The Yalta Conference During The Cold War

The Yalta Conference

The most famous precursor to the Cold War was the Yalta conference during the end of World War II. The leader of the Soviet Union (Joseph Stalin), the prime minister of Britain (Winston Churchill), and the president of the United States (Franklin Roosevelt) met in a former vacation place of the czars called Yalta. Each leader had his own ambitions for their countries and disagreements were bound to arise. Churchill wanted no country to have too much power in Europe which contradicted to Stalin’s plan for securing his country’s borders which involved taking control of European countries around the Soviet Union’s borders so no one could attack the Soviet Union. Franklin Roosevelt was sworn in for his fourth term as president

This topic was chosen because the Allies were winning the war but the Germans still had some fight left in them. The meeting would mainly include top military leaders of all three armies: the Red Army, United States army, and the British army. The Red Army, which was only 70 kilometers from the German capital Berlin, did the best out of the three and thus gave Stalin and his military commanders the most negotiating power. In fact, the Western forces were only recovering after terrible losses in the Ardennes region. Stalin asked the Western delegations if there was anything he could do to help knowing that the more he contributed to winning the war the more bargaining power he had. (69-92) The next meeting was about what to do with Germany after the war. Stalin was all for dismembering the country and putting it under occupation. The Western allies were generally for this too but an issue arose when deciding who would occupy Germany. The Western allies wanted four zones of occupation with Britain, France, United States, and the USSR(Soviet Union) having their own zone. The Soviets did not want France to have a zone because they did not help very much in the war effort but eventually the Soviets conceded and France was able to occupy a zone.

Churchill had disagreed with Stalin a lot in the last few meetings and was upset about it. Roosevelt, on the other hand, had grand plans for a United Nations organization. This organization would create peace by allowing countries to put sanctions on a country as a whole. Disputes between nations could be settled in this new organization. The United Nations idea had originally come from Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations which was formed after World War One. Wilson won the Nobel Prize for his creation but the United States never joined the league because of isolationist pressure in Congress. In another meeting the leaders decided which countries were going to have the most power in the United Nations. Stalin did not want small countries to have much of a say in the United Nations, but Churchill did. The two argued constantly about this with no solution in site.