The Yalta Conference
In February 1945, Nazi armies were quickly beaten back towards Berlin by armies of the Soviet Union. British and American forces were preparing to invade Germany. Unconditional surrender could be expected from Germany in a matter of weeks. Also, in the Pacific War, American forces moved steadily from island to island towards a final invasion of the Japanese home islands. The possibility of using an atomic bomb to end the war was unknown to military experts and world leaders. With the defeat of Germany and Japan a certainty, the leaders of the Big Three Allied Powers, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, Communist Party Secretary Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States, met to plan and discuss the postwar world. The meeting was held at Livadia Palace at Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula of the Black Sea from February 4 to February 11, 1945, and was called the Yalta Conference. Was the Yalta Conference a success for the United States and Great Britain? One possibility is that a wily Joseph Stalin took advantage of an ailing Roosevelt to get many concessions in return for few on his part. It may also be argued that the agreements reached were mostly harmless
In conclusion, it is obvious that some significant concessions were made by Roosevelt and Churchill to Stalin at Yalta, but these concessions were necessary to arrive at some sort of compromise regarding several important issues facing the postwar world. Some important agreements reached are as follows: the agreement on voting procedure in the Security Council of the United Nations, pledges by Stalin to include democratic leaders in Poland's new government and to allow free elections, allowing France to have an occupation zone in postwar Germany, and finally, Stalin's promise to enter the Pacific War in return for land lost in the Russo-Japanese war. These agreements represent the power and success of American and British diplomacy at the Yalta Conference. The most difficult and time consuming question at Yalta was agreement on the government of Poland. At the time of the conference, the Soviet Union had established the Lublin Provisional Polish Government. Both President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill adamantly refused to recognize this puppet regime because it did not represent a majority of Poland's people, while the Soviet Union insisted that all that should be done to the Lublin Government was to make it bigger. Roosevelt and Churchill then suggested reorganizing the government so as to include democratic leaders from outside Poland, which Stalin finally agreed to. The British and Americans also requested that "free and unfettered elections would be held at an early date," which Stalin also agreed to. It may appear that Roosevelt and Churchill abandoned democratic Poland, but a pledge from Stalin to allow the government to be reorganized and that free elections would be held in a country which was entirely at his mercy is a great accomplishment by these leaders given what they had to bargain with. The fact that Poland later fell to communism was not a fault of Roosevelt or Churchill, but a fault of the fact that Stalin failed to live up to the terms of the agreement. The arguments against the gains of Roosevelt and Churchill concerning Poland can be summed up with the following quote: "What was conceded to Stalin at Yalta that he did not already have as a result of the smashing victories of the Red Army? Great Britain and the United States secured pledges at Yalta, unfortunately not honored, which did promise free elections and democratic governments [in Poland]." Stalin next demanded that harsh reparations be paid by Germany to the Soviet Union to compensate for the nearly twenty million dead Soviet soldiers and the Nazi destruction of nearly one thousand Russian towns and cities. Stalin wanted reparations in two ways. First, in seizing of German "factories, land, Machinery, machine tools, rolling stock of railways, investments in foreign enterprises, and so on." Second, in yearly monetary payments after the war over ten years. Stalin proposed that 80 percent of all German industry, namely iron and steel, engineering, and metal and chemical industries, should be confiscated and carried away physically and used as reparation payments. He added that all, not just part of, aviation plants facilities for the production of synthetic oil and all other military enterprises and factories should also be confiscated and used as reparation payments. Germany's possession of 20 percent of its heavy industry would suffice to sustain economic stability, Stalin argued, and all reparations would end within ten years, while the removal of factories and other wealth would end within two years. The Soviets proposed that reparations should only be paid to countries that had sustained direct material losses such as damage to factories, land, and homes and the losses of personal property by citizens. Since the losses were so huge, Stalin proposed that countries receive reparations based on their contribution to the winning of the war and the value of their direct material losses. He stated that reparat
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Approximate Word count = 3229
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)
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