The Yalta Conference
Date
1954-06
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Abstract
The Yalta Conference climaxed twenty-five years of changing relations between the United States, Great Britain, and Russia. For this reason Yalta cannot be understood as an isolated event. The inter-war period was characterized by mutual mistrust between Soviet Russia and the two nations that became her allies in the Second World War. Both sides share the responsibility for the tension that existed, but at least some of the later Soviet action can be traced directly to the earlier militant moves of nations in the West. There is as yet insufficient source material to underpin a definitive study of the Yalta Conference. Yet the evidence available is sufficient to provide contemporary students with a general picture of the conference, and to answer many specific questions that have arisen in the public debate over the meeting. As this record is examined it is important to consider and keep constantly in mind the many duties and great responsibilities under which all the participants worked. Political leasers had no realistic or practical alternative but to accept the advice of the military and make their decisions accordingly. To expect President Franklin D. Roosevelt and other top-level officials to have done otherwise is to judge them before the fact.
Description
216 pages
Keywords
Yalta conference, International relations, Postwar Europe