Roosevelt, Yalta, and the Origins of the Cold War

Yet not long after this, he decided he had no choice. The prospect of giving up power, of becoming a respected but secondary figure in the creation of a new postwar world order, was simply too terrifying for him. And so, in 1944, Roosevelt would make one of the most selfish choices in international relations history, something so profoundly self-centered that historians still shy away from addressing it.

He not only decided to run for office while dying; he also decided to change his running mate for vice president to someone he did not like, would not confide in, and would not prepare in any way to succeed him as president. Worried that incumbent Vice President Henry Wallace was seen as too left-wing, Roosevelt chose the more moderate Harry Truman to be his running mate. Politically, it was an astute choice. Truman hailed from Missouri and had the political common touch that nicely complemented Roosevelt’s aristocratic presence. Truman could help Roosevelt in the Midwest and upper South, areas not particularly enamored with the more radical Wallace.

This article is adapted from The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler—How War Made Them and How They Made War by Phillips Payson O’Brien, (Dutton, 544 pp., $35, August 2024)

Truman, by his own estimation, had almost no experience in international relations, and Roosevelt would make sure he got none. Between the November 1944 election and Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, his appointments diary records only six meetings between the two—and only once, on Dec. 21, would they meet alone. Roosevelt seemed to actively avoid including Truman in his plans, such as the crucial Yalta Conference in February 1945. Roosevelt was basically saying that he, and only he, could lead the United States and the world in this crisis, and therefore he must live. If he did die—well, après moi, le déluge.

One of the reasons this lack of consultation ended up being so extraordinary is that Roosevelt never wrote down, and rarely discussed, a concrete vision for the postwar world. He usually dazzled people with broad, amorphous concepts of keeping order through the “four policemen”—Britain, China, the Soviet Union, and the United States—and talked hopefully about the creation of the United Nations, but he avoided answering the difficult questions.

Would U.S. forces be permanently deployed in Europe at the end of the war? Should Germany be permanently divided? Would the military alliance with the Soviet Union continue, and if so, would the United States accept Soviet domination of eastern Europe? What would the postwar settlement look like in Asia and the Pacific? Would European empires such as those of the Dutch or French be allowed to reconstruct themselves? Would U.S. forces go into areas formerly occupied by Japan? How would China, with its chaotic political situation, be one of the world’s policemen?

If he had clear answers to these questions, Roosevelt kept them to himself. As Leahy admitted in his memoirs, “There were times when I felt that if I could find anybody except Roosevelt who knew what America wanted, it would be an astonishing discovery.”

In refusing to provide the U.S. government with an idea of concrete war aims and purposes, Roosevelt was making a mockery of the axiom laid out by Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz that strategy is the connection between ends, ways, and means. Roosevelt, more than any war leader, had a clear idea of the ways and means—fighting the war with air-sea power and many machines rather than soldiers—but they seemed disconnected from the ends. The ends were what he wanted at any given moment.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (left) walks with Joseph Stalin on a visit to Moscow in 1944.Laski Diffusion/Getty Images

Stalin’s greatest moment of clarity was probably in October 1944, when he met alone with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Moscow. During the official meetings, which were often attended by the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman, Churchill and Stalin had tried to pretend that they were looking for a peace based on Rooseveltian concepts. When they were alone, however, they behaved differently.

One night during their private chats, both men looked to the future and talked about a Europe without the possible influence of the United States. The result was the famous “Percentages Agreement,” which saw Churchill and Stalin dividing up the region into spheres of interest.

This agreement represents perhaps the truest picture of how Stalin and Churchill would have liked to conduct negotiations between themselves. When compared to Roosevelt, they certainly had more concrete aims in mind for the war. For Churchill, it was the maintenance of Britain and its empire as a great power. For Stalin, it was the greatest possible expansion of the Soviet Union in eastern, central, and southern Europe. Neither had much time for Roosevelt’s notions of international goodwill and cooperation.

The Percentages Agreement was also a political and personal pipe dream. Roosevelt would never have agreed to such an arrangement—for political reasons as much as anything else—and so the three would have to gather to devise a more workable framework for postwar Europe and the world. They would need to reconcile Churchill and Stalin’s quite concrete strategic aims with Roosevelt’s more amorphous ones.

The result of this difference would be the Yalta Conference, code-named Argonaut, easily the most controversial of all the grand-strategic meetings of the war, held from Feb. 4 to Feb. 11, 1945, in Crimea.

To this day, Yalta generates heated discussion about just what was agreed—or to put it more accurately, what the three protagonists thought they were agreeing to.  In some ways, the problem was not the conference itself, the conclusions of which were not seen by any of the Big Three as “definitive” at the time.

The real problem was that Roosevelt died not long after, and as he kept the real meaning of the deals he made so close to the vest, Truman ended up having to intuit Roosevelt’s intentions.

From left: Churchill, Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin after negotiations at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

By the time Roosevelt reached Yalta, he seemed even worse. He had lost more weight; had large, puffy black bags under his eyes; and needed constant rest. Some members of the British delegation, who had last seen him at the Quebec Conference the previous August, were shocked by his deterioration in such a short time. One of Churchill’s secretaries, upon seeing Roosevelt, remarked that he “was hardly in this world at all.”

