Conference of Yalta

Held of the 4 with the February 11th 1945 in the Seaside resort of Yalta, on the coast of the Black Sea, in the Crimea, the conference of Yalta brings together in great secrecy the heads of government of the Soviet Union (Joseph Stalin), of the United Kingdom (Winston Churchill) and of the United States (Franklin D. Roosevelt), with following aims:

to adopt a common strategy in order to hasten the end of the war,
to regulate the fate of Europe after the defeat of IIIe Reich and
to guarantee the stability of the world beyond the victory.

The agreements that three the “large ones” signed on February 11th, 1945 were going to appear essential for the post-war period, although in Yalta the world was not divided in zones of influence, as claimed it thereafter Charles de Gaulle.

The principal matter of Stalin was undoubtedly to preserve his country of future attacks, as in 1914 and 1941, by protecting it by a territorial and political glacis. The best solution for him, it was the creation of a Poland which would be directed by a friendly government of the Soviet Union.

Churchill and Roosevelt, on their side, were laid out to forget “infamous” the Pacte Molotov-Ribbentrop, which “invited Hitler expressly to attack Poland”, just as the Soviet aggression against Poland and the Finland in 1939: the Soviet Union will keep the Baltic States and is of Poland, territories which it had annexed in 1940, against the promise of Stalin to enter in war against the Japan the three months after the capitulation of Germany. It is not true that Stalin negotiated in strong position, the Soviet armies not being any more but to one hundred kilometers of Berlin. In addition, Roosevelt, whose health was degraded more and more, showed an incredible frankness. “If I give him (I. E. at Stalin), it estimated, all that it will be possible for me to give without anything to claim in exchange, nobility obliges, it will not try to annex anything and will work to build a world of democracy and peace. ”

The agreements of Yalta were quickly violated by Stalin in Poland. The Soviet Union and the Alliés had very different designs as for the democracy and the future of Europe. Certain historians even think that the agreements of Yalta had made the bed of the Cold war. The agreement stipulated also the reference in the USSR of all the Russian prisoners, as of those which had joined Wehrmacht to fight Communism: 2 million these " traîtres" were massacred.

Content of the agreements

The agreements concluded at the conclusion of the meetings envisaged

free elections in the released European States, the Three Large ones beginning with to constitute provisional governmental authorities largely representative of all the democratic elements of the populations and which will commit themselves establishing, as soon as possible, by free elections, governments which are the expression of the will of the people (cf Final communique in appendix: Declaration on released Europe );
the organization in April 1945 of the Conference of San Francisco;
the entry in war of the Soviet Union against Japan in the 3 months which will follow the defeat of Germany, the USSR receiving exchanges of them the island of Sakhaline and the islands Kouriles;
destruction of German militarism and the Nazism;
the division of Germany in four zones, occupied each one by one of the four Allied: The United States, the USSR, the United Kingdom and France;
displacement of Poland towards the west: it would yield territories to the USSR and would receive in compensation of the territories removed in Germany;
the advance of the soviéto-Polish border until the Line Curzon;
the reorganization of the “Committee of Lublin”, government pro-Soviet established in Poland released, according to more extended democratic bases, with the inclusion of the democratic chiefs being abroad , i.e. members of the Polish government in exile in London (cf Final communique in appendix: Poland );
some methods concerning the operation of UNO, whose creation had been decided in 1943 with the Conférence of Teheran: the Right to veto of the permanent members of the Safety advice will play for all the safe cases for the questions of procedure; the USSR agrees to have only three seats in the United Nations (Russia, Ukraine, Bielorussia) instead of the sixteen which she asked; the United Nations will have a right to watch on the organization of Europe.

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