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Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Yalta
Despite his failing health leading up to 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was determined to end the Second World War. After he was elected to an unprecedented fourth term in 1944, Roosevelt threw himself into discussions with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. He met them in Yalta, Soviet Crimea, where they negotiated the division of Germany, the governance of liberated Europe, and aid from the U.S.S.R. on the Pacific front. The conference resulted in the re-mapping of Poland's borders. Free elections in Poland became a condition of the conference -- but Stalin immediately defaulted. Though Roosevelt expressed his outrage over the betrayal, he never made it to the follow-up conference that would have addressed Stalin's duplicity. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, just weeks before the allies would reconvene and mere months before the war's end.
Samariy Gurariy, 1945 |