http://www.history.upenn.edu/phr/archives/97/sanchez.html

I The conference between the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain that took place at the Black Sea resort of Yalta between the 4th and 11th of February 1945 held great historical significance. Critics of the agreement that each nation's leaders negotiated held that it partitioned the world into both communist and noncommunist spheres. A Polish exile's views of his country's political status after the conference exemplified this sentiment when he wrote shortly thereafter: "We fell even before the war had ended because we were sacrificed by our allies, the United States and Great Britain." (1) This same bitterness was shared by most nationals of the Soviet-controlled regions following the Yalta Agreement. Many other prominent observers defended the Yalta Agreement. They saw it as a sound peace treaty which the three nations that developed it had simply failed to follow. The historian Athan G. Theoharis accused critics of the Yalta Conference as simply attempting to gain political clout. He derided United States congressmen who opposed the meeting as just seeking to "increase their national influence and following by discrediting Administration foreign policy makers." (2) The journalist C.L. Sulzberger called the Yalta Agreement's perceived "partitioning of the world" a "myth", as the course of events throughout the entire war had actually determined the balance of power that the accord noted. (3) This perspective bears far more significance than many individuals might realize. A question that many scholars and lay people aim to answer involves whether the communist takeovers of many Eastern European and Asian governments could have been averted if U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had taken a much harder line towards Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin's intentions at Yalta. This paper offers some insights into that question by examining the circumstances surrounding Roosevelt's negotiations regarding three territorial issues at the conference. The three issues involved were how to determine Germany's political future, a Polish state's postwar government, and Soviet intervention in the Far East in the war against Japan. This essay focuses on an analysis of whether the Yalta Conference amounted to the great American capitulation to the Soviet Union that many people believe it was. The work notes how the conference accords resulted from the diplomatic outcome of the 1943 Teheran Conference. This same diplomatic outcome was essentially protected by the military balance of power that existed between the Allied powers on all European fronts during the Yalta Conference. This military balance of power had developed over time and favored a Soviet Union whose armies occupied Poland and stood within close striking distance of Berlin. It did not favor United States or a Great Britain whose forces had been bogged down by German and Japanese counteroffensives. This balance of power did not give Roosevelt or British prime minister Churchill much of a bargaining chip in order to act aggressively against Stalin at Yalta. They simply did not have the military muscle to back up any attempt to go back on any term upon which they had either officially or unofficially agreed at Teheran. The negotiations at the Teheran Conference may not have been immediately definitive, but they demonstrated an inability by both Roosevelt and Churchill to formulate a vision of a favorable postwar balance of power with the Soviet Union. Roosevelt's own failure to agree with Churchill over how to enforce a peace in postwar Germany contributed to a three-way conflict over the issue. The absence of a unified front by these two leaders of democratic nations provided Stalin with a strong chance to take advantage of the situation by offering few promises of any of his intentions regarding that country. Roosevelt also guaranteed Soviet influence in Poland's postwar political future by agreeing with Stalin's concerns about that country's boundaries without securing any concessions from him regarding the exiled Polish government's role during a future Soviet occupation. Even the vehemently anti-communist Churchill himself suggested some terms that enhanced the Soviet Union's postwar clout when he suggested that the country might obtain extra territory in the Far East if it entered the war against Japan in the region. It was at this informal level that the three leaders determined the future of Germany, Poland and the Far East. The military balance of power that developed shortly after the Teheran Conference later solidified these informal agreements in that they hampered any kind of clout that Roosevelt or his British counterpart may have had later. These military realities made the results of Yalta completely inevitable by the time the three leaders met at the Crimean resort. II The most familiar part of the Yalta Agreement to a scholar involves its initial setting of the terms for division of the whole German state into three occupation zones between the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain (France would be awarded a zone later). Critics base their opposition to this part of the accords on the fact that the Soviet Union gained an opportunity to transform its occupation zone into a full-fledged communist, yet nominally independent political entity. The third part of the agreement amended Article 12a of the Surrender Terms for Germany as follows: The United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics shall possess supreme authority with respect to Germany. In the exercise of such authority they will take such steps, including the complete disarmament, demilitarization, and dismemberment of Germany as they deem requisite for future peace...(4) This section of the agreement clarified the fact that Germany was to be occupied, that it would not have one autonomous government, and guaranteed the right of the three Allied victors to do what they individually chose to do with their zones. This latter condition gave the Soviet Union an incentive to impose its form of government upon its zone without diplomatic repercussions. The issue of Germany's future centered on the military balance of power that the Yalta agreement established in Europe. If an observer examines this whole matter from the perspective of anti-communist forces arrayed against communist armies across the German countryside, he can certainly see how the former's dependence on much more powerful American defenses could have been problematic. Should the United States have been able to stay in Europe for a brief time, the burden of defending Germany would probably have fallen on Great Britain and possibly France. The military strength of the British and French armies could pose no match for Soviet armies, an accomplished and numerically great fighting force. The historian Jean Laloy documented this potential result by stating that "the outcome (of any such conflict) would run the risk of being decided under extremely unequal conditions." (5) For critics, this agreement created the vulnerable conditions under which Germany, and most specifically the Soviet Union's eastern occupation zone, lived for the next four decades. No matter what one might think of Joseph Stalin and his own expansionist plans, the fact remains that the Yalta agreement bore significance only in its official nature, as most of the terms regarding Germany were