13 YALTA

AGAINST THIS BACKDROP of colonial violence, the same month Phillips debriefed him, FDR learned—although the evidence given him was ambiguous—of Stalin’s great crime, Katyn.

As German soldiers retreated in the spring of 1943, the government of Nazi Germany broadcast the electrifying news that its troops had discovered the mass graves of ten thousand Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia, all of whom had been shot in the back of the head. They charged the deed had been done by the Russians in 1940. This was indeed the case. The killings had been carried out because the NKVD and Stalin believed that the officers, the cream of the Polish army, who were indeed anti-Soviet, were potentially dangerous to the Soviet Union because, blinded by their hatred of Russia, in 1939 they had sought to ally themselves with Hitler. The Polish government in exile in London had repeatedly queried the Kremlin as to what had become of these officers, previously held as prisoners by the Soviet Union, particularly because letters from the soldiers to their families had ceased after March 1940. Faced with Polish charges that Premier Władysław Sikorski had been stonewalled by Stalin in December 1941 when he had asked him as to the fate of the officers, plus the demand by the Polish government for an investigation by the International Red Cross that the Kremlin would be unable to control, Stalin severed relations with the Polish government. Sikorski withdrew his request for an investigation. Stalin was so determined to evade all guilt he put himself way out on a limb in the letter FDR received from him on April 21:

The recent conduct of the Polish Government towards the Soviet Union is regarded by the Soviet Government as absolutely abnormal and contrary to all rules and standards governing relations between allied countries.

The campaign of calumny against the Soviet Union, initiated by the German fascists regarding the Polish officers they themselves slaughtered in the Smolensk area, on German-occupied territory, was immediately taken up by the Sikorski government and inflated in every possible way by the official Polish press. The Sikorski government, far from taking a stand against the vile fascist slander of the Soviet Union, did not even see fit to ask the Soviet government for information or explanations.

The Hitlerite authorities, after perpetrating an atrocious crime against the Polish officers, are now engaged upon an investigation farce for the staging of which they have enlisted the help of certain pro-fascist Polish elements picked up by them in occupied Poland, where everything is under Hitler’s heel and where honest Poles dare not lift their voices in public.

FDR gave him the benefit of the doubt. As a result, he was solely concerned with the political repercussions of the Soviet Union’s breaking off relations with the Polish government:

I can well understand your problem but I hope in present situation you can find means to label your action as a suspension of conversation with the Polish Government in exile rather than a complete severance of diplomatic relations.

It is my view that Sikorski has not acted in any way with Hitler gang, but rather that he made a stupid mistake in taking the matter up with the International Red Cross. Also I am inclined to think that Churchill will find ways and means of getting the Polish Government in London to act with more common sense in the future.

The Russian government had mounted an amazing disinformation campaign to disguise its deed. It dug up thousands of bodies, planted false evidence on the corpses, and then invited a group of U.S. and British journalists, including Kathleen Harriman, Averell Harriman’s daughter, who lived and worked with her father at Spaso House, to inspect the site. The group was sent down in a special train that Kathleen described as “sumptuous.” The cover-up effort was gruesomely meticulous. Kathleen’s description follows. Once at the site,

we began a tour of each and every one of the graves. We must have seen a good many thousand corpses, or parts of corpses, all in varying stages of decomposition but smelling about as bad. Some of the corpses had been dug up by the Germans in the spring of ’43 after they’d first launched their version of the story…The most convincing bit of evidence was that every Pole had been shot thru the back of the head with a single bullet. Some of the bodies had their hands tied behind their back, all of which is typically German…The Germans say that the Russians killed the Poles back in ’40, whereas the Russians say the Poles weren’t killed until the fall of ’41…Though the Germans had ripped open the Poles’ pockets, they’d missed up on some written documents. While I was watching, they found one letter dated the summer of ’41, which is damned good evidence.

