The Yalta Conference (World War II)

Yalta Conference (reference source)

• meeting of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin in Yalta near the end of the war

• Western front: Allies had liberated France + Belgium, threatened German border

• Eastern front: Soviets had driven back Germans in Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania

• location of the conference put Stalin at an advantage — he had claimed that his doctors had prevented him from traveling far

• agreements/conclusions reached

• Soviet involvement in the Pacific

• if the USSR helped out in the war in the Pacific, it would regain the Japanese territory it had lost during the Russo-Japanese war

• the United States would grant diplomatic recognition of Mongolia as an independent nation from China

• Division of Germany

• after surrender, it would be split into four post-war occupation zones (one controlled by the US, Britain, France, and the USSR) → same with Berlin

• Charles deGaulle wasn't invited to the Conference; Stalin only agreed to give France a portion if it was taken from Britain/the US'

• Germany would be completely demilitarized and take partial responsibility for post-war reparations

• Eastern European affairs

• USSR will not return previously annexed territory to Poland → Germany had used it to invade Russia too many times

• did allow limited free elections to take place in Poland, a promise that was swiftly broken

• USSR vows to permit free elections in all now-liberated Eastern European territories (ie. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria), but these nations must be on good terms with Russia

• formation of the United Nations

• USSR will participate in UN

• basis laid for UN through 1941 Atlantic Charter

• finalize post-war borders after the war's official end