The Yalta Conference of 4 to 11 February 1945 was a meeting of the 'Big Three' Allied leaders: President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Russian Premier Joseph Stalin. The conference, held in the Livadia Palace in Yalta in Crimea, decided the fate of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan after the expected and imminent Allied victory in the Second World War (1939 to 45). The decisions taken at the Yalta Conference, although not all enforced, redrew the political map of Europe and Northeast Asia. Western powers thought that Stalin later broke some of the Yalta agreements, particularly regarding free elections in states like Poland, and this perception coloured US-Soviet relations for decades to come as the two states entered the Cold War.

Yalta was a fashionable seaside resort and included the 50-room Livadia Palace, one-time residence of Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894 to 1917). The palace was selected to host the conference and impressed President Roosevelt with its lavish comforts. The purpose of the eight days of meetings, code-named Argonaut, was to thrash out an Allied agreement on what to do with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan (and the respective territories these powers had occupied) at the conclusion of WWII. The fighting was not yet over, but Allied victory was no longer a question of if but when.

The three Allied leaders – Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin – considered themselves the legitimate decision-makers for the fate of other nations largely because of the size of the armies they commanded and their successes on the battlefield, at sea, and in the air. Churchill and Roosevelt had already met twice in Malta a few weeks earlier, no doubt to get at least some of their strategy clear before coming face-to-face with Stalin. The three leaders at Yalta were accompanied by a small army of military and diplomatic advisers, around 700 officials in total. Stalin communicated with Roosevelt and Churchill using an interpreter, Vladimir Pavlov, but despite this obvious barrier, relations between the three leaders were friendly, and much champagne and vodka was drunk through several lavish banquets. Despite the disagreements over foreign policy and their inherent ideological differences, the official photographs showed a convivial atmosphere, where the three statesmen were clearly relieved and delighted to be in a position where they were about to achieve victory in the greatest challenge their countries had ever faced. There was one shadow that could not be hidden: Roosevelt was ill at the conference and, according to statements by secretaries and Churchill himself, seemingly distracted and even unprepared. The president died two months after the Yalta Conference.

The discussion topics on the table at Yalta included how best to conclude the war against Nazi Germany, which was still under the sway of Adolf Hitler (1889 to 1945), who was seemingly determined to defend the capital, Berlin, to the last man as the British and US troops moved in from the west and Russian armies moved ever closer from the east. All three Allied leaders were aware that the progress of their respective armies on the ground would likely determine who grabbed what territory at the war's end. The issue not only involved Germany but also the former nations that Nazi Germany had joined with or occupied through the 1930s, such as Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. There was going to be some sort of Allied occupation of a defeated Third Reich, but exactly which pieces would be under the control of whom was a sticky issue.

Thanks to lobbying by Roosevelt and Churchill, Stalin agreed that France should be an occupying power alongside the US, Great Britain, and the USSR. Yalta confirmed the previously discussed idea that both Germany and Austria would be divided into four zones of occupation with a joint military government established in each, the Allied Control Council in Germany and the Inter-Allied Council in Austria. Berlin and Vienna were similarly divided into zones of control. In addition, it was decided that each power had the right to conduct war crimes trials within its zone of occupation.

An issue which became problematic between the parties at Yalta was what to do with Poland and where its new frontiers would lie. Occupied since the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, a new set of borders was tentatively agreed upon at Yalta. Essentially, Poland was shifted westwards at the expense of Germany, a move which both punished Germany and compensated Poland for the loss of some of its territory in the east, which was given to the USSR. For ordinary citizens, it meant several million people were displaced in the west and east. The decision to allow the USSR to dominate the 'Poland Problem', as it became known, was criticised in the West, but with the Red Army already there on the ground, it was difficult to propose alternatives. Anthony Eden, then British Foreign Minister and present at Yalta, recalls:

Roosevelt thought he could do more with Stalin than anybody else and in that I think he was probably mistaken, but it was difficult to get started on the things we wanted to discuss with Stalin…who was a cold, cool and a calculating negotiator who knew exactly what he wanted to get and went out to get it, never got excited, hardly ever raised his voice, a cold chuckle or laugh particularly when he thought that FDR or Winston were at odds.

