The 'Big Three' at the Yalta Conference: Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill of Great Britain, President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, and Marshal Joseph V. Stalin, Premier of the Soviet Union.

     Valentin Falin: Any international event, especially major ones, should be viewed from a historical perspective. No event should be regarded outside the context in which it formed and happened, and the expected or actual consequences. The Yalta Conference stands out in this respect. That is why reports on it included distorted information back in 1945, let alone during the cold war. And these distortions have not disappeared but continued to multiply.

     To illuminate the assessments of the Yalta Conference by those who like to "rewrite" history, I will refer mostly to American sources and direct participants, namely President Roosevelt and his secretary of state, Edward Stettinius Jr.

     Mr. Stettinius, an industrialist and influential man in the US business and political communities, held the post until President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 and was succeeded by Harry Truman. He left highly interesting memoirs with crucial information about the conference, which he witnessed and attended.

     The secretary believes that Yalta was the summit of US cooperation with the Soviet Union and partly with Britain, when an atmosphere of trust was created between the three powers after Tehran and the opening of the Second Front. The days of Nazi Germany were numbered and the Soviet Union pledged to join the war against militarist Japan. The Americans and their allies faced the task of winning over the post-war world and precluding a repetition of such calamities as WW II.

     In my opinion, again confirmed by Mr. Stettinius's recollections, the bulk of decisions made in Yalta were based on US, not Soviet, proposals. The final communique, the secretary said, was a purely American idea to which the Soviet delegation did not make any amendments, while the British delegation only worked on its style. Those who claim that Stalin outplayed Roosevelt or used his failing health to his advantage should know that their claims are completely ungrounded.

     V.L.: Why did President Roosevelt need the meeting in Crimea so much and respected Stalin's concern over the future world?

     V.F.: Roosevelt more than once returned to the idea voiced during a meeting with Molotov in Washington in June 1942 that he saw the post-war world as a demilitarized one. This provoked the description of the world as the domain of three to four policemen. According to Roosevelt, only the Soviet Union, the US, Britain, and possibly China should have had limited armed forces, while all other countries, including the aggressor nations Germany, Japan and Italy, their satellites, and anti-Axis states (France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and all others) were to be fully disarmed and demilitarized. As Roosevelt said, a healthy world economy is incompatible with an arms race.

     The remaining armed forces of three or four powers were to be used only with common consent of everyone and never against anyof the three to four powers. They should be used only to prevent a potential war or nip aggression in the bud, the US president stressed.

     President Roosevelt relied on the experience of WWI and WWII, when the arms race led to and was the forerunner of aggression, which it begets in seven to eight out of ten cases. The latter is proved statistically. Only very rarely did a war begin without an arms race – there are examples of this in history.

     V.L.: I cannot understand some things. Roosevelt was not a naive man; he was bound to see deep-rooted contradictions between the US and the Soviet Union, between communist ideology and the ideology, principles and practice of democracy. Hence, he should have known that an alliance of these two extremes could be only temporary. Why then did he suggest a demilitarized post-war world? Was not it an impossible utopia?

     V.F.: Roosevelt was not naive politically. He was a military man and a deputy naval minister during WWI, which the US fought on the side of the Entente. He accumulated a wealth of experience during that service, which, I would say, was not devoid of the American hegemony-seeking aspirations that marked America's development in the 20th century. Next, Roosevelt understood Stalin very well; he saw that Stalin, while outwardly acting according to Marxist-Leninist principles, was in fact a die-hard pragmatist. For Stalin, ideology was a cover, a camouflage, if you want. And there is documentary proof, in particular in the documents of Churchill, Roosevelt and even Hitler, that the US did not view Stalin as a communist. The issue of ideology as such was important for the public, but was always of secondary significance for taking fundamental historical decisions. Do you know what Roosevelt said while welcoming Stalin to Teheran?

     V.L.: No.

     V.F.: Roosevelt said he was delighted to have the Russians as "new members of the family circle." In a manner, Roosevelt was more critical of Churchill than of Stalin, especially because of Churchill's tendency to engage in saber rattling at anyone who did not suit him for whatever reason. The American president had a very negative attitude to the excessively harsh use of British troops, which resulted in huge losses, against Greek guerrillas who did not want to surrender to British occupation. The Greek guerrillas liberated their country before the British came and wanted to have a democratic government rather than the king whom London was forcing on them.

     Knowing all of this now, we should use ideological cliches very accurately.

