--

*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the conference by participants *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "Do you think they will stop just to please you, or us for that matter? Do you expect us and Great Britain to declare war on Joe Stalin if they cross your previous frontier? Even if we wanted to, Russia can still field an army twice our combined strength, and we would just have no say in the matter at all." - President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Polish ambassador in Washington, D.C. (Gardner, 1993, 208-209). Separated by vast gulfs of political, cultural, and philosophical divergence, the three chief Allied nations of World War II - the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain - attempted to formulate a joint policy through a series of three conferences during and immediately after the conflict. The second meeting, named the Yalta Conference after its Black Sea venue, occurred in February 1945 and was both the most well-known and most influential of them all. Adolf Hitler's Third Reich had scant time remaining when the "Big Three" met to discuss the future of Germany, Europe, and the postwar world as a whole. No doubt existed regarding the war's outcome; the Americans had shattered the Wehrmacht's desperate last throw in the west, the Ardennes Offensive, during the Battle of the Bulge in the weeks immediately preceding Yalta, and the Soviet front lay just 50 miles east of Berlin, with the Red Army preparing for its final push into the Reich's capital after a successful surprise winter campaign. Among the agreements, the Conference called for Germany's unconditional surrender, the split of Berlin, and German demilitarization and reparations. Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt also discussed the status of Poland, and Russian involvement in the United Nations. By this time Stalin had thoroughly established Soviet authority in most of Eastern Europe and made it clear that he had no intention of giving up lands his soldiers had fought and died for. The best he would offer Churchill and Roosevelt was the promise that he would allow free elections to be held. He made it clear, though, that the only acceptable outcome to any Polish election would be one that supported communism. The final question lay in what to do with a conquered Germany. Both the Western Allies and Stalin wanted Berlin, and knew that whoever held the most of it when the truce was signed would end up controlling the city. Thus they spent the next several months pushing their generals further and further toward this goal, but the Russians got there first. Thus, when the victorious allies met in Potsdam in 1945, it remained Britain and America's task to convince Stalin to divide the country, and even the city, between them. They accomplished this, but at a terrible cost: Russia got liberated Austria. Given its context and importance, the Yalta Conference represented a contentious matter in its own day, and it remains so among historians both professional and amateur. As just one example, while some lauded Roosevelt's political dexterity, many others viewed him as excessively naive in his dealings with Stalin, or even as a pro-communist quisling. Yalta neither delayed nor created the Cold War; the collision between two utterly incompatible systems of thought - one that, despite its flaws, placed its faith in freedom, human rights, and majority rule, and the other that believed in paranoid dictatorship enforced through systematic state violence and terror - seemed inevitable either way. If anything, Yalta enabled the three leaders to project a momentary phantasm of unity, permitting them to postpone their intractable hostility for a few months in order to first defeat Germany. The Yalta Conference: The History of the Allied Meeting that Shaped the Fate of Europe After World War II looks at the controversial conference and its results."

...February 4, 1945. The three great powers met at Yalta to decide the fate of Germany and establish a new world direction. The meeting of the United States, Great Brittan, and the Soviet Union negotiated decisions that would take place after the defeat of Germany, including how the country would be partitioned. Other matters pertained to the creation of the United Nations; the terms of the Soviet's declaration of war on Japan; the government of Yugoslavia and Poland... Unclassified now, the Yalta Papers are the Official US Record of the Crimea Conference. Imaged in their original form, these 30 parts contain minutes, reports, documents and agreements of the Big Three. Also included is special Message Traffic to the US Moscow Embassy detailing worldwide responses to the Yalta events discussed. Unaltered and unedited, these Yalta Papers show critical decisions made at the close of WWII. They would draw the map of Europe and shape history. This book is a collection of the Yalta papers: Yalta Top Secret is a presentation of the original documents, unedited and without commentary.

*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the conference by participants *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "Do you think they will stop just to please you, or us for that matter? Do you expect us and Great Britain to declare war on Joe Stalin if they cross your previous frontier? Even if we wanted to, Russia can still field an army twice our combined strength, and we would just have no say in the matter at all." - President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Polish ambassador in Washington, D.C. (Gardner, 1993, 208-209). Separated by vast gulfs of political, cultural, and philosophical divergence, the three chief Allied nations of World War II - the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain - attempted to formulate a joint policy through a series of three conferences during and immediately after the conflict. The second meeting, named the Yalta Conference after its Black Sea venue, occurred in February 1945 and was both the most well-known and most influential of them all. Adolf Hitler's Third Reich had scant time remaining when the "Big Three" met to discuss the future of Germany, Europe, and the postwar world as a whole. No doubt existed regarding the war's outcome; the Americans had shattered the Wehrmacht's desperate last throw in the west, the Ardennes Offensive, during the Battle of the Bulge in the weeks immediately preceding Yalta, and the Soviet front lay just 50 miles east of Berlin, with the Red Army preparing for its final push into the Reich's capital after a successful surprise winter campaign. Among the agreements, the Conference called for Germany's unconditional surrender, the split of Berlin, and German demilitarization and reparations. Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt also discussed the status of Poland, and Russian involvement in the United Nations. By this time Stalin had thoroughly established Soviet authority in most of Eastern Europe and made it clear that he had no intention of giving up lands his soldiers had fought and died for. The best he would offer Churchill and Roosevelt was the promise that he would allow free elections to be held. He made it clear, though, that the only acceptable outcome to any Polish election would be one that supported communism. The final question lay in what to do with a conquered Germany. Both the Western Allies and Stalin wanted Berlin, and knew that whoever held the most of it when the truce was signed would end up controlling the city. Thus they spent the next several months pushing their generals further and further toward this goal, but the Russians got there first. Thus, when the victorious allies met in Potsdam in 1945, it remained Britain and America's task to convince Stalin to divide the country, and even the city, between them. They accomplished this, but at a terrible cost: Russia got liberated Austria. Given its context and importance, the Yalta Conference represented a contentious matter in its own day, and it remains so among historians both professional and amateur. As just one example, while some lauded Roosevelt's political dexterity, many others viewed him as excessively naïve in his dealings with Stalin, or even as a pro-communist quisling. Yalta neither delayed nor created the Cold War; the collision between two utterly incompatible systems of thought - one that, despite its flaws, placed its faith in freedom, human rights, and majority rule, and the other that believed in paranoid dictatorship enforced through systematic state violence and terror - seemed inevitable either way. If anything, Yalta enabled the three leaders to project a momentary phantasm of unity, permitting them to postpone their intractable hostility for a few months in order to first defeat Germany. The Yalta Conference: The History of the Allied Meeting that Shaped the Fate of Europe After World War II looks at the controversial conference and its results.