Stop Five: Livadia Palace, Yalta
In February 1945, the Big Three met at Yalta on the shores of the Black Sea to discuss the post-war future and organization of Europe. The tense and difficult negotiations regarding the location of the conference were an indication, and merely a precursor, of the disagreements in objective, vision, and interpretation that would emerge as the conference unfolded, as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin arrived at the conference with clear agendas for the governing of post-war Europe. The resulting agreements at the conference, their implementation after the war, and the degree to which the agreements were followed or broken, has been the source of much controversy.
Primary/Secondary Source: Stalin, Josef, as quoted by Ambrose, Stephen and Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (2010).
"Throughout history, Poland has been the corridor through which the enemy has passed into Russia. Twice in the last thirty years our enemies, the Germans, have passed through this corridor. It is in Russia’s interest that Poland should be strong and powerful, in a position to shut the door of this corridor by her own force…It is necessary that Poland should be free, independent in power. Therefore, it is not only a question of honor but of life and death for the Soviet state."
Primary Source: “Yalta Conference Agreement,” A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents, 1941-1949, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Department of State. Washington, DC: GPO, 1950. Reproduced on web by The Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, 2008 <avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/ yalta.asp> 29 Apr 2015.
“The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life must be achieved by processes, which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of Nazism and Fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice. This is a principle of the Atlantic Charter -- the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live -- the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples who have been forcibly deprived of them by the aggressor Nations.”
Analysis Questions:
1. What is most important to Stalin at the Yalta Conference and in the final division of Europe?
Primary/Secondary Source: Stalin, Josef, as quoted by Ambrose, Stephen and Douglas Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, New York: Penguin Books (2010).
"Throughout history, Poland has been the corridor through which the enemy has passed into Russia. Twice in the last thirty years our enemies, the Germans, have passed through this corridor. It is in Russia’s interest that Poland should be strong and powerful, in a position to shut the door of this corridor by her own force…It is necessary that Poland should be free, independent in power. Therefore, it is not only a question of honor but of life and death for the Soviet state."
Primary Source: “Yalta Conference Agreement,” A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents, 1941-1949, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Department of State. Washington, DC: GPO, 1950. Reproduced on web by The Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, 2008 <avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/ yalta.asp> 29 Apr 2015.
“The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life must be achieved by processes, which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of Nazism and Fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice. This is a principle of the Atlantic Charter -- the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live -- the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples who have been forcibly deprived of them by the aggressor Nations.”
Analysis Questions:
1. What is most important to Stalin at the Yalta Conference and in the final division of Europe?