Hist. 3002
February 14,2013

“Yalta Conference”

With Japan’s surrender, the Allies turned to the challenge of rebuilding war-torn nations. Even before the last guns fell silent, they began thinking about principles that would govern the postwar word. The Yalta Conference also known as the Crimea or “Argonaut” conference was held from February 4 to February 11of 1945, just before the end of World War II. The United States was represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Britain was represented by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Marshal Joseph Stalin was there on the Soviet Union’s behalf. The “Big Three” conferred in the Crimea, near Yalta on the Black Sea coast. Churchill and Roosevelt had met previously at Malta in the Mediterranean.
On September 11, 1939, just a few days after Hitler triggered the World War II by unleashing the German Army in Poland, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt penned a brief but important message to Britain`s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. FDR wrote to Churchill because he was looking for information about the war in Europe and wanted to to gather it informally, quietly, and on a personal level. This was the beginning of a unique relationship between the two most important leaders of the Free World, and established a precedent repeated by several successive American presidents and British leaders. On May 10, 1940, the very day on which the German Army finally launched its long-anticipated attack on the Low Countries and France, Churchill became the prime minister of Great Britain.
Over the course of the war, the two men exchanged thousands of messages, telephone calls, and indirect third-party exchanges. They also met in person nine times, including the two famous meetings with Soviet premier Stalin at Teheran and Yalta, creating "Summit Diplomacy." The ninth and last meeting took place at