     Before he recognized the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, Roosevelt, then a governor, had a passing interest for socialist ideas. He visited groups that discussed these ideas and was the only US president to be guilty of this "sin". He changed his attitude to Stalin and the Soviet Union in the mid-1930s, when the show trials were held. This made him change dramatically his stand with regard to the Soviet government.

     In December 1939 and January 1940, after the so-called Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland was provoked, he even pondered the possibility of severing diplomatic relations with the Kremlin and revoking his recognition of the Soviet Union, and held talks with Kerensky on the creation of a Russian government in exile.

     If we take all of this into account (though there were other crucial events, such as Roosevelt's attempts in early 1940 to create an anti-Soviet front under the pretext of assisting Finland, which was to include Germany, Italy and all Western democracies; the plan fell through because Germany decided to attack France and Washington learned of the plan), we will see that Roosevelt cannot be painted only in one color, that he was a liberal who almost fell in love with the Soviet Union.

     He was a sober and far-sighted politician who thought that America's economic might, even in the absence of strike forces, would ensure his country the leading role in the world. Indeed, the US produced 60-70% of the global output then. Washington controlled global finance and trade and was working to gain control of the main oil fields (by a plan adopted in 1943) and deposits of fissionable materials. We must understand this, because otherwise we will not understand subsequent developments.

     Secretary of State Stettinius wrote that the US was within a hairbreadth of catastrophe in 1942. If the Russians had lost faith at Stalingrad, if the battle on the Volga proceeded according to Hitler's plans, Germany would have conquered Britain, established full control of Africa and the oil-rich Middle East, and seized Latin America. This would have had extremely negative consequences for the US. This is what the Americans thought during the war, and so the alliance between Stalin and Roosevelt was no accident.

     Roosevelt came to Yalta in 1945 under the impression of (a) the defeat of the American troops in the Ardennes-Alsace campaign; (b) the fact that Stalin had saved them by launching an offensive on the Eastern Front ahead of schedule, thereby forcing Germany to redirect a third of its divisions from the Western Front. And lastly, he saw through Churchill's promises about putting Germany in the Anglo-Saxon pocket and leaving Russians in the cold, stopping them at the Vistula or the Oder, at the most. It was not a practical policy but fantasy; it was better for America not to sever relations with Russia but to continue cooperation with it, so that the post-war world would be foreseeable and predictable, without the threats America was facing at the time. Roosevelt wanted a post-war world that would correspond to at least some of his views of democracy and human and social justice.

     V.L.: Let's get back to the Yalta Conference. Who suggested the idea of the United Nations, which the Conference approved? And who thought of dividing the post-war world into zones of influence along the "Curzon Line"? Poland and the Baltic states never tire of accusing Stalin...

     V.F.: Roosevelt advanced the idea of the UN; it was voiced back in Teheran and formalized in Yalta. Stalin demanded that the UN be headquartered in New York. Why? Because the Americans refused to support the League of Nations and Stalin thought they might repeat the trick, saying that they changed their mind. He hoped that if the UN were headquartered in the US, the Americans would not be able to stay out international cooperation or hide in the bush, knowing that all seats had been taken.

     The general reaction of the US media to the Yalta Conference was highly positive and even complimentary to President Roosevelt, though some writers criticized him, upon encouragement from Churchill. They demanded the termination of cooperation with the Soviet Union and establishment of American domination in the world, saying that the Red Moor had done his bit and should leave the scene.

     Aware of these sentiments instigated in London, President Roosevelt wrote in his report to Congress on March 1, 1945 that the faithful fulfillment of the allied agreements reached in Tehran and Yalta was "a great decision which will determine the fate of the United States, and I think therefore of the world, for generations to come. There can be no middle ground here," Roosevelt wrote. "We shall have to take the responsibility for world collaboration, or we shall have to bear the responsibility for another world conflict."

     Documents dated March 1945 show that the State Department, though Mr. Stettinius was the new secretary, retained the old staff of anti-Soviet Secretary Cordell Hull, who used to speak about "the so-called Yalta agreements." Some members spoke derogatorily about "statements" and "declarations," apparently trying to bring down their importance. Harry Truman, who came to power on April 23 and did not know that the Americans had an A-bomb, said: We cooperated with the Russians; now we should move to a new stage. His proclaimed goal was to make Yalta non-existent.

