OVERVIEW CONTINUED (SCROLL DOWN FOR PREVIEW)
This volume is concerned with how the war was ended and how power was distributed. This was best seen at the Yalta Conference where the big three leaders met. What was remarkable about the conference was Stalin’s determination to extend his influence into Eastern Europe with the border on a Slav line and Roosevelt teaming up with Stalin to belittle the British Empire. Neither Roosevelt nor Stalin thought they ruled empires, they thought of themselves as leaders of a nation and the contiguity of their structure validated this.
Roosevelt was very ill and it was a magnificent effort to get to Yalta but he came with one big objective which was to further the establishment of the United Nations. Here he was at odds with the British Empire who wanted several nations to be included as sovereign states.
The Soviets wanted two extra places but sided with the US against the British. The big division was on Poland. The Lublin Poles were under the control of the Soviets and were not going to be undermined by the London Poles who wanted democratic elections to parliament. Stalin paid lip service to democracy but it did not engage him. At Yalta, Stalin got what he wanted, Roosevelt pushed on with the United Nations while Churchill felt isolated.
The two leaders with territory that was on the whole contiguous, had ganged up on him. Roosevelt was intent on dismembering the British Empire and he was succeeding. The war ended in Europe in May 1945. It would continue in the east for another few months bought to an end by the atom bomb which is a remarkable story on its own.
PREVIEW
Chapter 1
The Yalta Conference
American and British Differences Leading Up to Yalta
Churchill had now reached the age of seventy but was sprightly in outlook. He was upset by the diplomatic reverses his country had received in the strategy for ending the war via Italy and the Ljubljana Gap and staking a presence in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. This was the work of Roosevelt and his advisers, who were becoming less mute about the role of the British Empire after the war’s end. There were big rifts appearing in the special relationship and it was felt that the United States was using its power in an overbearing way. The Bretton Woods Agreement was settled by using the US dollar as the reserve currency rather than Keynes’s bancor. The United States wanted sanctions against the Argentines to bring down the pro-Nazi regime and asked Britain not to renew its contract of 25 million tons of Argentinian beef, which was crucial to the well-being of the nation. Before the war the contract was for 66 million tons per annum. Likewise, the United States was seeking dominance in controlling the air routes of the world and made a sneaky bilateral agreement with Ireland.
But what stuck in Roosevelt’s craw was the spheres of influence agreement between Churchill and Stalin, which to Roosevelt’s mind left him unable to negotiate with any freedom in Eastern Europe. As the Western Allies had few troops in Germany and none in the east at the beginning of 1945, the spheres of influence agreement was a direct result of not aiming for a presence in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Roosevelt and Marshall’s objective was to defeat Germany and, as the president pointed out, ‘A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.’ It was a numbing truism. Of course, the silliest rift was the Morgenthau plan for post-war Germany, which was soon discarded, but Churchill was forced into it because of Roosevelt’s threat of discontinuing lend-lease after the war.
Roosevelt was scathing about the British Empire and the way Britain defended the empires of other countries in case the United States suggested Britain give up some of its possessions, such as Burma and Malaya. He was also irked by the way Britain rejected China as a great power, the lynchpin of Roosevelt’s foreign policy in the east. Churchill referred to the Chinese as ‘pigtails’ and followed up by stating that ‘there is no unity and much communism. For thirty-five years, we have had in China unstable government and division. It is nonsense to talk about China as a great power.’
This was undeniably true but Roosevelt saw the potential, which Churchill might not have denied. Roosevelt compared China with France, which Churchill wanted to be restored to great power status and for which Roosevelt had only contempt. At Yalta, all these matters impinged on the ‘big three.’ The dying president had one great objective: to formalise a World Organisation, which had yet to meet. Stalin had his great objective too, which was to restructure Poland in his own way, and the problem of Poland was to dominate the Yalta meeting.
The Relative Positions of the ‘Big Three’
Roosevelt was seven years younger than Churchill, frail and cachectic, looking death in the eye, yet he agreed to travel to Crimea for a meeting of the ‘big three’. Stalin, on his home territory, held all the trump cards and would not meet them halfway – they had to come to him. It was not a case of not having been in communication with each other, as long letters had passed between them on the question of Poland. What was needed was a face-to-face encounter, which would translate the static opinions of a letter into something more mobile that promoted greater understanding. Churchill wanted a combined front against Stalin and suggested a meeting at Malta over three days but Roosevelt was not available. However, the diplomats and chiefs of staff did meet and there was an evening meeting when Roosevelt sailed into Valletta harbour before taking a plane to Crimea, where they discussed problems concerning Poland, Italy and Greece.
The nub of the problem concerning Poland was Stalin’s intransigence and desire to control that country, reflected in his letter to Roosevelt on 27 December. Stalin had taken a violent dislike to Mikołajczyk, the leader of the
