Yalta Conference (February 1945)

Met at Yalta in the Soviet Crimea. The Big Three were Franklin Roosevelt (USA), Winston Churchill (UK), and Joseph Stalin (USSR). Germany was nearly defeated but Japan was still in the war. The conference reached several agreements that would shape the postwar order.

• Germany would be divided into four occupation zones (American, British, French, Soviet), with Berlin similarly divided despite being inside the Soviet zone
• The Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan within three months after Germany's surrender
• Free elections would be held in Eastern European countries, particularly Poland (Stalin agreed in vague language he would later interpret in his own way)
• A United Nations would be created to replace the failed League of Nations

Why Yalta matters: Yalta is the conference where Western critics later argued that Roosevelt gave away Eastern Europe. The more accurate reading is that the Red Army was already in physical possession of Eastern Europe by February 1945; Roosevelt had little leverage to insist on Western-style democracy there. Yalta acknowledged this reality while extracting Stalin's verbal commitment to free elections, a commitment he then ignored. The conference shows how the Cold War's basic divisions were taking shape even before WWII ended.