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LESSON PLANS:
 Setting the Stage
Perception of the Viewer
Reflections on Leadership
Dangerous Negotiations
Voices of Memory
OTHER EPISODES:
Cold War I Home
Bay of Pigs
Citizen Kurchatov
Berlin Crisis
SITE CREDITS
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With the war against Germany drawing to an end in February 1945, the stage was set for the creation of the agreement that would define post-World War II Europe. On February 4 of that year, three of the most powerful leaders in the world, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, met at the seaside Crimean resort town of Yalta to craft a peace-time settlement that would forever alter the European landscape. But in the years following World War II, a central question regarding the Yalta Conference has emerged: "In their desire for peace did Churchill and Roosevelt concede too much to the Soviet Union? In ending one war, did they inadvertently lay the groundwork for the next?"
Churchill is said to have complained, "If they had searched for a decent place to meet for ten years or more, they couldn't have found a worse place than Yalta." Loaded into Russian military trucks, Churchill, Roosevelt and over 700 delegates undertook a five-hour journey through the miserable, wind-swept and snow-covered Crimean mountainside. Archival footage chronicles the extensive Nazi destruction delegates witnessed along the route as well as Stalin's calculated arrival a day later.
Armed with their individual agendas and ideologies, The Big Three would spend the next eight days in exhaustive negotiations. While Roosevelt and Churchill could agree on the primary goals of ending the war in Germany and defeating the Japanese, issues surrounding Poland and Soviet designs in Eastern Europe would prove more difficult. For Stalin, it was absolutely critical to ensure that Germany would never rise against the Soviet Union again. According to historian Walter Kimball, the question for Churchill and Roosevelt was how "to find confidence building measures to allow the Soviets to feel secure, without allowing the Soviets to become a dominant force that you can't deal with."
But as Stalin signed agreements and provided an appearance of compromise, were the two Allies blind to his true intentions? As historian and archivist Vojtech Mastny notes, "The Western powers chose to interpret the Soviet signature for these agreements as justifying the expectation that Stalin would behave the way they wanted him to behave, despite the fact that he really showed no indication to do that."
With the help of over 1,000 secretaries, translators, foreign ministers, advisors, diplomats and military strategists working around the clock, the three leaders would finally emerge from the Livadia Palace with an agreement. Churchill would remain disappointed in the compromises surrounding Poland, but as Jonathan Haslam, Ph.D. and historian at Cambridge University asserts, "There is the myth that somehow Poland could have been saved at Yalta but the tragedy of Poland was that it was already lost."
While Roosevelt and Churchill returned home feeling victorious, in the days to follow many would question the negotiations and wonder if their leaders had indeed conceded too much to the Soviet Union. YALTA: PEACE, POWER AND BETRAYAL is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look into the events and personalities that would shape a perceived peace, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for years of international discord and mistrust.
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