An apparently convinced Averell Harriman cabled his conclusions to FDR:

The evidence that made the greatest impression to substantiate the Russian case was 1. That the preponderance of soldiers so far exhumed are enlisted men rather than officers as claimed by the Germans. 2. The methodical method of the killing, each man having been executed by one shot in the base of the skull. 3. That the papers exhibited were dated from November 1940 to June 1941. 4. The description by witnesses of the unsuccessful attempt to evacuate the Poles when the Germans broke through to Smolensk and of Poles working on the roads in the area for the Russians and the Germans during 1941.

THE RUSSIANS USED TO call Yalta the Cowes of the Crimea, after the ultra-fashionable and beautiful English seaport town on the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England that had been the playground and meeting place of the tsars and Queen Victoria. Situated on a peninsula on the north coast of the Black Sea, offering a sheltered harbor, Yalta was set in a dramatic coastline of towering, snow-covered granite peaks that dropped down to green hills, beaches, and the sea. After the revolution the villas and palaces built by the tsars and grand dukes were converted to sanitoriums and rest homes: the remaining vineyards, magnificent cedars, and lovely green sloping countryside had kept Yalta beautiful. Now the harbor, the fields, the roads, were in various stages of destruction and ruin. The Germans had looted and damaged as much as they could before their hasty retreat. Most of the buildings were heavily damaged by shell fire; the few stores still standing were boarded up.

To ready Yalta for the conference was a task of heroic proportions. Before the war a town inhabited by 2,250 people, Yalta had only 234 residents and nineteen undamaged houses—the rest were roofless shells—by the time the German army retreated in 1944. The Livadia Palace, where the conference would take place, and the Yusupov Palace that Stalin chose for his residence were both still standing only because the Germans had not had time to blow them up, but windows were shattered, walls smashed, floors ruined, plumbing and heating destroyed, and furniture nonexistent. Beria and the NKVD were given the task of supervising the herculean project of rebuilding the roads to and within Yalta and rebuilding, repairing, and furnishing the residences. As with all projects in Stalin’s era, it was energetically and successfully carried out. An army of workmen was sent in to repair the damage and make the buildings habitable. Another army of workmen repaired the roads. According to one foreman, the workday began at five in the morning and went until midnight, after which briefings were held, totals accounted for the day, and tasks set for the following day. Crews worked for two weeks at full tilt, then, exhausted, were given time off to recover, before returning for another all-out two-week stint. Linen, china, and flatware collected from various public and private sources came from Moscow. Fifteen hundred trainloads of material arrived for the Livadia Palace alone. Kitchens, laundries, bathrooms, and telephone systems, plus two autonomous electric installations at each palace, were installed. When it was noticed some key item was missing, work details commandeered it from those remaining houses within driving distance. Moscow hotels were stripped of their staffs, furniture, plates, china, kitchen utensils, and bedding.

According Roosevelt his status of primus inter pares, Stalin saw to it that he was housed in the Livadia Palace, the fifty-room Renaissance-style edifice built by the last tsar, Nicholas, which was the conference venue. Nicholas, with the self-indulgence that marked his reign, had put thirteen hundred workers to work on his summer palace in April 1910, and Livadia was finished in September 1911. The palace had been designed with the very latest in modern conveniences: central heating, electricity, and an elevator, and because the royal family enjoyed seawater, seawater was pumped into the royal bathrooms. The grounds were extensive and beautiful, containing miles of allées lined with cypress, cedar, yew, and bay trees that stretched up the side of the mountain and down to the sea and beach. The tsar and tsarina and their four daughters and hemophiliac son vacationed only four times in the magnificent palace before Nicholas was forced to abdicate and a short while later executed, along with his entire family. It was said that fearing assassination for years, he had slept in a different bedroom at Livadia each night he was in residence; sometimes, FDR later told reporters, he would even change bedrooms during the middle of the night. According to Lord Moran, Churchill’s doctor, Stalin said, with a grin, that the only place where one could be certain of finding the tsar was in the bathroom first thing in the morning.

