Yalta Conference (1945).In 1945, the “Big Three” of World War II—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston S. Churchill, and Josef Stalin—had not met since December 1943. Because of Allied landings in France and the Soviet thrust across Poland and into Germany, by the summer of 1944 a second meeting of the three men was deemed necessary. But arguments over the time and place of their meeting delayed the conference until 4–11 February 1945, when they met at Yalta in the Crimea because Stalin refused to leave the Soviet Union.

Each man traveled to Yalta for different reasons. Roosevelt came because of his desire to create a United Nations before World War II ended. Churchill feared the growing power of the Soviet Union in a devastated Europe. Stalin was intent on protecting the Soviet Union against another German invasion. The major problems facing the three leaders included Poland, Germany, Soviet entry into the war against Japan, and the United Nations.

At Yalta, Roosevelt attained his goal in an agreement for a conference on the United Nations to convene in San Francisco, 25 April 1945. In addition, Stalin accepted the American proposal on the use of the veto in the Security Council and the number of Soviet states represented in the General Assembly.

Much time was spent on Poland because Stalin insisted on a “friendly” Poland. The three men agreed to move the Polish eastern boundary westward to the 1919 Curzon Line and to restore western Byelorussia and the western Ukraine to the Soviet Union. At Stalin's insistence, a Communist Polish provisional government would be reorganized to include primarily Polish leaders from within Poland, but he agreed to some from abroad to placate Roosevelt. Stalin promised free elections there within a month on the basis of universal suffrage and the secret ballot.

Stalin demanded $20 billion in reparations from Germany, half of this sum to be destined for the Soviet Union. Churchill rejected this amount while Roosevelt accepted the sum as a basis for future discussion. Germany would be temporarily divided into three zones of occupation, with France invited to become a fourth occupying power.

Stalin promised that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan after the fighting ended in Europe. Stalin's terms for this were accepted: the southern Sakhalin and adjacent islands to be returned to the Soviet Union; Darien to be internationalized; Port Arthur to be leased as a naval base to the Soviet Union; Chinese‐Soviet companies to operate the Chinese‐Eastern and the South Manchurian railroads; Outer Mongolia to remain independent of China; and the Kurile Islands to be handed over to the Soviet Union. China would be sovereign in Manchuria.

In a Declaration on Liberated Europe, proposed by Roosevelt, the three governments pledged jointly to assist liberated people in forming temporary governments representing all democratic elements and pledged to free, early elections. When the three governments thought action necessary, they would consult together on measures to fulfill their responsibilities. There could be no action without the agreement of all three governments.

Roosevelt probably hoped that in the United States, the Declaration would project an acceptable image of the Yalta Conference as the protector of the rights of liberated peoples. It could also be a standard against which Stalin's policies in Eastern Europe could be judged. However, when put to the test, Declaration proved ineffective. After the Yalta Conference, the Western powers accepted a Polish government in which two‐thirds of the members were Communists. When elections finally came in 1947, they were not democratic.

In the Far East, Soviet armies went to war against Japan two days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The Soviet entry into the war accelerated the Japanese surrender. However, in February 1945, American military planners had expected the war against Japan to drag on into 1946 or even 1947.

As the Cold War heated up, anti‐Communist American critics, particularly in the Republican Party, condemned Yalta as a symbol of appeasement and a diplomatic defeat for the United States. Poland and Eastern Europe had been betrayed. The United States should avoid negotiating with the Soviet Union. Some critics later insisted that China had gone Communist because of the Yalta Conference. The severest claimed that Roosevelt was either too sick to deal with Stalin or was duped by him.

The reality of Yalta was that the location of armies determined the final outcome. Soviet armed forces decided the politics of Eastern Europe; Allied forces influenced politics in Western Europe. China became Communist because the armies of Chiang Kaishek were defeated, not because Roosevelt had abandoned Chiang.

Yalta was an attempt to transform a temporary wartime coalition into a permanent agency for peace. Roosevelt apparently hoped to modify Stalin's behavior through the United Nations and postwar U.S. policies. Agreements had been negotiated while war was in progress when unity was vital. After the enemies were vanquished, however, the victors quarreled and their fundamental disagreements emerged.
[See also Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Bombings of; World War II: Postwar Impact; World War II: Changing Interpretations.]