Stalin was in high spirits. By the time of the summit, Russian forces had reached the Oder River, fewer than 100 miles from Berlin. Once they had reorganized and rested for their next offensive, the German capital was bound to fall. The conquest of most of Poland before the Yalta Conference was an enormous advantage for Stalin in the upcoming talks. He knew what sort of Poland he wished to build, and he was in no mood to compromise.

The key actors at Yalta would be Roosevelt and Stalin. By this time, Britain lacked the military or financial power to compel either the United States or the USSR to do what it wanted. Stalin still needed U.S. support from the lend-lease program and was eager to join the war in the Pacific after Germany was defeated. Roosevelt was still planning on the continuation of the U.S.–Soviet wartime alliance in some form after the war as a guarantee of world peace.

The first plenary meeting of the leaders with their closest advisors celebrated the fact that they were about to win the war. It was a military overview of the war in Europe, and thus a story of the inevitable crushing of Adolf Hitler’s Germany. The different leaders praised the performance of each other’s militaries and talked about close coordination in the final stages of the war.

With the military overview out of the way, the leaders turned to the postwar world. Stalin voiced a view of great-power politics—that it was these three men who should decide on the future and not spend time listening to the views of smaller states. Roosevelt provided Stalin with support, agreeing that “the Great Powers bore the greater responsibility and that the peace should be written by the Three Powers represented at this table.”

But Churchill was uncomfortable. Not wanting to contradict Stalin outright, he argued instead that it was incumbent on the great powers to listen to the small and show some humility—though it was never clear how his vision of the British Empire fit into this view. Stalin, seemingly amused, started teasing Churchill about possibly losing the next election.

For the rest of the conference, the Big Three decided the fate of the rest of the world—and a great deal of that was done amicably. There were some differences of opinion about Germany—primarily about whether it should be dismembered or not. Stalin, who was opposed, wanted to put off any such decision until the future. In fact, postponing any such decision was easy, as the key first step—the division of Germany into clearly defined occupation zones—had already been made.

Maybe the most interesting statement made in the discussion was Roosevelt’s claim that U.S. troops would not stay in Europe for more than two years. Hearing that, Churchill responded that maybe France should now be built up with a strong army. Stalin said that was fine, but France was not to be given a major say in the control of Germany.

Another major issue settled at Yalta was Soviet entry into the war against Japan. With victory over Germany now looking set for the spring, Stalin was keen to take as many spoils as possible from a collapsing Japan. By this time, the Americans knew well that they had no need for any Russian help to defeat the Japanese, but Stalin framed it as fulfilling an earlier pledge.

Hoisted on his own petard, Roosevelt could do nothing but gratefully accept Stalin’s help. Of course, Stalin had a price in mind. In the final agreements, the Soviet Union would get South Sakhalin; the Kuril Islands; and control over the Chinese port Dairen, including the railroad from the Soviet Union to the port.

Allied flags at Rockefeller Center in New York are lowered to half-staff on April 13, 1945, the morning after Roosevelt died.

The next day started with a discussion about the new United Nations. Both Stalin and Churchill seemed to understand how important it was to Roosevelt, even if they were less concerned with it themselves. Stalin even admitted to not having read the outline of the U.N. structure produced at the conference held at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington from August to October the previous year.

Then the fate of Poland was brought up, and the tension in the room increased. The Polish problem was in one way straightforward and in another basically intractable. There was agreement that Poland as a state would be recreated after the war, but with its border much farther to the west. Roosevelt and Churchill had accepted that Stalin would keep the eastern half of Poland that he had secured in his dirty deal with Hitler, and in exchange, the new Poland would be given a large part of what had been eastern Germany.

Poland’s future political structure was an entirely different matter. The United States and Britain had recognized the prewar Polish government in exile in London. Stalin, remembering the Soviet military defeat at the hands of prewar Poland, had moved immediately to create a new communist government called the Lublin Committee.

The question of which Polish government would rule became the great confrontation of Yalta. When the issue first came up, Roosevelt gave what looks to be his longest address of the whole conference. Gathering what strength he had and trying to appear as his normal reasonable and charming self, he proposed the creation of a multiparty interim presidential council with representatives of five different parties, including the strongly pro-Soviet ones. This body would rule Poland until new elections could be held. Churchill, with his usual eloquence, spoke even more forcefully for a free and independent Poland. “It is,” Churchill said, “the earnest desire of the British Government that Poland be mistress in her own house and captain of her own soul.”

Stalin could not have cared less about Roosevelt’s charm or Churchill’s eloquence. By this point in the war, Stalin had calculated that his supremacy in Eastern Europe had been accepted by the Americans and British. He made it clear that the fate of Poland was a matter of “strategic security not only because Poland was a bordering country but because throughout history Poland had been the corridor for attack on Russia.”

