in Tehran, only fourteen months before. Despite the president’s charm and spirit, “It was quite obvious that he was a very sick man.” Lord Moran, Churchill’s physician, thought the president was suffering from advanced arterial sclerosis and gave him only six months to live. There was also a feeling that at this meeting, unlike previous gatherings, Roosevelt was very much cut off, increasingly surrounded and shielded by State Department aides. But that may have been due as much to Roosevelt’s maneuverings with Stalin as to any additional protectiveness about the president’s fragile health. As with the previous meeting of the Big Three, Stalin had dictated the location; and this time, with his armies quickly pushing westward, he held even more sway.

Once again, much like he had done on the final day at Tehran, Roosevelt mischievously sought to reach out to Stalin by excluding Churchill. Before the sessions got underway, Roosevelt met privately with Stalin and Molotov. The president expressed his utter horror at the devastation in the Crimea, adding that he felt even more cutthroat toward the Germans than he had earlier and that he hoped Stalin would repeat the toast to the “execution of fifty thousand German army officers”—the toast that had drawn such an indignant reaction from Churchill in Tehran. Stalin responded noncommittally that everyone was more bloodthirsty now than a year ago.

FDR then maneuvered the conversation toward France, and tantalizingly announced that he would tell Stalin something “indiscreet,” because he would not wish to say it in front of Churchill. His tidbit was that for two years the British had artificially tried to build up France into a strong power, something anathema to the Russians who saw the French as collaborationists. The British, Roosevelt added insincerely, were a peculiar people, who wished to eat their cake and have it too. Stalin himself was happy to disparage the British as well, and Roosevelt left their little meeting believing that the old camaraderie of Tehran had been restored.

The Yalta conference ranged over eight days, and it was a sprawling affair. Ministers and military chiefs met in the morning, and the Big Three met at 4 p.m., but there were also discussions during lunch and dinner and private meetings between just two leaders. The Big Three would raise many issues, but rarely were any of them formally resolved. Instead, after some discussion, a question would be delegated to the participating foreign ministers or military chiefs or quietly dropped while another issue was taken up.

Roosevelt continued to believe in improvising solutions, but there were far more staff members at Yalta than had been present at Tehran, so there were fewer opportunities for freewheeling decision-making. “As the conference progressed, it became obvious that Roosevelt had not studied [his briefing books] as much as he should have,” noted the State Department adviser and Charles Bohlen, who was the president’s interpreter.

Two items were not on the official agenda at Yalta. The first, understandably, was Roosevelt’s health. Aside from a final evening toast by

Stalin to the president’s well-being, in which he saluted Roosevelt for Lend-Lease and the mobilization of the world against Hitler, that topic was out of bounds. In any case, Stalin could no doubt see that Roosevelt was clearly not well. Moreover, the Soviets’ concealed recording devices, which included directional microphones that could capture a conversation two hundred yards away, probably picked up Dr. Bruenn’s repeated blood pressure readings and electrocardiogram, and possibly detected that after the topic of postwar Poland was broached, the president’s heartbeat was erratic. He recovered, but there were other worrying moments, including a rambling, less than coherent speech that Roosevelt delivered at the start of the second meeting: he went on about the Germany he had known as a boy in 1886, a Germany of thriving semiautonomous states that bore no resemblance to Hitler’s creation. Centralization in Berlin was the cause of the world’s current ills, the president concluded. The Soviets and the British did not respond. And, perhaps most tellingly, when Roosevelt hosted Stalin and Churchill for dinner, the president, for the first time, did not mix the cocktails.