Bibliography

Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. , Roosevelt and the Russians. The Yalta Conference, ed. Walter Johnson, 1949.
Foreign Relations of the United States. Diplomatic Papers. The Conference at Malta and Yalta, 1955.
John L. Snell, ed., The Meaning of Yalta: Big Three Diplomacy and the New Balance of Power, 1955.
Diane Shaver Clemens , Yalta, 1970.
Athan G. Theoharis , The Yalta Myth: An Issue in American Politics, 1945–1955, 1970.
Richard F. Fenno, Jr., ed., The Yalta Conference, 1972.
Russell D. Buhite , Decision at Yalta. An Appraisal of Summit Diplomacy, 1986.

Keith Eubank

YALTA CONFERENCE

YALTA CONFERENCE. In early February 1945, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Marshal Joseph Stalin met in the Black Sea port city of Yalta to discuss the postwar administration of Europe. At the time of the conference, Allied forces had pushed Nazi Germany to the brink of collapse, and all sides recognized that the end of World War II was imminent. Roosevelt hoped to use the conference not only as a planning meeting for the postwar period but also as a forum to establish a warmer personal relationship with Stalin. Although weakened by a deteriorating heart condition that took his life two months later, Roosevelt believed he could use his charm and skills of persuasion to win Stalin's confidence in American goodwill, thereby ensuring a peaceful postwar world order.

Despite Roosevelt's efforts, however, Stalin drove a hard bargain at Yalta. Roosevelt's physical weakness as a dying man and Churchill's political weakness as head of a dying empire left Stalin in the strongest bargaining position of the three. The fact that Soviet forces had numerical superiority over their American and British allies on the continent of Europe further strengthened Stalin's hand. After a week of negotations, the three leaders announced agreement on (1) the occupation of Germany by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France in four separate zones; (2) a conference of the signatories of the United Nations Declaration to open at San Francisco on 25 April 1945, for the purpose of establishing a world peace organization; (3) a (then-secret) large-power voting formula in the new organization; (4) an eastern boundary of Poland mainly following the Curzon Line (which gave the Soviet Union about one-third of prewar Poland), for which Poland was to be compensated by unspecified German territory in the north and west, and a new, freely elected, democratic Polish government; and (5) freely elected democratic governments for other liberated European nations. A supplementary secret agreement provided for Soviet entry into the war with Japan in two or three months after Germany surrendered, and, in return, British and American acceptance of (1) the status quo of Outer Mongolia; (2) restoration to the Soviet Union of its position in Manchuria before the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), with safeguarding of Soviet

interests in Dairen, Port Arthur, and the Manchurian railways; and (3) the cession to the Soviet Union of the Kurile Islands and the southern half of Sakhalin Island.

Contrary to Roosevelt's hopes, the conference failed to establish a spirit of trust between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the months and years following Germany's capitulation in May 1945, relations between Moscow and Washington steadily deteriorated, and a Cold War developed between the two rival superpowers. The Yalta conference became a major point of friction, as Americans charged the Soviets with systematically violating the Yalta agreements. Although at Yalta Stalin had agreed to support freely elected democratic governments in the liberated territories, he broke his pledges and brutally suppressed incipient democratic movements across Eastern Europe. The establishment of pro-Soviet puppet regimes in Eastern Europe led Churchill in a 1946 speech to accuse Moscow of having divided the continent with an Iron Curtain. In the United States, Republican critics accused the Roosevelt administration of having cravenly capitulated to Stalin's demands at Yalta. The controversy over Roosevelt's diplomacy at Yalta later became a major part of Senator Joe McCarthy's crusade of anticommunism in the early 1950s. The Republicans' accusation that Democratic administrations were "soft" on communism remained a significant feature of American presidential campaigns until the end of the Cold War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clemens, Diane Shaver. Yalta. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Divine, Robert A. Roosevelt and World War II. New York: Atheneum, 1967.

Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.

Charles S.Campbell/t. g.

See alsoCold War ; Germany, Relations with ; Great Britain, Relations with ; Iron Curtain ; McCarthyism ; Russia, Relations with ; World War II .

