Yalta Conference





The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea conference, was the
wartime meeting over February 4 to 11, 1945 between the heads of government
of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics. The delegations were headed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston
Churchill, and Joseph Stalin respectively.

It was a continuation of the series of meeting begun at the Casablanca
Conference (January 14 to 24, 1943). The meeting took place in the former
Imperial palace at Yalta in the Crimea on the north side of the Black Sea.

The agreements of the Yalta conference were in dispute even before the final
meeting at Potsdam. Following the death of Roosevelt he was publicly accused
of signing eastern Europe into Communist control.

The official agreements reached at the meeting included:

   * The declaration of liberated Europe, allowing for democratic elections
     in all the liberated territories.
   * A conference in April in San Francisco on the proposed world
     organization, the United Nations. The structure of the UN was also
     considered and the Security Council idea was agreed. The US and UK also
     agreed to support the Ukraine and Belorussia having separate UN seats.
   * The dismemberment of Germany, which the three powers saw as "requisite
     for future peace and security". The country was to be divided into
     zones amongst the Allies. The French were also granted a zone of
     occupation and membership of the Allied Control Council for Germany.
   * Reparations from Germany for "losses caused by her to the Allied
     nations in the course of the war". Reparations were allowed in the form
     of the removal of national wealth (machine tools, ships, shares in
     German enterprises etc.), the annual delivery of goods for a period to
     be fixed, or the use of German labour. The Americans and Russians
     agreed on the figure of $22 billion in reparations, while the British
     delegation did not believe a final figure could yet be arrived at.
   * The question of war crimes was postponed.
   * Poland was to have a broad democratic provisional government leading up
     to "free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of
     universal suffrage and secret ballot"
   * In Yugoslavia the Tito-Subastich agreement would be put into effect.
   * The Russians agreed to intervene in the war with Japan within three
     months of the German surrender. In return they would be given the
     Sakhalin and Kurile Islands and pre-eminent interests over Port Arthur
     and Darien (Dalian) and its rail connections.
   * Concerns over the Italo-Yugoslav and Italo-Austrian frontiers were
     postponed as were decisions over Yugoslav-Bulgarian relations, Romania,
     Iran, and the Montreux Convention.
   * All captured Soviet nationals be repatriated whether they were willing
     or not.

The Yalta Conference is often cited as the beginning of the Cold War.