The second item that did not come up for serious discussion in any of the official sessions was the fate of Europe’s remaining Jews. True, Soviet troops had liberated Auschwitz a week before the start of the conference, yet there is no record that Stalin recounted, at any point, the horrors they had found. The only reference—a passing one—came at the final dinner meeting, when Stalin and Churchill began discussing the British parliamentary elections and an uneasy Stalin changed the subject by saying that the Jewish problem was complicated. The Russian leader noted that he had attempted to create a permanent home for the Jews within Birobidzhan, an agricultural zone in Russia, but after several years, the Jews had wandered away, scattering to the cities. “Only some small groups had been successful at farming,” he added. At this point, Roosevelt joined the conversation, stating that he was a Zionist (indeed, both the Democratic and the Republican party platforms had a pro-Zionist plank), to which Stalin replied that he was one in theory, but there were considerable challenges. Roosevelt pushed slightly further, revealing that he would be meeting with the Saudi king to discuss the admission of Jews to Palestine. Stalin wondered if Roosevelt would be offering King Ibn Saud anything. The president retorted facetiously, “The six million Jews in the United States,” using a number that in retrospect would turn out to be particularly ill-chosen. But Stalin in any case missed the awkward joke, instead pondering the literal implications of resettling American Jews, as he had tried to resettle Soviet Jews, and noting that Jews were “middlemen, profiteers, and parasites.” Then in a moment of levity, Stalin quipped, “No Jew could live in Yaroslav”—a city that Bohlen, the interpreter, would explain was known for the shrewdness of its peddlers. Roosevelt offered no rejoinder—instead he simply smiled—and Stalin ultimately offered no objections to sending Jews to Palestine.

But

otherwise, aside from a statement that all displaced civilians would be returned to their country of origin, the fate of Europe’s Jews, both those who had been killed and those who clung to survival, was seemingly not a topic meriting consideration by the Big Three as they concluded their summit at Yalta.

Roosevelt was, despite his physical frailty, a towering figure still in command. He presided over each plenary session and made sure that the major topics were addressed. Now that the war against Hitler was all but won, a singular achievement in history, his primary concern was guaranteeing the entry of the Soviets into the Pacific war against the Japanese. He wanted to pocket that commitment and he did so, in a secret codicil to the official communique. Anticipating an extended fight to capture Tokyo, Roosevelt obtained Stalin’s promise to enter the Pacific war no later than ninety days after the surrender of Germany, in exchange for control of parts of Manchuria after Japan surrendered. Second among the president’s principal goals was securing an agreement for the establishment of the United Nations, which would be an international framework for peace. And there were the nagging post-war questions: What was to be done with Germany? Would the French have an occupation zone there? How would war reparations work? Would Germany be dismembered? And what was to become of Poland, home of Auschwitz, home of the Warsaw ghetto, home of the Warsaw revolt, and a symbol of the war? Would it be free and democratic? Or would it become a satellite of the Soviet Union? This was an issue that would dog Roosevelt’s legacy for years to come.

The results were decidedly mixed, although most issues were seemingly resolved: the French would be included in the occupation of Germany, overseeing territory in the British and American zones, while Germany would pay reparations, with half the amount going to compensate the Soviet Union; and future governments of the buffer nations along the Soviet border would be “friendly” to Moscow. To the chagrin of many observers, the president gave too much on Poland. Poland’s postwar government would include members of the Communist Party, which all but guaranteed that the Poles would be switched from one master, the Germans, to another, the Soviets. But in Roosevelt’s defense, this was a fate virtually sealed by the axiom of geography, since Russian troops were already on the ground across Poland. Still, as a token, the official communique at least promised “free and unfettered elections,” with universal suffrage and a secret ballot. And there was an agreement on the American plan for the United Nations Security Council: it would have five permanent members, and each would have a veto over any decisions the Council made. Other decisions on the UN were to be made later, at an inaugural meeting in San Francisco set for the end of April. Churchill had arguably lost the most; he had wanted a clearly democratic path for the countries in eastern Europe, which

would not happen. But to some degree, Stalin had also compromised on the question of admitting France to the control commission in Germany. And Roosevelt clearly capitulated regarding Poland.

Yalta was initially hailed as a triumphant success and a signal that the Allies’ collaboration would remain possible in the postwar world. Roosevelt and the delegation left tired, but buoyed by thoughts of the future.