     What was Churchill doing at the time? Experts will recall the striking letters he wrote to Stalin, thanking him for Soviet assistance and support to the Allies in January that saved them from new shocks, and hailing the magnificent Red Army whose glory would shine forever. Take his greetings on the occasion of Red Army Day (February 23, 1945). At the same time, the British premier ordered the collection and storing of German weapons for the eventuality of a conflict with the Soviet Union. In March 1945, he ordered his War Cabinet to draw up contingency plans for an offensive against Stalin, code-named Operation Unthinkable. The offensive was to be waged by a combined group of British, American, Canadian, Polish and German (sic!) forces.

     The British controlled ten German divisions, which had surrendered to the Western Allies at the last stage of the war, were formally disarmed and kept at hand in Schleswig-Holstein, where they trained daily, possibly for new exploits in the East. The new war was set for July 1, 1945.

     One would be wrong to assume that only the British were guilty of such mean deception. US General Patton, who commanded the US armored forces, called for troops to march on across the lines marked by Washington, Moscow and London all the way to Stalingrad – to root out not communists or the Soviet Union, but "the descendants of Genghis-Khan."

     Churchill believed that the Russian barbarians should be stopped as far east as possible. He was still thinking in terms of Operation Rankin, which had been conceived to replace Operation Overlord (the Second Front), so that the British and American troops, supported by Germans, would assume control of Berlin, Hamburg and other cities in Germany, as well as Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Bucharest, Sofia and Belgrade.

     There is documentary proof of these plans of the Allies. They did not happen not because the Allies decided against them but because the Soviet Union and the Red Army did not allow them to pursue their plans.

     When the Yalta agreements are denounced, I see this as the denigration of the main author of those documents, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The letter he wrote to Congress that I mentioned earlier was his political will. He wrote about what the world and the US needed, and what had to be done for justice to triumph and new wars prevented. Commitment to the Yalta agreements could have become a new chance for the world. Regrettably, we missed it.

     V.L.: You did not say who suggested dividing the post-war world into zones of influence along the "Curzon line"?

     V.F.: There were no zones of influence, and the decision on the Curzon Line was made back in 1919 at a conference attended by Britain, France and the US. The three countries drew the line on the ethnographic principle, dividing territories into those populated mostly by Ukrainians and Belarussians and those with a predominant Polish population. The decision was sealed as the line of division of the "spheres of interest" of Stalin and Hitler in September 1939.

     The British claimed during talks with the Soviet Union that the line passed east of Lvov, but the Soviet delegates put a map on the table where the line had been drawn, and the issue was removed from the agenda. When the Soviet Union tried to restore neighborly relations with Poland during and after the war, the line was amended, so that some cities and towns, in particular Belostok, were turned over to Poland. It was done to show that Poland could get some concessions from the Soviet Union, but not on the main issue.

     When Stalin discussed the Curzon Line with Roosevelt, he did not speak about creating a satellite government in Poland. We want a Polish government that will be friendly towards its eastern neighbor, Stalin said, so that Poland will not become another bridgehead or corridor for strikes at Russia, which it had been in the Middle Ages, during Napoleon's era, and in WW I and WW II.

     V.L.: But the Big Three discussed the Baltic countries in Yalta, whose incorporation into the Soviet Union the US had never recognized.

     V.F.: The Baltic countries are a special issue. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were torn away from pre-Soviet Russia, and occupied by Germans. Puppet governments were created there and, as planned, begged to become German protectorates. It happened in September 1917. After the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Soviet-like or plain Soviet governments spontaneously appeared in the Baltic countries – this is a historic fact that cannot be denied. They promptly suppressed the German troops deployed in their territory.

     Under the Treaty of Versailles, German troops were to be withdrawn from all territories outside Kaiser's Germany. But the allies actually obliged the Germans to keep their troops in Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as a guarantee that "the mob" would not come to power there, that those countries would have rulers that suit the allies.

     In 1921, Jozef Pilsudski began an offensive on Kiev, which had been prepared by the French with the assistance of the British. He was expected to advance to Moscow, while the Western democrats tried to force the following idea on Germany: to provide a group of forces to launch an offensive at Petrograd from the Baltic countries. Officially, the expedition was to be led by General Bermont-Avalov, though in fact German generals were to command the attack.

