Before Yalta: The Background

From our modern vantage point, the Yalta conference is often seen as a turning point in the history and structure of modern Europe until 1990. Undue focus on the decisions made there, while neglecting the events of the preceding three years simply gives one the wrong impression, however, that the Yalta Conference was decisive. The book, "Armed Truce - The Beginnings of the Cold War 1945-1946"" by Hugh Thomas contains well researched summaries of that background with excellent source material. For the record, Hugh Thomas is a British national.

Another error made by people today is putting the United States at the crux of those decisions. In 1941 before Pearl Harbor, the United States was simply uninvolved in European diplomacy and politics. The United States was still in a period of isolationism and had no experience in European realpolitik. The United States was involved in the war at the margins, by supplying Britain with Lend-Lease war supplies and helping Britain fight the submarine menace in the Atlantic. But there were no treaties of mutual defense with any nation in Europe. And the US and Britain did have some points of conflict, namely British colonialism.

Here are some key facts that influenced Yalta.

1. The Atlantic Charter - an unsigned statement of principles made by Roosevelt and Churchill on August 4, 1941 - was somewhat based on Woodrow Wilson's "fourteen points". The statement provided that the US and Britain "desired no territorial changes contrary to the wishes of the peoples concerned; respected the right of all nations to choose their own forms of government; and wished to see self-government, and sovereign rights, restored to peoples who had been deprived of them."

2. In December 1941 Stalin demanded British recognition that Soviet boundaries after the war would be those of six months before. That meant, in particular, the incorporation into Russia of the territory conceded to him by Hitler. Namely this was Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanian and eastern Poland. Britain rejected this plan, as did the US.

3. Stalin accepted the Atlantic Charter on January 1, 1942, after the United States entered the war. The obvious contradiction of the Atlantic Charter with Stalinism was ignored. But firmness did work - Stalin needed lend-lease supplies and was hard pressed by the Germans.

4. Churchill began backtracking after only a few months as he wanted a free hand in negotiating deals with Russia, saying "that the clauses on self-determination in the Charter did not apply to the territories of enemy states. He also urged Roosevelt in March 1942 that 'the principles of the Atlantic Charter ought not to be construed so as to deny Russia the frontiers which she occupied when Germany attacked her'." The freedom of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanian and eastern Poland was thus cast aside as an objective.

5. The US took the Charter more seriously. The US Department of State expressed its support for the principals of the Charter in discussion with the British: " 'if we did not build our new world on principals, we would crash again.' "

6. Through 1943, the US was not ready to discuss the future of Europe. "All officials in the US declined responsibility for detailed discussion of European frontiers. Equally firmly, being essentially 'universalists', they declined to consider anything so machiavellian as allowing 'spheres of influence' anywhere."

7. "By mid-1943, the British foreign secretary was uneasily admitting that his Polish policy was also 'contrary to the Atlantic Charter, but saying it had to be pursued to secure Soviet collaboration after the war."

8. By late 1943 the Red Army had proven that it could defeat the German Army and was rolling back the Germans across the entire Eastern Front.

9. Discussions at the Tehran conference between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt, the borders of postwar Poland were determined by Churchill and Stalin. Roosevelt did not want to play a part in it. The American contribution to this despicable act was simply good maps. "[Roosevelt] indicated that he would not resist Stalin on these matters."

In conclusion the focus on Yalta as a crucial, determining event for postwar Europe is wrong. The decisions of Yalta were really simply a ratification of the existing trends, earlier small steps, and exigencies of war. No concerted, united effort by Britain and the United States at Yalta could have changed anything significant in postwar Europe. That path to the Cold War was built during the prior three years of mistakes, appeasement, backtracking and indecision. Early indecision is really a decision to let the position of the armies at war's end be the deciding factor. That was bad to the peoples of eastern Europe. Residual American isolationism left the US unable to make timely, critically important decisions for postwar Europe.

My next [last?] post on this subject will be some speculations how the world could have been changed by stronger leaders and what they needed to support them.