4 February 1945 A.D. Yalta Conference Commences—Roosevelt, Churchill &
Stalin Confer in Crimea
Editors. “The Yalta Conference commences.” This Day in History. N.d. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-yalta-conference-commences. Accessed 4 Feb
1945.
The Yalta Conference commences
On this day, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta, in the Crimea, to discuss and plan
the postwar world—namely, to address the redistribution of power and influence.
It is at Yalta that many place the birth of the Cold War.
It had already been determined
that a defeated Germany would be sliced up into zones occupied by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, the principal Allied
powers. Once in Germany, the Allies would see to the deconstruction of the
German military and the prosecution of war criminals. A special commission
would also determine war reparations.
But the most significant issue,
the one that marked the conference in history, was Joseph Stalin's designs on
Eastern Europe. (Stalin's demands had started early with his desire that the
location of the conference be at a Black Sea resort close to the USSR. He
claimed he was too ill to travel far.) Roosevelt and Churchill attempted to
create a united front against the Soviet dictator; their advisers had already
mapped out clear positions on Europe and the creation and mission of the United
Nations. They propounded the principles of the Atlantic Charter, formulated
back in August 1941, that would ensure "life, liberty, independence, and
religious freedom" for a free Europe and guarantee that only those nations
that had declared war on the Axis powers would gain entry into the new United
Nations.
Stalin agreed to these broad
principles (although he withdrew his promise that all 16 Soviet republics would
have separate representation within the United Nations), as well as an
agreement that the Big Three would help any nation formerly in the grip of an
Axis power in the establishment of "interim governmental authorities
broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population... and the
earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments
responsive to the will of the people." Toward that end, Roosevelt and
Churchill gave support to the Polish government-in-exile in London; Stalin
demurred, insisting that the communist-dominated and Soviet-loyal Polish
Committee of National Liberation, based in Poland, would govern. The only
compromise reached was the inclusion of "other" political groups in
the committee. As for Poland's new borders, they were discussed, but no
conclusions were reached.
The conference provided the
illusion of more unanimity than actually existed, especially in light of
Stalin's reneging on his promise of free elections in those Eastern European
nations the Soviets occupied at war's end. Roosevelt and Churchill had believed
Stalin's promises, primarily because they needed to—they were convinced the
USSR's support in defeating the Japanese was crucial. In fact, the USSR played
much less of a role in ending the war in the East than assumed. But there was
no going back. A divisive "iron curtain," in Churchill's famous
phrase, was beginning to descend in Europe.
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