informally decided at Teheran. The seeming abandonment by the United States of eastern Germany to communism did not stem from a concession made at Yalta, but from Roosevelt's inability to secure any promise from Stalin as to what he planned to do with his territory at the earlier meeting. In that sense, no action by Stalin after the Yalta Conference should have been a surprise, as neither Roosevelt nor Churchill had ever pressured him to promise that a communist regime would not be imposed upon a segment of the German population. One might fault Roosevelt and Churchill for naivete at the Teheran Conference simply because Stalin did make clear that he intended to crush the German state. He did not say that he would force a communist regime on any postwar German territory of his. He did say that unless the Allies smashed her to pieces, Germany would find some means by which to rise again. Stalin truly wanted to destroy Germany as a viable entity, and it is fair to say that neither of his counterparts stood in his way or convinced him otherwise at the conference. Churchill and Roosevelt would never have been able to fully convince Stalin to soften his aims regarding Germany considering how both men could not find common ground over the German issue themselves. Churchill sympathized with Stalin's concerns, but feared the prospect of a defeated Germany as a removal of an obstacle to unabated Soviet expansionism across Europe. In contrast, Roosevelt contrastingly agreed with Stalin's idea and only tempered this harsh term with a hope that postwar German occupation could be overseen by some international peace organization that would keep all Soviet activities under control. (6) The course of negotiations at the Teheran Conference dealing with Germany involved Stalin's unabashed desire to destroy her as an independent and economically self-reliant state, with neither of his counterparts being able to decide whether his aims were justified. In a private meeting with Roosevelt, Stalin told him of his belief that Churchill was simply too optimistic about the prospect of keeping the German state under control. During one conference dinner, the burly Soviet leader taunted a hapless Churchill by accusing him of nursing some secret affection for Germany.(7) Stalin urged at least two other measures that went beyond any one that either leader had suggested. The first suggestion involved the Soviet Union keeping full possession of any point in the world that the three of them fully agreed to hold much of a strategic importance with regards to its proximity to Germany. In Stalin's own words, if "Germany moved a muscle, she could quickly be stopped" with such an arrangement in place. The other suggestion involved the wholesale liquidation of at least fifty thousand, and preferably one hundred thousand, members of the German "commanding staff". (8) Even as Stalin proposed these seemingly unreasonable ideas, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt could agree on how to counter any of them. Churchill took strong exception to the second proposal as cold-blooded murder while Roosevelt took a sarcastic tone during the conversation. The American president suggested that the figure of potential executions ought to be set at forty nine thousand or more. (9) The discussion about dividing a postwar Germany into several states took place in a similar manner. Stalin proposed terms that amounted to a veritable destruction of the entire country, while Churchill opposed him, and Roosevelt halfheartedly sided with the Soviet premier. Roosevelt sketched plans to Stalin's liking that divided Germany into five autonomous states and two regions under international trusteeship. Churchill only concerned himself with isolating Prussia from the rest of Germany, united or not. Stalin scoffed at this proposal and thereby enhanced the disagreements between his two counterparts from democratic nations. (9) Frustrated at his inability to stop what he saw as dangerous Soviet expansionism regarding Germany, Churchill asked Stalin if he contemplated a postwar Europe composed of weak and disjointed states. Stalin merely answered that only Germany should face that fate. Churchill however remained wholly unconvinced of Stalin's sincerity as his Russian counterpart had criticized the Polish government in exile and other opportunities for states to rebuild themselves as strong and independent democracies. (12) No settlement regarding Germany resulted from this lively conference, allowing Stalin to pursue his aims without any kinds of commitments whatsoever. The Teheran Conference's importance subsequently involves how his belligerent attitude should have given American and British diplomats a warning as to what actions to expect from him. Their lack of unity and resolve on the issue gave Stalin an opportunity to do what he deemed appropriate. He had given the other allies an impression of how he believed Germany should be treated. The fact that there had been no united response at all only allowed Stalin to forget the opinions of his counterparts and to act with only his own ambitions in mind. The American and British failure to counter Stalin's ambitions at Teheran that allowed him to gain the necessary diplomatic clout to destroy the last vestiges of independence in any future Soviet occupation zone in Germany without any diplomatic repercussions. III The Polish question served as an unwanted issue throughout the entire Yalta Conference. Discussed during most of the private talks between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, these leaders constantly returned to the same two matters: the frontiers of a postwar Poland and its future government. The second issue has been the focus of critics of the Yalta Agreement who believe that Roosevelt made needless concessions to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had occupied parts of Poland ever since 1944. In place of Nazi occupation governments, they had formed a provisional government called the Lublin Committee (a title for the city in which it was headquartered). (13) The main issue surrounding this provisional Polish government at the Yalta Conference was its status in determining the country's political future. Stalin originally wished to merely enlarge the committee by offering offices to a few exiled and formerly prominent Polish citizens. Both the American and British delegations wanted to establish a new provisional government until free elections could be held. (14) The Soviet delegation argued that a change of governments so soon before a series of free elections would supposedly be held was completely unnecessary. Churchill and Roosevelt subsequently recognized the current Soviet-imposed regime and stated the terms of the negotiations as follows: The Provisional Government which is now functioning in Poland should therefore be reorganized on a broader democratic basis with the inclusion of democratic leaders from Poland itself and from Poles abroad. This new government should then be called the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity. (15) These terms recognized the government that Soviet occupants had imposed upon Poland as legitimate and left no basis for how any voice from the Polish people regarding their political future would be heard. The agreement fully disregarded the wishes of the Polish government in exile, headquartered in London since 1939. This Polish government had criticized any diplomatic outcome that allowed a