In February 1945 the Big Three held their last summit conference, at Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula. It was a last chance to forestall the disintegration of the alliance upon victory or, conversely, for the British and Americans to take firm measures against Soviet control in eastern Europe. Roosevelt was now mortally ill and exhausted by the strenuous journey. Controversy later raged over his decision to attend the conference at all, his eagerness to conciliate Stalin, and the sinister presence in his entourage of Communist agent Alger Hiss. Postwar critics would charge that Roosevelt had been duped at Yalta and had “sold out” eastern Europe to the Communists. Doubtless if Churchill’s advice had been followed, the policy of trust might have given way to one of hard bargaining and clear haggling over boundaries and governments in Europe and Asia. But in fact there was little the Western powers could have done to frustrate Stalin other than threatening a new world war. Nor could Churchill and Roosevelt have openly relinquished any liberated states to Stalin without abrogating the principles on which the war had been fought and alienating the millions of U.S. voters of eastern European descent. As for Asia, the United States was yet facing a campaign that might cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. Purchasing Soviet help against Japan seemed both realistic and humane. Roosevelt could not predict that the atomic bomb would render Soviet aid superfluous.

Of the three great allies Britain was the weakest and most interested in restoring a balance of power in Europe. Churchill, a keen critic of Bolshevism since 1919, had lobbied all throughout the summer of 1944 for an Italian campaign in hopes that the Allies might reach the Danube before the Red Army, and in October he had made the “spheres of influence” deal with Stalin. But the war map—and Roosevelt’s unwillingness to strain the alliance—defeated all these tactics. On the eve of Yalta, Churchill wondered whether “the end of this war may well prove to be more disappointing than was the last.” American war aims, by contrast, were nebulous to nonexistent, except for a reprise of Wilsonian internationalism. There is little evidence of economic motives in U.S. policy and, incredibly, no contingency plans for a breakdown in relations with the U.S.S.R. While Roosevelt feared another American retreat into isolationism, he also believed in the possibility of a postwar Great Power condominium. He was prepared to show Stalin that the Anglo-Saxons were not ganging up on him and wanted Soviet participation in a United Nations Organization. But Stalin pursued the old-fashioned way of postwar security: military and political control of eastern Europe to create a buffer for the U.S.S.R. and to ensure Soviet domination over its own repressed nationalities.

At the Yalta Conference, Big Three unity seemed intact, but only because the participants resorted to vagueness or postponements on the most explosive issues. A joint European Advisory Commission, it was decided, would divide Germany into occupation zones, with the Soviet zone extending to the Elbe and a French zone carved out of the Anglo-American spheres. Berlin would likewise be placed under four-power control. The Western Allies repudiated the extreme plans broached at Quebec for the pastoralization of Germany and favoured German industrial recovery under international control. But the Soviets insisted on the right to strip Germany of $20,000,000,000 worth of machinery and raw materials. The issue was assigned to a reparations commission. As for the political future of Germany, Stalin revived earlier Big Three talk of breaking Germany into several states, but the Western Allies now perceived the danger of further Balkanization in central Europe in light of Soviet power. This matter, too, was left for study.

Poland was, as always, a most difficult problem. The Western Allies reiterated their Tehrān approval of the Curzon Line, now modified slightly in Poland’s favour, as the Soviet–Polish border. But the assignment of 2,700,000 Germans to Poland in the West worried Churchill: “It would be a pity to stuff the Polish goose so full of German food that it died of indigestion.” Hence Poland’s western frontier would be left to a peace conference. As for the Polish government, the most the Western Allies achieved was a vague promise from Stalin that he would reorganize the Lublin Committee and permit free elections among “non-Fascist elements” within a month after peace. But Stalin reserved the right to decide who was “Fascist” and rejected international supervision of the elections. Roosevelt proposed a Declaration on Liberated Europe, by which the Big Three promised to help all liberated peoples “to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems” through “free elections of Governments responsive to the will of the people.” Stalin signed, probably considering this more high-flown American rhetoric meant for domestic consumption. In the Communist lexicon words like democratic and free implied conditions virtually the opposite of what Roosevelt intended. Since Roosevelt also announced (to Churchill’s despair) that the United States would evacuate its troops from Europe within two years, Stalin may have felt that he could safely ignore the Declaration on Liberated Europe.

Stalin did prove conciliatory on the United Nations, which had already been discussed at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference between August 21 and October 7, 1944. The Soviets had demanded that all 16 constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. be represented (ostensibly to balance the British Empire nations that would vote with London) and that permanent members of the Security Council retain a veto on all issues, not just those involving sanctions or threats to peace. At Yalta, Stalin settled for three seats in the General Assembly and a limited veto. Like Wilson at Versailles, Roosevelt put great stock in international organization and was prompted to remark, “The Russians have given in so much at the conference that I don’t think we should let them down.” Finally, Stalin promised to declare war on Japan within 90 days of the German surrender in return for southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, retention of Outer Mongolia, and a promise of U.S. support for Soviet rights at Dairen (Lü-ta) and Port Arthur (Lü-shun)—all the old objects of Russian imperialism in east Asia. Within a month news from the various commissions established at Yalta indicated that the Soviets did not intend to meet Western expectations. When Molotov announced on March 23 that most of the London Poles were disqualified from Polish elections, Roosevelt reportedly banged his fist on his wheelchair: “Averell [Harriman, ambassador in Moscow] is right. We can’t do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta.” Roosevelt then retreated, disillusioned, to Warm Springs, Georgia, where he died on April 12.

The Allied advance from the west was stalled for six weeks by the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s last offensive, but by February 1945 German resistance was near its end. Some Soviet and Western leaders were openly describing the last campaigns as a “land-grab” directed as much against their distrustful allies as against the Germans. But the commanders in the West still took steps to prove that they were supporting the Soviet advance. The worst product of this policy was the Allied bombing of Dresden on February 13–14, 1945, allegedly to destroy a key communications centre for Germans facing the Red Army. The two-day incendiary raid created a firestorm, however, that consumed the medieval city and killed up to 25,000 civilians, to virtually no military purpose.

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Another product of Western efforts to reassure Stalin was the refusal to order British and American armies to race the Soviets to Berlin. On March 7, 1945, General George Patton’s tanks broke through weak German lines and the 1st Army infantry captured intact a Rhine bridge at Remagen. Churchill pleaded for a rapid thrust in order to secure Berlin and Prague: “Highly important that we shake hands with the Russians as far to the east as possible.” Stalin, in turn, tried to lull his allies by saying that “Berlin has lost its former strategic importance,” while in fact ordering his generals to make for it as soon as possible. Eisenhower, backed by Marshall, confined himself to military considerations alone, however. The Allied armies would close the Ruhr pocket, then advance in breadth in case the rumours were true of a Nazi “Alpine redoubt” in the south. When the Western armies exceeded the limits of their occupation zones in April, Eisenhower even called them back. Soviet forces, meanwhile, captured Vienna and Königsberg on April 9 and encircled Berlin by the 25th. Five days later a despairing Hitler declared that Germany had proved unworthy of him and committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. Hitler’s successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, opened negotiations with the Western powers, hoping to save as many troops and refugees as possible from Soviet reprisals. But the U.S.S.R. refused to recognize the surrender ceremony at Eisenhower’s headquarters on May 7, necessitating a second surrender, and a separate Soviet V-E Day, in Berlin on May 8. The war in Europe was over.