YALTA CONFERENCE

The Yalta Conference, along with the Potsdam Conference, was an important event for the end stages of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War.  The Yalta Conference occurred from February 4th to the 11th in 1945 and was a wartime meeting of the Allied leaders, including: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.  The meeting took place near Yalta, which is now a city in Crimea, Ukraine. The purpose of the conference was for the three Allied powers to begin discussing how to reorganize Europe once Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany were defeated.  While, World War II in Europe was not over yet, the Allies could see that the end of the war was near and that Germany would soon be defeated.  The hope was that the three leaders could agree on how to divide Europe following the war.

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference

However, the Yalta Conference is now viewed as a major event in the Cold War as well, because it highlighted the divide between Stalin and the other two leaders. Neither side trusted the other and Joseph Stalin was resentful of the other two believing that they delayed the Normandy Invasion and Allied invasion of Italy to cause the Soviet army to struggle alone against Nazi Germany.  This divide would be further highlighted at the later Potsdam Conference.

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