Roosevelt’s inauguration for his fourth term was Saturday, January 20. It took place on the South Portico of the White House, rather than at the Capitol, and was watched by a relatively small group of two thousand people gathered on the South Lawn: because of wartime security measures it had to be kept small, without parades or flyovers. FDR told Harriman he planned to leave for Yalta at the earliest practicable date after it. Molotov, worried that Yalta wouldn’t be ready, having been given a start date of February 10 for the conference, asked him not to rush it. When the first Americans arrived at the Livadia Palace, Romanian prisoners of war were still at work planting shrubs and repairing the roads, and inside, doorknobs and the last plumbing fixtures were being put into place.

Great care was taken to make sure not only that Roosevelt would be comfortable but that his special needs would be met. To make sure that the president could be wheeled, and stay in his wheelchair no matter in which of the three palaces a meeting or a dinner was held, wherever there were stairs, ramps were installed. (Replacing stairs with ramps was a usual courtesy extended for presidential visits: ramps had been built at the Citadel in Quebec for FDR’s visits there.) Some measure of the magnitude of the undertaking that went into making FDR comfortable may be taken from the fact that besides the listed army, navy, and diplomatic staffs necessary for the conference, FDR would be bringing and need housing for another thirty people: eight servants, sixteen Secret Service men, and six White House staff.

The Livadia Palace, called the White Palace because its exterior was white granite, was now camouflaged brown and pink, according to Admiral C. E. Olsen, in charge of seeing to American needs. Roosevelt was given a suite of rooms on the ground floor, the rooms Nicholas and his son, Alexei, had used. They consisted of a bedroom, a study, a dining room, and, a most rare prized possession at Livadia, a bathroom that was built from scratch. No expense was spared. His bedroom, with three floor-to-ceiling windows facing the sea, was paneled in yellow satin, his study was paneled in red velvet. His dining room, with chestnut walls and an intricate walnut ceiling, originally the tsar’s billiard room, designed in the English sixteenth-century style with windows facing the courtyard, had miraculously survived as originally constructed; above the fireplace was a cartouche of Nicholas, and a painting of a winter scene hung behind FDR’s chair. When the suite was finished and the Russians learned that FDR had wanted his rooms painted the blue of the sea, they repainted his bathroom blue. Then, worried about the particular shade—whether or not they had got it right—they repainted it three times. For the same reason—worry over the color scheme (Kathleen Harriman wrote home, “The Soviets just couldn’t make up their minds which oriental colors looked best”)—the Oriental rugs for the suite were changed four times, which meant moving out the furniture each time.

Hopkins’s room was next to FDR’s. Because he was so ill, he rarely left it except to attend plenary sessions. In spite of his ill health FDR was relying on him for advice again. (Losing his battle to send Hopkins to the sick bay aboard the USS Catoctin, Dr. McIntire tried to restrict him to his bedroom. He basically subsisted, according to Stettinius, on coffee, cigarettes, an amazingly small amount of food, paregoric, and sheer fortitude. Lord Moran, Churchill’s doctor, wrote of Hopkins that he looked much worse than the president, “Physically he is only half in this world. He looked ghastly.”) Anna Boettiger and Kathleen Harriman also shared a room near the president. Kathleen finally met FDR, who, she wrote to her sister, is “absolutely charming, easy to talk to, with a lovely sense of humor. He’s in fine form.” (Kathleen Harriman would provide a classic example of the inaccuracy of memory. After FDR died and people assumed that he was already terribly sick at Yalta, she had a new thought. “I was horrified at the way he looked,” she would say in 1987.) Edward R. Stettinius, whom FDR had appointed secretary of state in December to replace Hull, who had resigned because of ill health, was also one of the lucky ones on the ground floor in a two-bedroom suite overlooking the sea. Everyone else—there were forty-three members in the delegation—was on the second floor. General Marshall was given the tsar’s bedroom upstairs. Admiral King was housed next door in the empress’s bedroom. The rest of the military staff had to share quarters: six major generals shared one room, twelve brigadier generals and ten colonels another. The bathroom situation was dire: as many as thirty men shared one bathroom. Water buckets and pitchers were placed in these rooms. State Department personnel were also squeezed into rooms.