Then Stalin stuck the knife in deep. He, too, wanted a democratic Poland. And as far as he could see, the Lublin Poles were governing freely and efficiently, and moreover, they were helping the Red Army keep its rear areas safe and patrolled. The London Poles, however, were threatening to end this harmony and create an insurgency behind Soviet lines. They were, in essence, doing Hitler’s work.

“When I compare what the agents of the Lublin government have done and what the agents of the London government have done,” Stalin said, “I see the first are good and the second bad. … We will support the government which gives us peace in our rear, and as a military man I could not do otherwise.”

Stalin had thrown down the gauntlet, and the discussion, even though it would go on for days, never changed. The Red Army was in Poland, Stalin commanded the Red Army, he wanted the Lublin government in power, and he would not countenance any influence from the prewar Polish state. Roosevelt and Churchill were in an almost impossible bind: They could either accept Stalin’s terms or, in essence, break the alliance. As all three men knew, there was nothing that could force Stalin to change the composition of a Polish government.

Stalin and Roosevelt talk during the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Corbis via Getty Images

Roosevelt, however, was determined to try. The next day, when they returned to the question, he started by discarding the entire London government to appease Stalin. Roosevelt understood that the Lublin government was going to be powerful no matter what and proposed only to balance it by setting up a new commission, half made up of the Lublin government and half made up of other parties, to discuss establishing a new provisional government.

Stalin stalled, and on and on it went. Roosevelt even sent Stalin a private letter, pleading that it would be a great help to him domestically if he could tell the American people that Poland would have a multiparty, democratic government.

Even if Roosevelt understood that Stalin was going to install a government of his own choosing and on his own terms, Stalin’s inability to understand that Roosevelt had such political needs at home shows that his evolution as a strategist had only gone so far. He could not believe that Roosevelt really needed to answer to the U.S. Congress, voters, or any other authority—after all, Stalin had never needed to.

It was a sign of how close Stalin was to screwing everything up. If he had operated cannily since the German invasion because his practical side had suppressed his paranoid side in a need to survive, as the war was ending and victory was assured, the old, paranoid Stalin was coming out. He couldn’t understand that Roosevelt really did want some sign that he could be flexible—all Stalin could see was Roosevelt asking him to make a concession that he did not want or have to make, and as such, he basically stonewalled.

Though Roosevelt would press him for the rest of the conference, in the end, Stalin made only the most minor of concessions. He agreed to include language in the This meant almost nothing, as Stalin had already stated that the Lublin government represented true democracy, with the unspoken point that capitalist governments were not really democratic.

This agreement on Poland was historic, as it also established the basic framework for Soviet rule of Eastern Europe. Where the Red Army was in control, Stalin could do what he wanted to set up a government that suited his interests.

Roosevelt took this slight personally, but he did not know what else to do. He was too sick and too exhausted to keep up the fight. The person to whom he admitted the truth was Leahy, who spent almost every minute of the conference with Roosevelt. When Leahy commented that the language agreed on Poland basically allowed Stalin to do whatever he wanted, all Roosevelt could do was concede.

He didn’t have the strength for anything else—“I know it, Bill, but I’m too tired to fight any more.”

Harry Truman dines with Roosevelt at the White House in Washington in August 1944. Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

Then, Stalin threatened to destroy everything he had accomplished. After Yalta, he began to drift away from even a pretense of cooperation with the United States and Britain. His earlier strategic successes had come from an ability to practically react to a dynamic situation by tailoring his actions to suit the needs of his allies, particularly Roosevelt. But now, he started to openly subjugate Eastern Europe and not even pay lip service to the needs of Roosevelt or Churchill.

Stalin even stopped treating Roosevelt with the consideration and tact he had almost always displayed. He deeply insulted the U.S. president by refusing to allow U.S. officers into Poland to look after American prisoners of war who had been liberated from the German camps. Soon, Stalin would go even further. He accused Roosevelt, bizarrely, of planning to betray him by cutting a last-second deal with Hitler.

This was about as insulting a charge as Stalin could have made against Roosevelt. In the latter’s mind, he had bent over backwards to reach out to Stalin, and so Stalin accusing him of the most heinous betrayal stung deeply. It seemed that Roosevelt finally had enough, and his tone toward Stalin changed markedly in March 1945. His final telegrams to Stalin were the sternest and most forthright he would send during the entire war.

In one long telegram about Poland, he basically accused Stalin of lying to him at Yalta and refusing to allow other elements into the Lublin committee: “I cannot reconcile this either with our agreement or our discussions.”

Churchill was delighted with Roosevelt’s firmer tone. The British leader had quickly soured on Yalta and pushed Roosevelt to make a “firm and blunt stand” against Stalin. Things were shaping up for a confrontation.

Then, on April 12, as Roosevelt was once again on vacation—at his compound in Warm Springs, Georgia—he complained of a headache, slumped back in his chair, and died.

U.S. policy fell into the hands of Truman, who had no idea what Roosevelt had really wanted to achieve or how he had planned to achieve it. Over the coming three years, Truman would take this ignorance, combined with Stalin’s strategic overreach and blundering, and create the Cold War that Roosevelt had always been keen to avoid.