PDP1 - Yalta Agreement

Sorry for the delay - unexpected family emergency!

Author Bio:  This document was an agreement reached by President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, and Generalissimo Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union, the most powerful leaders of the Allied countries.  

• Roosevelt a democrat was elected the 32nd president in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression.  Although he began his fourth term in office in 1945, he would die in office on April 12, 1945.  
• Churchill the Prime Minister of Great Britain also held the titles of First Lord of the Admirality and Minister of Defense.  His strong personality and leadership is often credited as a primary factor in bringing about a British victory.   
• Stalin rose to power during the mid-1920's bringing an end to the civil war that enveloped the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution.  Know for ruling with an iron-fist, Stalin committed the USSR to the Allied cause in 1941 after Germany invaded.

Date/Context:  By 1945, much of the world was at war and divided into two opposing spheres: the Allied Powers, led by Britain, the US, and the USSR, and the Axis Powers, including Japan, Germany, and Italy.  This war brought about destruction on a massive scale.  Germany's Nazi regime was committed to destroying the Jewish "race" and any other group or individual that did not fit into the "ideal."  In the Pacific, Japan was seeking to establish a vast empire.  This document was written BEFORE the official end of the war (VE Day = May 8, 1945 & VJ Day = September 2, 1945) but lay the foundation of a post-War era in which the United States and the Soviet Union divide the globe into spheres of influence.  Further, this document established principles for a new international organization to replace the defunct League of Nations.

Summary: Written in February 1945 and released in the US in March, this document created a new international organization (the United Nations), demanded the complete surrender Germany, called for German reparations, established borders for Poland, Yugoslavia, and Southeastern Europe, and defined the conditions by which the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.  The United Nations was to include a Security Council in which each of the 5 permanent members (Britain, USA, USSR, France, & China) would have veto power.  This new organization was also set with the task of dividing up and/or granting independence to territories after the war.  This agreement reasserted the Atlantic Charter, calling for new governments chosen by the people in the areas of Europe that were occupied by Germany.  Further, upon the its surrender, Germany would be dismembered and divided into zones of influence.  Germany was to pay reparations for the costs of the war with "the chief purpose of destroying the war potential of Germany."  This Yalta Agreement also define the borders of Yugoslavia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Iran and established that Turkey would control the Dardanelles and the Bosporous.  Finally, Stalin agreed that the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan only after German surrender and under the condition that Soviet claims in the lands controlled by Japan would not be questioned by other Allied states.

Key Quotation:  "The Crimea Conference of the heads of the Governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...came to the following conclusions:"