By this time Roosevelt had made his peace and gained influence with State Department personnel. In Stettinius he had a man who would do his bidding, did not have the tender ego of Cordell Hull, and was a good administrator. For that reason Stettinius was at Yalta, whereas Hull had been frozen out of Tehran; Charles Bohlen had become liaison between FDR and the State Department as well as interpreter. Brought along for their expertise, were H. Freeman Matthews, director of European affairs, and Alger Hiss, deputy director in the Office of Special Political Affairs, who had been administrative head at Dumbarton Oaks and would be later convicted of perjury on the charge of spying for Russia.

Roosevelt, with his sense of history and his architectural bent, must have appreciated the fine palace where he spent so much time. But being housed in the last palace built by a foolish monarch who, if he had been alive, would have been only fourteen years his senior must have reinforced his intention to set the world on a course that would avoid the excesses, lawlessness, and carnage of the past.

To ensure two-way high-speed radio communications between Yalta and Washington, the U.S. Signal Corps set up communications from the Livadia Palace to the USS Catoctin, anchored in Sevastopol, by stringing landlines over the fifty miles. To ensure that FDR knew the latest war news, a map room was set up for him in the palace.

The moment any American opened a door leading outside, three NKVD men dressed in long dark blue overcoats and shabby black caps appeared out of nowhere. Security troops were also very much in evidence, all magnificent physical specimens in gray and blue uniforms.

The Yusupov Palace, where Stalin chose to live, in Koreis on a hill above the sea, was between the Livadia Palace and the Vorontsov Palace, about a twenty-minute drive each way. It was situated right under a steep, snowcapped mountain and was on a smaller scale than the other two. It had a unique history. Stalin, dedicated revolutionary that he was, must have felt a sense of achievement and pleasure to be staying there, for it had belonged to Prince Felix Yusupov, in the earlier years of the twentieth century not only one of the richest men in Russia but one who could have served as the poster boy of the decadent prerevolutionary ruling class that ran Russia into the ground. Ironically, both Stalin and Yusupov had lived in St. Petersburg at the same time, although leading wildly different lives. Stalin, then an escaped revolutionary, was furtively putting out the first issues of Pravda while hiding from the Okhrana, while Yusupov, nine years younger, a daring, stunningly beautiful bon vivant cross-dresser, was habituating St. Petersburg clubs and restaurants exquisitely dressed in his mother’s clothes and jewels, causing such a sensation that photographs of him so attired regularly appeared in the local magazines. However, it was as the murderer of Gregory Rasputin, the faith healer who held such power over Nicholas and Alexandra, that Yusupov earned undying fame. Yusupov had lured Rasputin to his palace in St. Petersburg, served him tea, Madeira wine, and cakes, all of which he had laced with cyanide. However, he had evidently not administered a lethal enough dose, for Rasputin failed to drop dead. Yusupov thereupon whipped out a pistol, shot him, wrapped the body in heavy linen, shoved it into a car, drove to Petrovski Island, and dropped it off a bridge into the Moika River. Exiled for the deed by the tsar, Yusupov, taking money and possessions with him, went to live in Paris, thereby making him one of the lucky members of the Russian nobility who was out of the country before the revolutionary violence exploded.