Soviet-installed regime to maintain power. The exiled Polish leaders believed that no such government, ironically called a "People's Soviet of Poland" in this case, would allow itself to potentially be ejected from office in Western-style elections. (16) Unfortunately for the Polish people, these same suspicions later came true. Poland became a full-fledged satellite in a Soviet-dominated communist empire after the end of the war, but not as a result of concessions made by Roosevelt and Churchill at the Yalta Conference. Just as Stalin clarified his intentions to crush any form of German independence at Teheran, his actions and statements with regards to Poland should have hinted that he had every intention of occupying Poland and imposing communist rule. The Teheran Conference was key to Poland's political future simply because it served as the forum for informally deciding two major issues - Soviet recognition of the Polish government in exile and American acknowledgement of Soviet concerns regarding that group of exiled Polish diplomats and high-level officials. On both issues, the Soviet Union emerged with a very clear diplomatic upper hand. Stalin unabashedly refused to recognize the Polish government in exile. Hopes for a quick and easy resolution of the Polish question died soon after the Soviet government delegation criticized the government in exile at the Teheran Conference. The Lublin Committee aided this diplomatic strategy by consistently treating the exiled Polish government with great hostility. The Soviet government also accused Polish resistance leaders of collaborating with German intelligence agents against communist partisan rebels who also fought against Nazi occupation forces. (17) On the last day of the Teheran Conference, Roosevelt noted his hope that the Soviet Union would officially resume a formal and amicable diplomatic relationship with Poland. The notes taken at the meeting indicate that Stalin bristled at this notion since he did not wish to recognize the Polish government in exile as the legitimate government of Poland. He specifically accused the same group of exiles of collaborating with German intelligence agents. He said: The agents of the Polish Government, who are in Poland, are connected with the Germans. They are killing partisans. You cannot imagine what they are doing. (18) Stalin's hostility to any participation by the London Poles in determining Poland's political future clearly manifested itself with these words. Both Churchill and Roosevelt attempted to get him to change his mind about the exiled Poles. They pleaded with Stalin that their own credibility with several exiled Eastern European governments depended on whether they used their clout to restore their power. Stalin only replied: We stand for the restoration and strengthening of Poland. But we draw a line between Poland and the emigre Polish government in London. We broke off relations with that government not out of any whim on our part, but because the Polish Government joined Hitler in slandering the Soviet Union. All that was published in the press. What are the guarantees that the emigre Polish government in London will not do the same thing again? (19) These harsh words marked Stalin's intentions regarding the Polish exile lobby's participation in determining its country's future. Any role for London Poles, or Poles in any other parts of the world was to be minimal at best. This was a feeling that Stalin expressed time and again afterwards, notably in a February 4, 1944 letter to Roosevelt in which he renewed his accusations against the noncommunist Polish resistance. (20) Roosevelt had hesitated to discuss the Polish issue in detail for political reasons. With a reelection campaign looming for the next year, the president did not wish to offend the six to seven million voters of Polish origin as a "practical man". But he did agree with Stalin over the principle of restoring Poland with the border adjustments that the Soviet delegation had requested. (21) Churchill placated the Soviet leader by agreeing to the same border adjustments. The subsequent proposal read: It was agreed in principle that the hearth of the Polish state and people must be situated between the so-called Curzon Line (a demarcation line that pushed the eastern boundary westward) and the line of the Oder River, including Eastern Prussia and the Oppeln Province as part of Poland. (22) Stalin essentially received the concession officially given to him at the Yalta Conference. The Polish state would be moved westward. Perhaps because of his own political concerns and hopes, Roosevelt gave in to Stalin on these issues without extracting any promises from him with respect to the Polish government in exile. It was at that point that the Lublin Committee's legitimacy as the Polish government was unofficially established. The Soviet delegation left the Teheran Conference without so much as even mentioning a place that the exiled Polish government might have in a postwar Poland. The Soviets refused to establish diplomatic relations with that regime and continued to harangue it at diplomatic levels. What happened at Yalta with respect to the exiled Polish government should not have surprised many people, considering how the Soviet Union had employed all of its diplomatic muscle to rid itself of any opposition from it. The fact remained that the fate of the Polish government in exile and resultingly, that of Poland herself, was unofficially decided by the diplomatic outcome of the Teheran Conference. IV Disillusionment over the Yalta Agreement's terms regarding Soviet entry into the war against Japan in the Far East involves how this provision enabled the Soviet Union to create a sphere of influence in the Pacific region. Yet any provision that might be called a territorial concession had its roots at the Teheran meeting, in the same informal and top secret manner as those regarding the political future of Germany and Poland. Many students of postwar diplomatic history consider the Yalta Agreement to have allowed the Soviet Union to establish its own sphere of influence in Asia. Roosevelt's own concessions of territory to Stalin are infamous for some people as they are regarded to have given the Soviet Union an easier means by which to support communist movements in eastern Asia. The Yalta Agreement bound the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan upon certain conditions. The terms read: The leaders of the three Great Powers...have agreed that in two or three months after Germany has surrendered and the war in Europe has terminated, the Soviet Union shall enter the war against Japan...(23) The part which many critics claim the Soviet Union took advantage of involved the conditions that followed. The terms of the treaty established that: a) Outer Mongolia would remain under Soviet control; b) that the Soviet Union would gain territorial rights to the island of Sakhalin; c) that the Manchurian port of Dairen would be placed under international trusteeship and the port city of Port Arthur would be leased by the Soviet Union; d) that rail transportation to Dairen would be operated jointly by the Chinese and Soviet government; and e) that the Kuril Islands would fall under Soviet control. (24) These territorial gains constituted a real triumph for the Soviet Union as it had lost many of these same lands in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. They also served as ammunition for many of the most outspoken critics of Roosevelt's conduct. It is easy to blame the Yalta Agreement for establishing a communist sphere of influence in the Pacific region. At the time the treaty took full effect, the Nationalist Chinese government of President Chiang Kai-Shek had only begun to fight a renewed and threatening communist insurgency.