Yalta Conference. The World War II conference of top Allied leaders held at the Black Sea resort of Yalta in the Crimea on 3–12 February 1945 developed from an Anglo‐American perception that, with their own and Soviet forces rapidly converging on Berlin, postwar political issues needed urgent attention.Two potentially incompatible views of the postwar world order had already appeared: the American conception of a universalistic United Nations, and the scenario defined by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin at Moscow in October 1944 envisioning British (or Western) and Soviet spheres in postwar Europe. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, alarmed by growing domestic criticism of British and Soviet conduct as they consolidated power in their respective spheres, pressed for a meeting. He hoped to bind the Allies to the United Nations framework and also win Soviet agreement to enter the Pacific war. In preliminary diplomatic maneuvering, Stalin made clear that he in return wanted territorial acquisitions in East Asia, recognition of Soviet paramountcy in eastern Europe, and substantial reconstruction aid.

At Yalta, Roosevelt found Stalin determined to dominate eastern and central Europe, already largely under Soviet military control. On the crucial Polish issue, discussed at seven of the eight plenary sessions, Roosevelt and Churchill conceded much of prewar eastern Poland to the Soviets with territorial compensation envisaged for Poland at Germany's expense. Stalin refused a freely elected Polish government, though he accepted a tripartite commission to facilitate the addition of non‐communists to the pro‐Soviet Lublin regime. In other significant agreements, Stalin accepted the American United Nations formula and promised, in return for territorial concessions at Chinese expense, to declare war on Japan within three months of Germany's surrender. Churchill won an enhanced role for postwar France.

In retrospect, however, the real drama lay elsewhere, in Roosevelt's casual introduction of an ostensibly cosmetic Declaration on Liberated Europe promising “free and unfettered elections” and “democratic institutions” in eastern Europe. Stalin, characteristically insensitive to Western public opinion and/or relying on the political ambiguity of these phrases in the existing context, signed it. He was doubtless upset to find Roosevelt emphasizing it after the conference as the centerpiece of a stunning American diplomatic success.

Stalin reacted angrily to this image‐making. He frustrated the operation of the tripartite commission in Poland, arrested Polish resistance leaders, mounted a procommunist coup in Rumania, and refused to send Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov to the founding conference of the United Nations. Roosevelt and Churchill, and especially President Harry S. Truman after taking office on 12 April, responded with increasing vigor. The crisis dragged on until late May when Roosevelt's former aide, Harry Hopkins, sent by Truman on a conciliatory mission to Moscow, settled the Polish government issue on Stalin's terms.

Yalta long remained deeply controversial. Many Europeans and American conservatives saw the conference as a “betrayal”of Poland, eastern Europe, and China. This image, notwithstanding Roosevelt's spirited liberal defenders, helped stimulate the excesses of the McCarthy era. Later revisionists portrayed a successful negotiation subsequently undermined by Truman's belligerence. Yalta marks the first full American political engagement with Europe's postwar problems. Although some saw it as the high‐water mark of American‐Soviet cooperation, it also began a process that by stages led to the Cold War. In retrospect, it appears to have ended the “Grand Alliance” and any prospect of a consensual, cooperative approach to postwar issues.
See also Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; World War II: Postwar Impact.

Bibliography

John Snell ed., The Meaning of Yalta, 1956.
Diane S. Clemens , Yalta, 1970.

Fraser J. Harbutt

YALTA CONFERENCE

The Yalta Conference was the second wartime summit meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin. It met from February 4 through February 11, 1945, in the Crimean city of Yalta. A mood of optimism prevailed at the conference because German armies were in retreat throughout Europe and victory was assured. The principal agenda item was Germany. Although there were sharp policy differences between the three parties, the Yalta Conference reached agreement on most issues, and the Big Three came away convinced that allied unity had been preserved.

Germany, it was agreed, would be divided into three zones of occupation (a fourth zone was carved out of the British and American zones for France). Occupation policy would be made by a Four Power Allied Control Commission to be located in Berlin. Reparations were to be extracted from Germany, with the details to be determined by an Allied Reparations Commission in Moscow. Nazism and German militarism were to be extinguished, and war criminals were to be justly and swiftly punished.