German soldiers had bivouacked in the Yusupov Palace, leaving it in ruins. Reconstruction crews paneled the walls in oak, resurfaced the floors, brought in furniture, and rebuilt the kitchens. The most interesting change, however, was that Stalin used only a side door while he was in residence instead of the grander front door, and he had the large room he chose to live in close by that entrance divided into two rooms, one of which he used as his bedroom, the other as his office. The furnishings brought in for him, preserved by the state, were standard Soviet issue—austerely bland: a utilitarian bed with a plain honey-colored wooden headboard and matching wardrobe and simple desk and bookcase. Whether he did not feel comfortable in the large rooms, whether it was an ostentatious reminder to his staff of the excesses of prerevolutionary Russia that Bolshevism had remedied, whether he felt safer in small rooms, can only be a matter of conjecture. He was certainly seriously concerned with his personal safety: Beria’s bedroom was next door but one. Molotov’s bedroom and office, in contrast to Stalin’s, were in their original configuration. Molotov had a piano installed in his office and unlike Stalin enjoyed the luxury of a balcony overlooking the sea. So that Stalin could see newsreels from the front and stay current with the progress of the war, the billiard room in the basement was turned into a movie theater, with a huge screen at one end, a wall with openings for a projector at the other, so that Stalin could see the latest films of the war. The only room in the villa on the grand scale of the other palaces was the dining room, a good fifty feet long and more than twenty-five feet high, dominated by a huge half-moon window, the glass of which had been shattered and replaced for the conference. This is where Stalin hosted his dinner. The household staff that prepared meals, all the china, glass, and silver used, came from the Metropol and National hotels in Moscow.

Churchill was installed in the Vorontsov Palace, properly grand, with part-Scottish, part-Moorish flourishes, designed by an English architect, which the Germans had not had time to trash. It boasted towering turrets, Gothic windows, magnificent spaces, sweeping views of the sea on one side and the stark granite peak of Mount St. Peter’s on the other; six huge fierce white marble lions guarded the wide flight of stone steps leading down to terraces and the sea. There were intricate oak ceilings and paneled walls in many rooms and a blue drawing room where Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin had performed. Churchill’s large bedroom on the ground floor featured floor-to-ceiling windows facing the sea. As at the Livadia Palace, bathrooms were scarce: there were two sinks with cold taps only and two baths in the entire palace. The Vorontsov Palace was the farthest from the Livadia Palace, about a half-hour drive along a road that was well paved but had many hairpin turns.

Because the NKVD had been in charge of renovations as well as staffing, the palaces were thoroughly bugged, as were the cars the Soviets provided. Stalin saw summaries of conversations; unlike at Tehran, however, he no longer asked for verbatim extracts of the conversations. Quite possibly this was because the material Beria was supplying was so boring: all U.S. personnel had been warned that everything they said would be overheard by the Russians, that every room was bugged, and presumably the English participants had been also.

The level of care, effort to please, and pervasiveness of surveillance are illustrated by one incident. Churchill’s daughter Sarah Oliver, a WAAF section officer, remarked to someone one day that lemon juice improved the taste of caviar. Shortly thereafter a lemon tree, covered with lemons, appeared in the garden near the dining room at the Vorontsov Palace.

The smartly dressed staff that saw to the daily needs of all the participants was in sharp contrast with the cleaning crews that operated at night when everyone was in bed. Then shabby porters polished the floors by skating about in their bare feet on top of rag mops, while women swept up with bundles of twigs.

A line of warships—Russian and American—stood off the coast. Prior to the conference Beria had the NKVD make security sweeps of the area; they found and arrested, according to him, hundreds of spies and confiscated thousands of guns, including more than seven hundred machine guns. During the conference four NKVD regiments remained on guard.

BY THE END OF JANUARY everyone watching the three leaders knew that something was up: Hopkins had left Rome for no one knew where; the president was nowhere to be seen on his birthday, January 30; Churchill and Eden had both disappeared. The NKVD, learning through espionage organs they monitored that the Germans were trying to pinpoint the exact location where the three leaders would meet, ordered that eight Soviet air divisions of the Black Sea Fleet be on constant patrol around the Crimea while they were there.