(25) That same insurgency would meet with success in 1949, causing what was arguably the most strategically important land in the Pacific region to fall to communism. Many statesmen and academics believed that the Soviet Union managed to use its awarded proximity to northeastern China's industrial Manchuria province (by the use of developed railway systems and the like) to aid the communist revolutionaries. The resulting "fall of China" placed the whole region's security in jeopardy in that it left many smaller nations vulnerable to attacks by a regime presumably bent on spreading its mode of government to them. Using John Foster Dulles's domino theory as a guide (the theory held that if one nation or territory fell under communist control or influence, neighbors would soon follow), critics of the Yalta Agreement hold that the occupation of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands only gave the Soviet Union a base from which to hold air and missile proximity to Japan.(26) The Soviet presence in northeastern China perceivedly allowed it to send more troops to the northern part of Korea and establish a communist regime there. If a critic really wishes to indicate that the Yalta Agreement was a cause of the later Cold War confrontations in Asia, he could hold that had the Soviet Union not been given so much proximity to the northeastern part of China, it could not have aided the communist insurgency as much as it did. China would subsequently not have fallen and American troops in Korea would not have had to worry about a war against a communist giant to the north in the war there a year later had the conflict even taken place at all. One cannot point to the Yalta Agreement as a cause of such events as the "fall of China" simply because the concessions that critics attack were really made at the Teheran Conference. Stalin established his own diplomatic ambitions regarding the Far East just as he did with Germany and Poland. The American president and his British counterpart did not protest or really put up any strong resistance to the Soviet leader's requests, despite the fact that he was not involved in the Far Eastern war at all. In this case, the two western leaders suggested these terms in an effort to facilitate Soviet involvement in the Far East. Notes taken from the conference describe a plenary session between the three leaders in which they discussed the Far East. A notable aspect about these documents involves how Churchill and Roosevelt actually sought the Soviet leader's opinions regarding a region in which his forces had not become involved. Churchill even suggested that the Soviets, having no ice-free port on their Pacific coast, should take control of Vladivostok, near the border with China and Korea. Roosevelt mentioned some sort of international trusteeship for the Manchurian port of Dairen as a means to give the Soviet Union access to the Pacific. (27) Stalin approved of several of these ideas. (28) He again made no promises regarding his plans for action in territories in a postwar Far East, but promised to formally declare war against Japan once his forces defeated the German army. (29) Roosevelt, conferring with the American Pacific War Council shortly after the Teheran meeting, defined what had been discussed clearly. He recounted that: a) the Soviet Union wished to control an ice free port on the Pacific; b) that Stalin looked favorably on an international trusteeship arrangement for the port of Dairen, and; c) that he had wanted all of the Japanese-held southern half of the island of Sakhalin and all of the Kuril Islands. (30) These were the prospective concessions that Roosevelt presented as options to the council as part of his aim to obtain Soviet aid in defeating the Japanese menace. This report ought to come to mind recurrently for anyone who studies the Second World War. It indicates the extent to which issues that many historians believe to have been decided at Yalta were actually settled at Teheran. The United States ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman, even relayed a message to Roosevelt shortly before Christmas of 1944 that Stalin wished to note that the only matter that "he had not mentioned at Teheran was the recognition of the status quo in Outer Mongolia". (31) The Teheran Conference, and not the one held at Yalta, served as the forum under which Stalin defined the terms that he would accept in order to take part in the war against Japan. One can call this same situation an informal settlement of the Far Eastern issue that took such precedence at Yalta. In the form in which these concessions were suggested, none of them so much as even disturbed Roosevelt. He did not adjust any military plans or invasion timetables as he did not see any potential for territorial conflicts in the region with his Soviet counterpart. (32) The Yalta Conference may be a more prominent part of history because so many negotiations developed into official settlements of issues throughout its course. But informal and formal sessions between the same group of leaders at Teheran only a little over a year before decided several of the same issues at an unofficial level. The pattern of diplomatic negotiations evidenced by notes of the first meetings involved Stalin defining opinions regarding either the German or Polish states. With the exception of the war in the Far East, which Stalin did not bring up, both Roosevelt and Churchill either blankly conceded these statements as a full set of demands, weakly questioned them, or ignored them to their presumed diplomatic peril. These circumstances made much of the official outcome of the Yalta Conference certain. V What happened at the Teheran Conference may not be enough to convince many people of its importance relative to the meeting at Yalta. The fact remains that the informal conclusions reached at Teheran were simply that - informal conclusions. No official agreements were reached regarding any of the three territorial issues that were pertinent in Yalta a little over a year later. The issue that subsequently emerges involves whether the two western leaders could have disregarded what they told (or failed to tell) Stalin at Teheran and simply hold him accountable for the expansionism that many officials in their delegations suspected he harbored. Many historians have suggested means by which they could have done just that. With regards to the Polish question, the historian Herbert Feis suggested in his book Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin that both the American and British delegations should have insisted on some kind of international supervision of the Lublin Committee's rule and activities. Only through this kind of plan could truly free elections have been guaranteed, simply because a failure to hold them would have constituted a diplomatic embarrassment for Stalin and his country. (33) Even Roosevelt had received some advice from the high levels of the military to not officially concede any territory as such a course of action could only bring about a disastrous setting of the balance of power among nations across the European continent. But