(Holmes, 532 & 541)

The negotiations were not helped from the Western viewpoint by the fact that one of Roosevelt's aides, Alger Hiss, was probably a Russian spy. Churchill at least managed to extract a promise from Stalin that Poland would have free elections, and if voted in, members of the Polish government in exile would be permitted to retake office. This never happened. Poland was not the only state the 'Big Three' wrangled over. The make-up of the new governments in Bulgaria and Greece was likewise disputed, with Roosevelt and Churchill wanting free elections and Stalin the placement of Communists within these governments, no matter what.

The other main topic discussed at Yalta was what to do with Japan, also still fighting, and also seemingly determined to defend every island and fight to the last soldier. Roosevelt and Stalin made a secret deal concerning Japan, one that Churchill was not directly involved in (but he did sign the agreement to). Neither was the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887 to 1975) informed of this deal, despite China losing some territory as a consequence of it. In return for Russia's entering the war against Japan, certain Soviet demands would be met. These demands included control of the Kuril (aka Kurile) Islands, the southern part of Sakhalin Island (both of these are in the Sea of Okhotsk and had been occupied by Japan), and retaining the status quo regarding Mongolia, which had been a Russian client state since 1924. When the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, Japan surrendered, and the war ended. There has been much debate ever since whether Russia's declaration of war on Japan just before the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had any influence on the Japanese government's decision to surrender, and so whether the Asian compromises at Yalta were, in the end, necessary.

Other issues discussed at Yalta included the reparations Germany was expected to pay, the severe limits on that country's future military power, and that public war crimes trials of senior suspects would be conducted. The delegates at Yalta also discussed how voting rights would be distributed in the United Nations, the proposed new version of the League of Nations. Roosevelt and Churchill managed to persuade Stalin that France should join them in having a permanent seat on the UN's governing Security Council. There was, too, an agreement that all deserters and those considered traitors would be returned to their home countries after the war. Such an agreement to repatriate Russians very likely meant their death warrant, but Roosevelt and Churchill were only concerned with getting back their own nationals who had been taken prisoners of war and who were now in Russian hands.

Finally, and after much discussion as noted above, the Declaration on Liberated Europe was issued, which "committed the UK, USA, and USSR to establishing free elections and democratic governments in the countries they had liberated" (Dear, 222). This declaration was not to prove of any value as it was broken just a few weeks later, when Stalin installed a new Soviet-backed government in Romania. This was only the first of many such cases perpetrated by all sides, but it was Stalin's persistent flouting of the declaration in Eastern Europe in the post-war years that permitted Western leaders to charge the USSR with bad faith and duplicitous intentions concerning the Yalta agreements in general.

In the short term, the Yalta Conference and the spirit of discussion, compromise, and unity, which reports and photographs suggested, were given a very positive light by the press. In the longer term, particularly as more details became known (they were only released to the public in March 1947), the outcomes of the conference were criticised, particularly in the United States and Britain, where it was felt by many that Roosevelt and Churchill had negotiated away control of Eastern Europe to the USSR and permitted a Soviet presence in East Asia which could be used as a platform for further expansion of Soviet influence in that part of the world. Even if there had been some successes, such as France's elevated position and the defence of democracy in Greece, the Western leaders were fully aware that Yalta had turned out to be a disappointment for them overall. As Churchill said to one of his aides at the end of the conference, take me away from this 'Riviera of Hades' (Holmes, 535).

There was a general feeling in the United States that as the USSR increasingly defaulted on its commitments made at Yalta, the Americans had, in effect, 'won the war but lost the peace' (Liddell Hart, 435). The Western position was further weakened by the death of Roosevelt and the failure of Churchill to win the next general election, so that by the next major summit, two new leaders sat at the negotiating table: British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and US President Harry S. Truman. The wily and experienced Stalin held an advantage when the three nations met at the Potsdam Conference of July-August 1945. There was continued haggling over the precise borders of Poland and other European states, and the peace terms regarding Japan were discussed. The ultimate consequence of the fractured peace and rival foreign policy aims of East and West was the rapid development of the Cold War between the USA and USSR and their respective allies, a decline in relations, which saw a prolonged period of international tensions and proxy wars through the second half of the 20th century.