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Wartime Diplomacy and Weakening of the Alliance
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Casablanca Conference – Churchill and Roosevelt met in January 1943 in Casablanca, Morocco and
agreed to launch an invasion of Italy and to accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of
Germany. Stalin declined FDR’s invitation to attend. He was demanding the immediate opening of a
second front in western Europe to help ease the pressure on the Soviet Union. The foreign policies of
the capitalist countries since the October Revolution had convinced Stalin that their main objective was
the destruction of the communist system in the Soviet Union. The pledge to an unconditional
surrender was a measure to assure Stalin that the US and Britain would not negotiate a separate peace
and leave the Soviets alone to fight Germany.
Teheran Conference – The first meeting of the Big Three – Churchill, Stalin, and FDR in Teheran, Iran in
November 1943. The US had lost its most effective bargaining tool – US assistance to the USSR in their
struggle against Germany. German forces had been turned back at Stalingrad and the Soviets had
launched their own westward offensive. Stalin agreed to an American request for the USSR to enter
the war in the Pacific soon after the war in Europe ended. FDR promised in return that a second front
to liberate France would begin in June 1944. However, a dispute erupted over the future status of
Poland. Churchill and FDR agreed to move the Soviet boundary of Poland further westward. The
argument was over the type of government that would be instituted in the independent nation of
Poland. Churchill and FDR wanted the Polish democratic government-in-exile in London since 1939,
Stalin wanted a pro-communist government. By this time, Stalin firmly believed that the foreign
policies of the 1930s were a conspiracy to destroy communism in a war with Hitler. Stalin wanted a
buffer zone to ensure that the destruction and suffering of his people would never occur again
because of matters in Europe. The Big Three agreed to leave the issue unresolved staving off a bitter
end to the conference.
Yalta Conference – The Big Three met for the last time in February, 1945, in the Soviet city of Yalta.
Stalin renewed his promise to enter the Pacific War and FDR agreed that the USSR should receive some
of the territory in the Pacific that Russia had lost in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. They also agreed to
a plan for a new international organization – a United Nations. However, many issues were not
resolved between the Big Three at Yalta. Stalin’s army occupied Poland in 1945 and had already
installed a pro-communist government. The question of the future status of the Polish government
only resulted in a promise by Stalin to hold “free and unfettered elections” on an unspecified date –
which would come 40 years later. Nor was their agreement about Germany. FDR wanted a
reconstructed and reunited Germany. Stalin wanted to impose heavy reparations on Germany and to
ensure a permanent dismemberment of the nation. The final agreement was again, vague and
unstable. The decision on reparations would be referred to a future commission. The US, Britain,
France, and the USSR would each control its own “zone of occupation” in Germany – the zones to be
determined by the position of troops at the end of the war. Berlin, the German capital, was already
well inside the Soviet zone, but because of its symbolic importance it would itself be divided into four
sectors, one for each nation to occupy. At an unspecified date, Germany would be reunited; but there
was not agreement on how the reunification would occur. As for the rest of Europe, the conference
produced a murky accord on the establishment of governments “broadly representative of all
democratic elements” and “responsible to the will of the people.” In the weeks following Yalta, FDR
watched with growing alarm as the USSR move systematically to establish pro-communist
governments in one Central or Eastern European nation after another as Stalin refused to make the
changes in Poland that FDR believed he had promised.
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Denazification – After the war, Germany was divided into 4 zones by the US, Britain, France, and the
USSR. Each occupied one zone. The occupying powers introduced programs explaining the evils of
Nazi beliefs to the German people. Hitler’s attempts to put his racist doctrines into practical effect also
played a large role in discrediting racism anti-Semitism, Social Darwinism, eugenics, and similar ideas
worldwide. The Nazi nightmare showed where these ideas could lead. This contributed to the later
Civil Rights Movement in the US.
Wartime Diplomacy and Sources of Soviet-American Tensions
At the heart of the rivalry between the US and the USSR in the 1940s was a fundamental difference in the
ways the great powers envisioned the postwar world. One vision, first openly outlined in the Atlantic Charter
in 1941, was of a world in which nations abandoned their traditional beliefs in military alliances and spheres of
influence and governed their relations with one another through democratic processes, with an international
organization serving as the arbiter of disputes and the protector of every nations’ right of self-determination.
The other vision was that of the USSR and Great Britain. Neither leader was eager to embrace the Atlantic
Charter; a document that both had signed. Both were uneasy about the implications of self-determination –
Britain had an empire and the USSR was determined to create a secure sphere for itself in Central and Eastern
Europe as protection against possible future aggression from the West. Both men tended to envision a
postwar structure in which the great powers would control areas of strategic interest to them, in which
something vaguely similar to the traditional European balance of power would reemerge.
 Potsdam – FDR died 6 weeks after Yalta ending any changes of personal diplomacy that FDR believed
would resolve the US concerns over the political issues of the Soviet Union with eastern Europe.
Truman had been in office only a few days before he decided to get ‘tough’ with the USSR. Atlee,
Stalin, and Truman met at Potsdam, Germany in July 1945. Truman reluctantly accepted the
adjustments of the Polish-German border that Stalin had long demanded; he refused, however, to
permit the Russians to claim any reparations from the US, French, and British zones of Germany. This
stance effectively confirmed that Germany would remain divided, with the western zones united into
one nation, friendly to the US, and the Russian zone surviving as another nation, with a pro-Soviet
communist government. All parties agreed to the unconditional surrender of Japan and agreed to hold
war crimes trials for Nazi leaders. Truman’s demands for free elections in eastern Europe were once
again refused by Stalin creating postwar tensions between the two countries.