perhaps the historian Edward Bennett most clearly illustrated why other military officers, notably General George Marshall, did not advise Roosevelt to pursue such an action against Stalin. He simply wrote: "The Americans needed him". (34) The problem for anybody who would have attempted to use any kind of brute military force to back up any claim against Soviet territorial ambitions at the time of the Yalta Conference would have been the balance of power towards defeating Germany that the nations faced. It remains a fact that the Soviet Union held a military advantage at the time of the meeting because much of the territory that Stalin sought to occupy or influence had already been taken over. Soviet armies had marched across German lines in eastern Poland in order to veritably occupy the whole country. The progress made by the same armies involved so many successes that the German capital of Berlin lay within their own striking distance by the time the Yalta Conference took place. In contrast, the United States and Great Britain still had to worry about simply reaching the German border. Examination of the military state of affairs of the Second World War's waning days illustrates the difficulty the two western powers faced in simply crossing the German border. Such weaknesses exacerbated the American need to obtain assistance to end the war quickly against an equally stubborn Japanese menace. These circumstances illustrate that the two western powers simply did not hold the requisite military power to challenge concessions that their leaders had long since made to a superior military superpower. Throughout the dates that Roosevelt and Churchill conferred with the Soviet premier at Yalta, American and British armies faced massive German counterattacks. Responding to the gains that these two armies had reaped shortly after landing on German-occupied France, the German Wehrmacht ordered an attack against the front of the U.S. First Army in the Ardennes. This hilly and wooded sector of the German-Belgian border had been thinned out by the American army in order to amass maximum force along flatter entry routes to Germany. (35) The Battle of the Bulge, as military historians would soon term this series of events, commenced on December 16, 1944, and destroyed any American soldiers' hopes that the German army would surrender by Christmas. By the time the Allied high command could plan a retaliatory strike, the four divisions that had held the wide Ardennes stretch had been burst open by an assault of twenty German divisions, seven of which were armored with a total of nearly a thousand tanks and guns. (36) Why the American leadership ignored intelligence information that the German military command had planned such an attack for some time is an issue for military historians to discuss. But this decision's implications for overall Allied strength on the western war front were quite negative. The United States armies, once unstoppably on the way to the German border, lost a great deal of time just trying to recapture suddenly reoccupied parts of Belgium. By December 26, the whole German army fell back and the offensive's leader, General C.R.G. Von Rundstedt, recognized that its goal to force the Allies off of the mainland in a manner similar to the Dunkirk withdrawal of four years earlier was unattainable. (37) As the Yalta Conference progressed, American troops had yet to defeat the remaining forces from the Ardennes attack. The American territory in Germany to which Roosevelt referred in his meetings with Stalin was nonexistent. It was not until March 7, 1945, that the U.S. Third Army broke through the weak German defenses in the Eifel (the German end of the Ardennes forest) and finally became the first American army to enter Germany. (38) In contrast, the Soviet army was very successful in breaking through Germany's eastern front. Some of its divisions stood so close to Berlin during the Yalta Conference that many military observers of the situation believed that they might be able to take over the whole of Germany while the other allied armies floundered about in the Belgian forests. Stalin launched his own counteroffensive across the Soviet border with Poland on January 12, 1945. Ten armies, including two tank armies, were deployed. A final count showed the Soviet attack as comprising seventy military divisions supported by two full air armies. (39) All that could possibly have gone well for the Soviet army in its drive to take over Poland did. A fog cloaked its divisions as they marched westward. A well-handled artillery barrage wholly pulverized German resistance at an eastern stronghold at the town of Kielce and opened a crack in its lines. Only three days after the attack had begun, Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov's military force marched into the Polish capital of Warsaw. (40) Just before Stalin left for Yalta to confer with Roosevelt and Churchill, Soviet troops reached the Oder River, the eastern German border. German civil authorities commenced the evacuation of all towns along the river. (41) Finally on February 9, at the same time that Stalin conferred with Churchill and Roosevelt, a Soviet force crossed German lines along the Oder to reach the town of Sommerfeld, only eighty miles from Berlin. (42) The Yalta Conference took place with each leader holding a different position of strength regarding the enemy whose fate the whole meeting was to decide. Churchill and Roosevelt suffered from the results of bad luck and poor military planning. In a full setting that was meant to be a conference of victors, they had yet to vanquish their enemy and had even come dangerously close to being forced off the European continent. Stalin did not face the same fate. When he met his two counterparts at Yalta in February of 1945, his armies had already taken over all of Poland and some parts of eastern Germany. One can say that Stalin's armies took full advantage of the fact that Stalin had made no promises at Teheran regarding any political autonomy for Poland and eastern Germany. At a time when establishing a position of strength was crucial from a pure standpoint of negotiating strategy, Stalin had already taken over one country whose political future had yet to be officially discussed. He was also well on his way to completely crushing the German state as he had planned to do at Teheran. He held this sort of diplomatic and military leverage while both of the other two leaders could merely boast of how their armies struggled to fight the remnants of an offensive that military experts had believed they should have expected. At least on a full military level, the issues of whether the Soviet Union would impose any influence on Poland and Germany had been decided after Teheran. Soviet armies in a sense moved into the same countries to "enforce" the outcome of that same meeting. That situation still left a Far East where the Soviet army had yet to get involved. The Japanese empire was a sea empire, with a reach extending across a series of Pacific islands far beyond its base. Roosevelt pursued a strategy of "island hopping", or attacking every single territory held by the Japanese armies. Defeating Japan in this manner would take a great deal of time and lives. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius later attested to this reality in a discussion of American plans to invade Japan.