Poland proved to be an intractable problem. Churchill and Roosevelt sought unsuccessfully to persuade Stalin to recognize the London-based government in exile, but he continued to support the government installed by the Soviet Union in Lublin. At most, the Western leaders secured from Stalin a commitment to free and unfettered elections as soon as possible. No decisions were reached regarding

Poland's postwar boundaries, although it was understood that the eastern boundary would be the Curzon line. As to the liberated countries in Eastern Europe, the conferees pledged in a Declaration on Liberated Europe to respect "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live."

A secret protocol stipulated that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan within three months after Germany's surrender. As compensation, Russia's losses to Japan resulting from the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and 1905 would be restored. These included southern Sakhalin, adjacent islands, and the Kuril Islands. The Soviet Union also received the lease of Port Arthur, internationalization of the port of Dairen, and partial control over the Chinese Eastern and South Manchurian railroads as concessions.

Regarding the United Nations, it was agreed that a United Nations conference would be held in the United States on April 25, 1945. The United States and Britain agreed to accept Ukraine and Belorussia as original members, thus giving the Soviet Union three votes in the General Assembly. Also, important provisions related to the voting rules of the Security Council were formulated, including a provision for the veto power of the five permanent members.

Because Stalin ultimately succeeded in imposing communist regimes on the peoples of Eastern Europe, some critics have accused Roosevelt of "selling out" Eastern Europe. However, the consensus of scholarly opinion is that the superior military position of the Red Army at the end of the war virtually guaranteed Soviet predominance, regardless of the decisions made at Yalta.

See also: potsdam conference; world war ii

bibliography

Buhite, Russell D. (1986). Decisions at Yalta: An Appraisal of Summit Diplomacy. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources.

Clemens, Diane Shaver. (1970). Yalta. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mastny, Vojtech. (1979). Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism. New York: Columbia University Press.

Snell, John L. (1956). The Meaning of Yalta: Big Three Diplomacy and the New Balance of Power. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Joseph L. Nogee

YALTA AGREEMENT

British prime minister Winston Churchill, U.S. president franklin d. roosevelt, and Soviet premier joseph stalin met from February 4 to 11, 1945, at Yalta, in the Crimea. The conference—the last attended by all three of these leaders—produced an agreement concerning the prosecution of the war against Japan, the occupation of Germany, the structure of the united nations, and the post–world war ii fate of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. The Yalta agreement proved to be controversial, as many in the United States criticized Roosevelt for abandoning Eastern Europe to the Communists.

Roosevelt came to Yalta seeking early Soviet participation in the war against Japan. Fearing that Japan would not surrender easily, Roosevelt promised Stalin the return of territories lost following the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan, but only ninety days after the surrender of Germany. With the surrender of Japan in August 1945, which followed the dropping of nuclear bombs by the United States on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union obtained the promised territories after expending minimal military effort.

Roosevelt also sought Stalin's approval of the U.N. Charter, which had already been drafted. Stalin had previously insisted that each of the sixteen Soviet republics be represented and that the permanent members of the Security Council retain a permanent veto on all issues, not just those involving sanctions or threats to peace. Roosevelt and Churchill objected to this proposal, and at Yalta, Stalin agreed to three seats for the Soviet Union in the General Assembly and a limited veto.

The postwar status of Germany was also settled at Yalta. Germany was to be divided into four zones of occupation by the three countries and France, as was the city of Berlin. Germany was to have its industrial base rebuilt but its armaments industries were to be abolished or confiscated. The leaders also approved the creation of an international court to try German leaders as war criminals, setting the stage for the nuremberg trials.

The most troublesome issue was the fate of the Eastern European countries that Germany had conquered during the war. The Soviet army occupied most of the territory, making it difficult for Churchill and Roosevelt to bargain with Stalin on this point. It was agreed that interim governments in these countries would give way to democratically elected regimes as soon as practicable. On Poland, Churchill and Roosevelt abandoned the London-based Polish government-in-exile, agreeing that members of this group must work with the Soviet-dominated group with headquarters in Lublin, Poland.