     The Germans saw through the allies' plans and refused to comply. And so, Pilsudski's combination failed without support from the north. This led to the conclusion of the Riga peace treaty in 1921, designed to preclude any possibility of opportunism in the Baltic states. Russia recognized the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and the US did the same two years later. (Before they did, the Americans, who did not think about the Baltics' sovereignty, had supported the demands from Kolchak and other White Guard leaders for the restoration of a "great and indivisible Russia.")

     V.L.: But why did America accept the incorporation of the three Baltic countries into the Soviet Union after the war?

     V.F.: It never did, and the issue was never raised at the Yalta Conference. Roosevelt once suggested to Stalin, possibly in Tehran: Let's hold a plebiscite [in the Baltics]. If they vote in favor of joining the Soviet Union, we will recognize their new status. If not, we will respect their decision. Stalin replied: The plebiscite has been held and there is no need to stage another.

     Roosevelt had been pressing for a separate meeting with Stalin since 1942. I think the Soviet leadership made a gross mistake by refusing to grant it. According to Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's unofficial emissary to Stalin and Churchill, Stalin would have been surprised how far Roosevelt was prepared to go to meet the legitimate interests of the Soviet Union.

     But Stalin avoided the meeting, under plausible pretexts, always saying that it would be best for all three leaders to come together and suggesting a conference of their representatives. There could have been an objective reason for such unwillingness in 1943 - Stalin had a minor stroke and could not work for several months, which nobody was allowed to know. But, according to secret data, Stalin was put against Roosevelt by misinformation fed by Churchill through various channels. The British premier claimed that he had called on the Americans to recognize the Soviet Union's borders of 1941, when it incorporated the three Baltic countries, but the Americans refused to do so.

     The Americans were against this idea not so much because they liked the Baltic nations but because immigrants from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were a considerable part of Roosevelt's electorate. He needed their votes, which kept him on a short leash.

     V.L.: What was the main result of the Yalta conference? That we lived 60 years without another world war? And what are its lessons for modern politicians?

     V.F.: Before answering these questions, I will tell you about one more, major detail about the talks in Yalta, which nobody writes about: Roosevelt promised Stalin a loan of $4.5 billion for post-war reconstruction. Why? Though the US president was told that Stalin was a communist dogmatic and die-hard socialist, he knew that Stalin offered the Americans a vast number of concessions and exceptionally good investment conditions, and was pondering the idea of creating a market economy in the Soviet Union. The dream did not become reality only because Roosevelt was succeeded by Truman, a man who ordered Eisenhower on the way from the Potsdam Conference to draft a plan of a nuclear war against the Soviet Union, called Totality.

     The first draft was ready in December 1945 and was soon followed by many other military contingency plans, including Operation Dropshot that envisaged the dismembering of the Soviet Union into 12 states, none of which would be able to solve its economic and defense tasks independently.

     As for the global significance of the Yalta Conference, it was the best chance which humankind had in its recorded history, or at least since Jesus Christ, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," as the UN Charter promises to do. But we missed the chance, and the responsibility for this rests above all with Washington.

     James Byrns, Truman's first secretary of state, returned from Moscow, where he attended a conference of foreign ministers, in December 1945. He said in a radio address to the Americans on December 30 that talks with Stalin had convinced him that a fair world in the American understanding of the word was possible. On January 5, President Truman sent him a letter, writing that Byrns had been talking complete nonsense, that America did not need a compromise with the Soviet Union. What it needed was a Pax Americana that would 80% suit US interests.

     January 5, 1946 can be viewed as the formal beginning of the cold war. We know what came later.

     The main lesson of the Yalta Conference is that, given a reasonable approach and readiness to develop the world on a balance of interests of all its members, solutions satisfying the world could have been found much sooner than today. This goal has become much more difficult today; the world is oversaturated with weapons, and much depends on chance, on unintended circumstances both human and heavenly.

     In the past, US B-52 bombers carried four H-bombs on board, 25 megatons each, and had three accidents. One plane crashed outside Chicago, and 11 of the bombs' 12 safety fuses did not work. I cannot imagine what would have happened to the world if the 12th had failed.

     We can calculate how many times the world was on the brink of disaster, and only some Higher Reason saved humankind and all biological life on earth from self-destruction. This is why all states without exception, must scrutinize their tiniest move for its ability to make this world a safer, and hence more just and more united place to live.

LEST WE FORGET
THE IMMORTAL FEATS OF OUR FOREBEARS

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FOOTNOTES and SOURCES

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#1 Original source: http://en.rian.ru/onlinenews/20050202/39701121.html

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