was won. A division of Europe was emerging
between the Soviet-controlled territory of eastern,
central and south-eastern Europe and the West.
Roosevelt’s hope of achieving some solid
understanding between the three world powers,
Britain, the Soviet Union and the US, was
severely tested by Soviet behaviour in 1944 and
- He pinned his hopes on creating a new
international organisation – the United Nations –
under the tutelage and based on the agreement
of Britain, the Soviet Union and the US. But
Stalin was making unreasonable demands. All
sixteen Soviet republics were to be among the
founder members of the United Nations. He also
insisted that the six permanent members of the
proposed council of the United Nations should
be able to exercise an all-inclusive veto, that is to
say, have the right to a veto when disputes were
being dealt with in which they themselves were
involved. The Dumbarton Oaks Conference,
which had met to organise the United Nations,
thus, ended in September 1944 without agree-
ment on these vital issues. What was seen as
Stalin’s intransigence brought the US and Britain
more closely together.
In Quebec, Churchill and Roosevelt met that
same month, September 1944, to devise their
joint military and political strategy. Plans were
made to move troops from Italy into Istria and
Austria ahead of Russian troops. To help Britain
economically, Roosevelt also agreed to continue
Lend-Lease during the time that would elapse
between the defeat of Germany and the defeat of
Japan. Britain’s likely post-war economic weak-
ness was thus foreshadowed: Britain would not
remain an equal superpower with the US and the
Soviet Union. Britain and the US next agreed to
cooperate in the military and civilian development
of atomic energy and, significantly, to exclude the
Soviet Union from sharing this information.
The future of Germany was another subject
of primary importance discussed at Quebec.
Roosevelt’s advisers had prepared both a ‘soft’
plan for peace terms and the famous plan associ-
ated with the name of the secretary of the trea-
sury, Henry Morgenthau, which intended to
deprive Germany of its major industries, reduce
the German standard of living and turn it into an
agricultural country. At first Churchill was vio-
lently opposed to this ‘hard’ option. It would too
clearly be repeating the error of the First World
War. A prosperous Europe could not develop
without German economic recovery. But in
return for concessions for the continuation of
American economic aid to Britain he finally
assented to ‘converting Germany into a country
primarily agricultural and pastoral in its charac-
ter’. What were Roosevelt’s motives in advocat-
ing a course that would have been so disastrous
for European recovery? He spoke of punishing
the German people for their wars of aggression;
more important to him was to win Stalin’s coop-
eration by reassuring the Soviet leader that the
Western Allies would not try to rebuild Germany
as a bulwark against Russia. In the autumn of
1944 Roosevelt’s hand was strengthened by his
re-election as president. He would not have to
enter peace negotiations without the certainty of
public support as Wilson had done in 1919.At Yalta in February 1945 Stalin, Roosevelt and
Churchill finally met together again for the first
time since Teheran. Roosevelt and Churchill
arrived with some 700 officials. The photograph
of the three leaders in front of the tsarist Livadia
Palace implied an equality that did not exist.
Roosevelt as a head of state was seated in the cen-
tre flanked on his left by Stalin and on his right by
Churchill. Roosevelt’s exhaustion and illness were
plain to see, a shocking transformation from the
confident president pictured only fifteen months
earlier at Teheran. He was in a hurry and wanted
the conference to be quickly over. He telegraphed
to Churchill that it ought not to last more than
five or six days. Churchill replied, ‘Even the
Almighty took seven.’ In the event it lasted eight
days from 4 to 11 February 1945.
Roosevelt was determined to come to terms
with the Soviet leader and saw in Churchill almost
as great an obstacle to establishing a good post-
war partnership between them as Stalin himself.
He had been reluctant to meet Churchill in Malta
before flying on to the Crimea for fear that Uncle
Joe would interpret this as the Anglo-Saxons
ganging up on him. The peaceful future of the
world rested, as Roosevelt saw it, on a good