In the aftermath of World War II the results envisioned in the Yalta agreement on Eastern Europe proved illusory. Communist regimes were established by the Soviet Union, accompanied

by the destruction of democratic political groups. The legacy of Yalta continued until the collapse of communism and the emergence of democracy in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

further readings

Laloy, Jean. 1990. Yalta: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. Trans. by William R. Tyler. New York: Harper & Row.

Yakovlev, Alexander, ed. 1985. The Yalta Conference, 1945: Lessons of History. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency.

cross-references

World War II.

Yalta Conference (4–11 Feb. 1945) A meeting between the Allied leaders Stalin, Churchill, and the ailing Roosevelt in the Crimea. With their armies already on German territory, the final stages of strategy for World War II were discussed, as well as the proposed occupation of Germany. The new border between the Soviet Union and Poland along the Curzon Line was agreed. For its resulting territorial losses, Poland was to be granted territorial gains in the west; although Stalin mentioned the Oder-Neisse Line as a new border between Poland and Germany, this was left undecided pending the follow-up conference (eventually held at Potsdam). Germany and Austria were each divided into four postwar occupation zones, as France was accepted as a fourth main Allied power. Finally, Stalin promised Soviet entry into the war with Japan around three months after German capitulation. The results represented a far cry from the drastic Morgenthau plan proposed only months earlier. Also, the conference was notable for the continued atmosphere of goodwill and harmony, despite the availability of secret reports in the USA and Britain about the aggressive and sometimes brutal activities of the Soviet military governments in its occupied areas.

Yalta Conference (4–11 February 1945) A meeting between the Allied leaders STALIN, CHURCHILL, and Franklin D. ROOSEVELT at Yalta in the Soviet Union. They discussed the final stages of World War II, as well as the subsequent division of Germany. Stalin obtained agreement that the Ukraine and Outer Mongolia should be admitted as full members to the United Nations, whose founding conference was to be convened in San Francisco two months later. Stalin also gave a secret undertaking to enter the war against Japan after the unconditional surrender of Germany and was promised the Kurile Islands and an occupation zone in Korea. The meeting between the Allied heads of state was followed five months later by the POTSDAM CONFERENCE.

Yalta conference, 4–11 February 1945. Churchill was increasingly fearful of the rising power of the USSR, but agreed that she was entitled to a buffer zone in eastern Europe. He agitated for some western influence in the reorganization of the Polish government and strove to promote free elections in the east. He also ensured that France was given an occupation zone in Germany, but was less successful in resisting Stalin's demands for huge reparations. Britain had little say over plans for the Far East, though a proposal to return Hong Kong to China was dropped. Nevertheless, after Yalta Churchill briefly seemed hopeful concerning the future.

C. J. Bartlett

Yalta Conference a World War II peace conference held on February 4–11, 1945, at Yalta in the Crimea, between President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet premier Josef Stalin. Issues they discussed included the occupation of Germany, the establishment of a government and borders in Poland, Soviet entry into the war against Japan, and voting procedures for the United Nations. In the aftermath of the war, the agreements reached by the leaders proved largely unsuccessful.

It was held in Yalta because Stalin refused to leave the Soviet Union.

Yalta Conference (February 1945) Meeting of the chief Allied leaders of World War 2 at Yalta in the Crimea, s Ukraine. With victory over Germany imminent, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met to discuss the final campaigns of the war and the post-war settlement. Agreements were reached on the foundation of the United Nations (UN); the territorial division of Europe into ‘spheres of interest’; the occupation of Germany; and support for democracy in liberated countries. Concessions were made to Stalin in the Far East in order to gain Soviet support against Japan.

Yalta conference, 4– 11 February 1945. Churchill was increasingly fearful of the rising power of the USSR, but agreed that she was entitled to a buffer zone in eastern Europe. He agitated for some western influence in the reorganization of the Polish government and strove to promote free elections in the east. He also ensured that France was given an occupation zone in Germany, but was less successful in resisting Stalin's demands for huge reparations. After Yalta Churchill briefly seemed hopeful concerning the future.

Yalta Conference a meeting between the Allied leaders Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in February 1945 at Yalta, a Crimean port on the Black Sea. The leaders planned the final stages of the Second World War and agreed the subsequent territorial division of Europe.

Yalta conference, see ARGONAUT; see also Grand Alliance.