(43) The country's distance from most American armies and fleets existed in addition to the fighting prowess and willingness to fight until the death that American soldiers found in their Japanese enemies. One can then see how the defeat of such a nemesis would have taken time and casualties. At the time of the Yalta Conference, the American armies in the Pacific were nowhere near assaulting Japan herself, though the military course of the war was tipped in their favor. The battle of Okinawa, the first major military battles fought on Japanese soil, would not take place until April of 1945. (44) Japanese forces stubbornly held a perimeter stretching from the southern tip of Japan across to the Phillipines, New Guinea, and Borneo. These same forces also held on to the bulk of Southeast Asia, with territory from Burma to Indochina falling under their control. (45) The prospect of a war being fought all the way to Japan promised to impose unprecedented numbers of casualties on the United States. It is fair to say that the United States needed the Soviet Union to conventionally defeat Japan. The American armies could not easily take over the vast expanses of Japanese territories themselves. General Marshall (quoted earlier) noted that Soviet intervention could make defeating Japan a much easier proposition for American troops. A Soviet declaration of war would allow assaults on Japan's northern and western fronts to be performed by Stalin's troops. It would also put another opponent in the way of the Japanese imperial command's goals, making the United States war effort a little easier. The historian B.H. Liddell Hart documented how this same prediction materialized in his book The Second World War. Attacks on the Japanese held territories in Manchuria hastened action by the emperor himself to surrender before having his country fully swallowed up by two, instead of just one, enemy. He wrote: Russia's declaration of war on August 8, and immediate drive into Manchuria the next day, seems to have been... effective in hastening the issue...For at a meeting of the inner Cabinet...he pointed out the hopelessness of the situation... (46) Soviet intervention was later proven to have been one necessary option to bringing the war against Japan to a quick end. The ensuing occupation of Manchuria surrounded the Japanese from two fronts and forced a quicker surrender on their part. This situation in the Pacific, and a corresponding one on the European continent, illustrated that the United States may have been comparatively stronger than the Axis powers. But it was not strong enough to intimidate the Soviet Union with respect to any qualms it may have had regarding territorial claims. If the American situation in the Pacific Rim in fact illustrates any one issue, it is the fact that the United States needed the Soviet Union's own military strength more than the Soviet Union needed the United States. Perhaps the United States could have lodged a protest regarding Soviet incursions into Poland and the German state, prewar bordered and postwar bordered. But during the Yalta Conference, it did not hold ground in any of the areas that were discussed. Only the Soviet Union held strength with any regards to Poland and Germany. That strength was so great that some military forces could eventually be allocated to ending the United States war against Japan. Even if the United States and Great Britain had decided to completely change their diplomatic stands regarding unofficial concessions of land at the Teheran Conference, they certainly did not hold any of the requisite military strength to fully enforce such a change. VI Although the Yalta Agreement has been subject to some highly politicized criticism, many academics and statesmen alike hold a somewhat simplified view of its actual significance as a treaty that conceded territory to the Soviet Union. Those individuals who claim that Roosevelt simply handed over lands to Stalin fail to understand how the official results of the meeting were so inextricably linked to the negotiations that took place a little more than a year earlier and the military balance of power that existed between the "big three" of Yalta. Documents from the Teheran Conference illustrate a confident and self-assured Soviet leader who knew exactly what he wanted in postwar territories. He simply set forth his terms and was never firmly rebuffed by either of his two counterparts. When the time came to put these terms into official agreements, Stalin's armies held most of the European territories he initially desired. His own military leverage was such that he could afford to have some of his troops abandon his own front and assist in defeating in enemy whom he had not originally taken interest. In the mean time, nothing the United States or Great Britain could have done would have changed this definitive military situation that really enshrined the unofficial agreements of Teheran into the official agreements of Yalta. This situation brings all readers to the one final question that was set forth at the beginning of this essay - whether the results of the Yalta Conference could have been changed had the American president taken a harder line at Yalta. The answer unfortunately is no. The American military position at the time of Yalta would not have allowed for any development of a confrontation with the Soviet Union that a demand for such a concession as a free Poland would have entailed. In order to prevent the outcome of the Yalta Conference as it took shape, Roosevelt and Churchill would have had to take a more long term view of the developing military balance of power at an earlier point in the war. Stalin hinted at what he intended to do after the war during a meeting that took place long before its end was even feasible. This meeting should have served as the forum for questioning or calling Stalin to account for his seeming desire to swallow up the whole eastern part of Europe. The fact remains that Roosevelt and Churchill did no such thing. Some might say that he was foolish in hindsight, but it was the distrustful Churchill himself who brought up the possibility of Soviet intervention in the Far Eastern war and proposed the same concessions regarding the region to which the three leaders officially agreed at Yalta. Perhaps Stalin took advantage of this predicament in his later military operations, for by the time the Yalta Conference took place, what was to be decided regarding Germany and Poland had already been decided on the battlefield. The realities of the Far Eastern battlefield also forced the United States to seek Soviet aid in facilitating a more rapid Japanese surrender. The Yalta Agreement thereby served only as a means of recognizing the unofficial agreements and outcome of the Teheran meeting as enforced by a current military balance of power. Critics of the Yalta Conference can reconsider their own perspectives if they agree that the Teheran meeting merits more attention than it has been given. By the time Roosevelt and Churchill sat down at Yalta, there was nothing they could have done to save Poland, eastern Germany, or the Far East from any form of Soviet influence. These regions' futures had already been decided and the Allied military balance of power prevented either of the two leaders from renegotiating these unofficial accords. The only way for the postwar situation regarding these regions to have changed would have been for Stalin and Churchill to not have let Stalin get away with so many demands at the Teheran meeting. Endnotes

