The Yalta Conference was held February 4-12, 1945, in Yalta, in the Soviet Union province of Crimea on the Black Sea. It involved the “Big Three” leaders of the Grand Alliance against the Axis in World War II: Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and U. S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The meeting took up issues previously discussed at the Teheran Conference, including the surrender and postwar status of Germany; the postwar status of eastern Europe, especially Poland; the establishment of an international organization to maintain postwar peace; and the final stages of the war in the World War II Pacific theater. Issues not settled at Yalta were left to later meetings, and ongoing questions involving Poland, eastern Europe, and Germany played an important role in the unraveling of the Grand Alliance and the development of the cold war. Particularly in the United States, decisions made at the conference were controversial from the beginning.
At Yalta, Stalin wanted to ensure secure borders for the Soviet Union in eastern Europe and to receive heavy German reparations to help rebuild the postwar Soviet Union. His advantages for negotiating at the conference included the immense Soviet contribution to the war effort and the position of the Red Army, which by February 1945 had wrested eastern Europe from Nazi control and was driving toward Berlin. Roosevelt’s objectives included Soviet agreement to joining the postwar United Nations and a Soviet declaration of war on Japan. He wanted to avoid overt Soviet domination of eastern Europe and to ensure cooperative Soviet-American relations and Stalin’s constructive participation in the postwar world.
The Big Three confirmed the Casablanca Conference policy of Germany’s unconditional surrender and agreed to the division of Germany into four zones of occupation. The Soviets, Americans, British, and French would each administer their own zone, with a central control commission in Berlin overseeing all four zones. With respect to reparations from Germany, Stalin wanted $20 billion, but the British and the Americans only agreed to use that sum as a working number, with the Soviets to receive no more than half. The final amount would be decided at a subsequent conference.
Discussions of Poland focused on the country’s borders and its government. Churchill and FDR agreed to the Soviet acquisition of eastern Poland, with the prospect, to be decided later, of Poland being compensated by receiving part of eastern Germany to the Oder and Neisse Rivers. The question of Poland’s government proved especially difficult. Stalin insisted upon recognizing the Soviet-sponsored government located in the Polish city of Lublin, rather than the rival anticommunist Polish government-inexile in London. FDR was concerned about the possible political backlash from Polish-American voters and was not ready to accept the new Lublin government. The Big Three agreed to a provisional government, which was to include members of the London government-in-exile and to hold free elections. No date or enforcement procedures were established, and the Soviets, who occupied Poland, would oversee the process. FDR was unable to receive firmer guarantees from Stalin and explained to his chief of staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, that “it’s the best I can do for Poland at this time.”
The Big Three also agreed to a Declaration on Liberated Europe, which committed them to “arrange and conduct free elections” so that liberated countries could democratically meet their political and economic problems. Interim governments would be created that would be “broadly representative of all democratic elements,” including both Communists and non-Communists, until free elections were held. The terms of this were also vague and open to interpretation.
Roosevelt had success on two issues of paramount importance to him. Stalin agreed to help establish the postwar United Nations, on condition of big-power veto authority on action items in the Security Council and
Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at Yalta (Library of Congress)
The membership of two Soviet republics in the General Assembly. Roosevelt also wanted Stalin’s commitment to declare war against Japan (still linked to the Soviets by a mutual nonaggression treaty) so that the war in the Pacific theater could be brought to an end as quickly as possible. Stalin agreed to enter the war within two or three months of Germany’s surrender in exchange for postwar annexation of the Kurile Islands, southern Sakhalin Island, restoration of rights lost in Manchuria in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War, and recognition of Soviet-controlled Mongolia. Stalin also agreed to deal with the Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek)’s Nationalists as the legitimate government in China.
After Yalta, Roosevelt was criticized by conservatives and by Polish Americans for betraying Poland, Eastern Europe, and China, and such charges played a significant role in the postwar McCarthy era. Historians have disagreed about Roosevelt’s performance at Yalta, including the degree to which his failing health hampered him. Most historians agree, however, that he received important concessions from Stalin on the United Nations and the war against Japan and that Soviet influence over eastern Europe was inevitable, given Soviet security concerns and the Red Army’s control of the area.
See also PoTSDAM Conference.
Further reading: Diane Sharer Clemens, Yalta (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Athan G. Theoha-ris, The Yalta Myths: An Issue in U. S. Politics, 1945-1955 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1970).
World History
