Yalta Conference

The Yalta Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe. The three states were represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin. The conference was held near Yalta in Crimea, Soviet Union, within the Livadia, Yusupov, and Vorontsov palaces.^[1]

Yalta Conference
Crimean Conference

Soviet Union

4–11 February 1945

Livadia Palace

Yalta, Crimean ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union

Joseph Stalin
Winston Churchill
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Tehran Conference

Potsdam Conference

The aim of the conference was to shape a postwar peace that represented not only a collective security order, but also a plan to give self-determination to the liberated peoples of Europe. Intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe, within a few years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, the conference became a subject of intense controversy.

Yalta was the second of three major wartime conferences among the Big Three. It was preceded by the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and was followed by the Potsdam Conference in July of the same year, 1945. It was also preceded by a conference in Moscow in October 1944, not attended by Roosevelt, in which Churchill and Stalin had spoken about Western and Soviet spheres of influence in Europe.^[2]

Agreement to the priority of the of Nazi Germany. After the war, Germany and Berlin would be split into four occupied zones.

unconditional surrender

Stalin agreed that France would have a in Germany if it was formed from the American and the British zones.

fourth occupation zone

Germany would undergo and denazification. At the Yalta Conference, the Allies decided to provide safeguards against a potential military revival of Germany, to eradicate German militarism and the Nazi general staff, to bring about the denazification of Germany, to punish the war criminals and to disarm and demilitarise Germany.^[20]

demilitarization

German were partly to be in the form of forced labor. The forced labour was to be used to repair damage that Germany had inflicted on its victims.^[21] However, laborers were also forced to harvest crops, mine uranium, and do other work (see also Forced labor of Germans after World War II and Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union).

war reparations

Creation of a reparation council which would be located in the Soviet Union.

The status of Poland was discussed. The recognition of the communist , which had been installed by the Soviet Union "on a broader democratic basis", was agreed to.^[22]

Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland

The Polish eastern border would follow the , and Poland would receive territorial compensation in the west from Germany.

Curzon Line

Stalin pledged to permit free elections in Poland.

Roosevelt obtained a commitment by Stalin to participate in the .

United Nations

Stalin requested that all of the 16 would be granted UN membership. That was taken into consideration, but 14 republics were denied. Truman agreed to membership for Ukraine and Byelorussia while reserving the right, which was never exercised, to seek two more votes for the United States.^[23]

Soviet Socialist Republics

Stalin agreed to enter the fight against the "in two or three months after Germany has surrendered and the war in Europe is terminated". As a result, the Soviets would take possession of Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, the port of Dalian would be internationalized, and the Soviet lease of Port Arthur would be restored, among other concessions.^[24]

Empire of Japan

For the , agreement was reached on basing U.S. Army Air Force B-29s near the mouth of the Amur River in the Komsomolsk-Nikolaevsk area (not near Vladivostok, as had earlier been proposed), but that did not eventuate. General Aleksei Antonov also said that the Red Army would take the southern half of Sakhalin Island as one of its first objectives and that American assistance to defend Kamchatka would be desirable.^[25]

bombing of Japan

were to be found and put on trial in the territories in which their crimes had been committed. Nazi leaders were to be executed.

Nazi war criminals

A "Committee on Dismemberment of Germany" was to be set up. Its purpose was to decide whether Germany was to be divided into several nations. Some examples of partition plans are shown below:

From left to right: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin. Also present are British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov (far left); Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, RN, Marshal of the RAF Sir Charles Portal, RAF, (standing behind Churchill); General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, USN (standing behind Roosevelt).

Yalta Conference