Endnotes

1. Mikolajczyk, Stanislaw. The Rape Of Poland: Pattern Of Soviet Aggression (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1972), p. viii.

2. Theoharis, Athan. Yalta Myths (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1970), p. 8.

3. Sulzberger, C.L. Such A Peace: The Roots And Ashes Of Yalta (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1982), p. i.

4. Langsam, Walter ed. Historic Documents Of World War II (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1958), p. 105.

5. Laloy Jean. Yalta: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 81.

6. Feis, Herbert. Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 273.

7. de Senarclens, Pierre. Yalta (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988), p. 19.

8. Feis, Herbert. Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, p. 273.

9. Ibid, p. 274.

10. The Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1969), p. 48.

11. Ibid, p. 49.

12. Feis, Herbert. Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, p. 275.

13. Lukas, Richard C. The Strange Allies: The United States and Poland, 1941 - 1945 (Knoxville, TE: University of Tennessee Press, 1978), p. 60.

14. Ibid, p. 163.

15. Langsam, Walter ed. Historical Documents of World War II, p. 107.

16. Mikolajczyk, Stanislaw. The Rape Of Poland, p. 107.

17. Buhite, Russell. Decisions At Yalta: An Appraisal of Summit Diplomacy (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1986), p. 45.

18. The Teheran, Potsdam, and Yalta Conferences, p. 46.

19. Ibid, p. 47.

20. Stalin's Correspondence With Churchill, Attlee, Roosevelt, And Truman (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1958), p. 196.

21. Feis, Herbert. Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, p. 285.

22. The Teheran, Potsdam, and Yalta Conferences, p. 50.

23. Langsam, Walter ed. Historical Documents of World War II, p.110.

24. Ibid, p. 110 - 111.

25. Douglas, Roy. From War To Cold War, 1942 - 48 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), p. 105.

26. McCormick, Thomas J. America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy In The Cold War And After (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 115.

27. Feis, Herbert. Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, p. 255.

28. Clemens, Diane Shaver. Yalta (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 59.

29. McNeill, William Hardy. America, Britain, and Russia: Their Cooperation And Conflict, 1941 - 1946 (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1976), p. 352.

30. Feis, Herbert. Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, p. 255.

31. Ibid, p. 255 - 256.

32. Ibid, p. 256.

33. Ibid, p. 529.

34. Bennett, Edward M. Franklin D. Roosevelt And The Search For Victory: American Soviet Relations, 1939 - 1945 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1990), p. 161.

35. Hart, B.H. Liddell. History Of The Second World War (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1971), p. 639.

36. Ibid, p. 642.

37. Ibid, p. 658.

38. Ibid, p. 677.

39. Ibid, p. 665

40. Ibid, p. 668.

41. Ibid, p. 666.

42. Ibid, p. 668.

43. Stettinius, Edward. Roosevelt and the Russians: The Yalta Conference (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1949), p. 96.

44. Hart, B.H. Liddell. History of The Second World War, p. 685.

45. Smith, Gaddis. American Diplomacy During The Second World War, 1941 - 1945 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p. 7.

46. Hart, B.H. Liddell. History Of The Second World War, p. 696.

47. Snell, John L. ed. The Meaning Of Yalta: Big Three Diplomacy And The New Balance of Power (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), p. 206.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20071016/84122320.html

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16/ 10/ 2007

		Opinion & analysis
				Tehran-43: Wrecking the plan to kill Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill

Interview with Russian intelligence veteran Gevork Vartanyan.

The historic significance of the Big Three conference in Tehran, Iran, was enormous - at stake were the destinies of millions of people and the future of the world. The deadline for the opening of the second front was the main issue on the agenda.

Fully aware of this, the Nazi government instructed the German intelligence service, the Abwehr, to assassinate Joseph Stalin,�Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The number one Nazi saboteur, Otto Skorzeny, planned an operation code-named Long Jump.

The security of the Soviet, American and British leaders was mostly the responsibility of Soviet troops and security agencies. Acting under the Russian-Persian Treaty of Friendship of 1921, the Soviet Union sent troops into Iran's northern regions in August 1941 to curb the operations of German agents. Britain deployed troops in the south of the country to guarantee the flow of British-American land-lease supplies to the U.S.S.R. from the Persian Gulf.

The conference itself was held in the Soviet Embassy. It was the perfect site for secret talks - a big mansion surrounded by a stone wall, with buildings of light-colored brick scattered across the park. One of these was converted into the U.S. president's residence.

For security reasons, Roosevelt accepted Stalin's invitation to stay there. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Tehran was located on the city's outskirts, while the Soviet and British embassies were (and still are) located across the street from one another. Soviet soldiers broke down the walls, blockaded the street with six-meter shields and built a temporary passage between the two diplomatic missions, guarded by anti-aircraft- and machine-gunners. Four rings of security surrounded the embassies. Nobody could break in.

If Roosevelt had stayed at the U.S. diplomatic mission, either he, or Stalin and Churchill, would have had to travel to the talks through Tehran's narrow streets, where Nazi agents could easily have concealed themselves in a crowd.

On his return to Washington D.C., Roosevelt said that he had stayed in the Soviet Embassy because Marshal Stalin told him about a German plot.

Nazi intelligence learnt of the time and place of the conference in mid-October in 1943, after cracking the American naval code. In 1966, Skorzeny confirmed that he had been instructed to abduct or kill the three leaders in Tehran.

Moscow received a cable about the plot against the allied leaders from Dmitry Medvedev's guerrillas operating in the Rovno forest [in Ukraine - ed.]. Among them was the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov. Posing as a German Oberleutnant by the name of Paul Siebert, Kuznetsov became friendly with SS Sturmbannfuehrer Ulrich von Ortel, who even promised to introduce him to Skorzeny. Heavily inebriated, Ortel boasted that he was going to Iran for the meeting of the Big Three: "We will repeat the Abruzzi jump [a daring airborne operation in which Skorzeny rescued Mussolini - ed.]! But it will be the Long Jump! We will eliminate Stalin and Churchill and turn the tide of the war! We will abduct Roosevelt to help our Fuehrer to come to terms with America. We are flying in several groups. People are already being trained in a special school in Copenhagen."

Following this report the [intelligence] center made us responsible for security at the conference.

Tehran at that time was flooded with refugees from war-ravaged Europe. For the most part, these were wealthy people trying to escape the risks of the war. There were about 20,000 Germans in Iran, and Nazi agents were hiding among them. They were aided by the pre-war patronage extended to the Germans by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who openly sympathized with Hitler. The German field station in Iran, headed by Franz Meyer, was very powerful.

Long before the conference - from February 1940 to August 1941 - our group of seven intelligence officers had identified more than 400 Nazi agents. When our troops entered Iran, we arrested them all. Meyer went deep underground. It took us a long time to find him - he had grown a beard and dyed it, and was working as a grave-digger at an Armenian cemetery.

Our group was the first to locate the Nazi landing party - six radio operators - near the town of Qum, 60 km from Tehran. We followed them to Tehran, where the Nazi field station had readied a villa for their stay. They were travelling by camel, and were loaded with weapons.

While we were watching the group, we established that they had contacted Berlin by radio and recorded their communication. When we decrypted these radio messages, we learnt that the Germans were preparing to land a second group of subversives for a terrorist act - the assassination or abduction of the Big Three. The second group was supposed to be led by Skorzeny himself, who had already visited Tehran to study the situation on the spot. We had been following all his movements even then.

We arrested all the members of the first group and made them make contact with enemy intelligence under our supervision. It was tempting to seize Skorzeny himself, but the Big Three had already arrived in Tehran and we could not afford the risk. We deliberately gave a radio operator an opportunity to report the failure of the mission, and the Germans decided against sending the main group under Skorzeny to Tehran. In this way, the success of our group in locating the Nazi advance party and our subsequent actions thwarted an attempt to assassinate the Big Three.

After the conference, Stalin went with Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav Molotov to the Shah's palace in order to thank Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for his hospitality. This was a very smart and important step, which had a big effect on Iranian society. It did not occur to either Roosevelt or Churchill to do so. The Shah was moved by Stalin's attention. When the Soviet leader entered the throne room, the Shah ran up to Stalin and tried to kiss his hand. But Stalin did not let him and raised him to his feet.

At that time, Stalin's authority in the world was absolute - everyone understood that the outcome of the war was being decided on the Soviet-German front. Both Roosevelt and Churchill admitted this. Churchill recalled in his memoirs that everyone stood up when Stalin entered the hall of the conference. He resolved not to do so again. Yet, when Stalin entered the hall on another occasion, some unknown force again brought Churchill to his feet.

Gevork Vartanyan was not even 16 when he went into intelligence. His farther was sent to Iran by Soviet intelligence in 1930 and worked there for 23 years.

Gevork was declassified only on December 20, 2000. He and his wife Goar, a member of his group, immediately received five decorations: the orders of the Great Patriotic War, Battle Red Banner and Red Star. The Gold Star Medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred on Gevork in 1984 for his performance during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) and the Cold War. He received the Order for Services to the Fatherland when he turned 80.

Vartanyan believes that his biggest achievement was his and his wife's 45 year-long record of successful service and safe return home.

"We were lucky - we never met a single traitor. For us, underground agents, betrayal is the worst evil. If an agent observes all the security rules and behaves properly in society, no counter-intelligence will spot him or her. Like sappers, underground agents err only once."

Transcript by Yury Plutenko.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/1/newsid_3535000/3535949.stm

1943: Allies united after Tehran conference

Allied leaders of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union have ended a landmark conference held in Tehran, the capital of Iran.

It was the first time Winston Churchill, President Franklin D Roosevelt and Marshal Joseph Stalin had met together.

In a joint statement issued after the four-day conference, they expressed a determination to work together to win the war in Europe and in Asia and establish an "enduring peace".

The three allies said they had reached agreement on a second front although actual details were not given - only that operations would take place in the east, west and south.

We came here with hope and determination. We leave here, friends in fact, in spirit and in purpose

Joint statement by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin

They stated: "We expressed our determination that our nations shall work together in war and in the peace that will follow."

And they pledged to form a United Nations and "banish the scourge and terror of war for many generations".

The declaration ended: "We came here with hope and determination. We leave here, friends in fact, in spirit and in purpose."

The foundations for this agreement were laid at a conference held in Moscow a month ago between foreign ministers of the allied countries.

Days before the Moscow conference a meeting between Mr Churchill, President Roosevelt and General Chiang Kai-shek of China held in Cairo [codenamed Sextant], resolved to restore to China all land taken over by Japan and "in due course" secure the independence of Korea.

During the Tehran conference Mr Churchill took the opportunity to award the Soviet leader the Sword of Stalingrad.

The British prime minister handed over the sword as a tribute from King George VI and the British people for forcing the German Sixth Army to surrender at Stalingrad on 2 February this year.

There was another occasion to celebrate in Tehran - it was Mr Churchill's 69th birthday on 30 November and a special dinner was held at the British Legation in his honour.

His daughter, Section Officer Sarah Oliver, greeted the guests which included the US President and the Soviet leader.

Marshal Stalin proposed a toast, "To my fighting friend, Winston Churchill," and a similar toast to President Roosevelt.

This was the first time Joseph Stalin (L) had met the other two Allied leaders
Timeline: World War II

In Context

News about the Tehran Conference, codenamed Eureka, was not actually reported until three days after it had ended - in an announcement on Moscow Radio. Details of what was discussed were not revealed until after the war. The western allies assured Stalin they would invade France and ease the pressure on Soviet troops fighting on the eastern front. A date for what was codenamed Operation Overlord was set for May 1944 - later delayed until June. Stalin confirmed that the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan following the defeat of Germany, much to the relief of Roosevelt and Churchill. Turkey's involvement in the war was also discussed, as was the future of Poland and Finland and support for the partisans led by Tito in Yugoslavia. Finally, further to the debate at the Moscow Conference, a discussion was held on the post-war division of Germany. Further conferences between the so-called "grand alliance" of the Big Three took place in Yalta and Potsdam in 1945 to co-ordinate progress of the war and its aftermath.

The Tehran Conference

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill in Teheran, Iran, 11/29/1943
ARC Identifier: 197062.
Courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Library

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill and several others in Teheran, Iran, 11/29/1943
ARC Identifier: 196980.
Courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Library

US National Archives (NARA)

Picture of Franklin D. Roosevelt Sitting With Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai Sheck

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Churchill, C. Kai Sheck, and Mrs. Sheck in Cairo, Egypt (November 25, 1943).

Picture of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Others at Yalta

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and others at Livadia Palace in Yalta, USSR (February 4, 1945).

Photograph of FDR Sitting on a Porch

Franklin D. Roosevelt sitting with L. Howe, T. Lynch, and M. MacIntyre (1920).

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