The afternoon of the day he left for Yalta, FDR’s personal preparations for the trip included having John Mays, the dignified, courteous black man who had doubled as the official White House greeter and barber since the time of President Taft, cut his hair. While this was taking place, he was having a last-minute discussion with James Byrnes, director of mobilization and reconversion, about Yalta matters. FDR asked Byrnes to go to Yalta to provide expertise on trade as well as economic data “certain to come up.” He had told Morgenthau that there would be no “finance people” at Yalta as an excuse not to talk about a long-term loan to Russia: the fact that he asked Byrnes along meant that he was reconsidering.

At 10:00 p.m. on January 22, FDR was driven to the siding under the Bureau of Engraving, where his private railroad car, the armor-plated Ferdinand Magellan, with three-inch bulletproof windows, waited. By 11:00 p.m. he was in bed. This siding was the usual place for FDR to board, both because it was private and because the siding floor was level with the floor of the car, so FDR could be wheeled directly from the auto to the railroad car. The Magellan consisted of the president’s suite: bedroom, bathroom with shower, plus three more bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen, and a lounge. (Although there were adequate toilet facilities in every car, FDR’s shower was the only one on the train.) A communications car containing a diesel-powered radio that kept FDR in touch with the Map Room using special codes, four sleeping cars, a dining car, and a lounge car for the other passengers made up the rest of the train. Accompanying FDR, besides Byrnes, were his daughter, Anna; Admiral Leahy; Ross McIntire; Admiral Wilson Brown; General Pa Watson; Dr. Bruenn; Edward J. Flynn, consummate Democratic politician and former head of the Democratic Party; and his press secretary, Steve Early. (Flynn was a last-minute addition; FDR planned that his attendance at Yalta would give Flynn added prestige in everyone’s eyes and that after the conference he would visit Moscow and the pope and work on improving relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Russia.) The Filipino mess crew from Shangri-La, the presidential retreat in Maryland, who would prepare all the president’s meals at Yalta, were in one of the sleeping cars. Hopkins and Stettinius were waiting at Malta. As FDR slept in his bedroom, the train, which had right-of-way over all other trains (all of which had to keep clear of the Magellan by at least twenty minutes—taking to a siding if necessary), continued on at the smooth-riding maximum speed of forty miles an hour. The usual precautions were in play: army guards watching over the train as it headed south were particularly visible as the train passed trestles, culverts, switches, and crossings; where highways closely paralleled the tracks, motorized units patrolled. The Magellan arrived on schedule before dawn at Newport News, Virginia. Waiting in the harbor was the USS Quincy, the fast new heavy cruiser that had fired the first gun at the Normandy landings and would weigh anchor, with the president’s party on board, before the sun came up.

FDR had confided to Daisy that he was worried the conference would be tiring (“thinks it will be very wearing, and feels that he will have to be so much on the alert, in his conversations with Uncle Joe and W.S.C.”) but that he was looking forward to the ship’s voyage itself. When he went aboard, he told her, “he would get into the elevator, go up to his cabin on the upper deck, have breakfast, then go forward on the deck and get the sea air and spray.” And that was what occurred: “We came on board & had breakfast, and by the time we were through we were out in the stream & heading out, wrote FDR.”

At dusk that first day FDR sat on deck with Anna watching the Virginia coastline slip by. He pointed out, secure in the knowledge that Anna was discreet, complicit as she was in keeping from Eleanor his many meetings with Lucy Rutherfurd, whom he had promised Eleanor years before never to see again, the spot where Lucy’s family used to live. “That’s where they had their plantation,” he remarked.

Ten days of salt air during the day, almost smooth seas, a morning nap (“take another nap after breakfast”) and an afternoon nap (Anna would report that the president “slept and slept”), communal lunches and dinners served in his cabin, followed by a movie, and resting ten hours at night (as he told Stettinius) was just what Roosevelt thrived on. There were no nasty surprises: twice ships in the convoy thought they had picked up sound contacts from enemy submarines, but both turned out to be false alarms. He was, according to William Rigdon, “a merry guest” at his birthday party on January 30, when five rival groups aboard the Quincy baked and presented to him five birthday cakes. Rigdon reported that “he worked with his usual deft touch on a big batch of mail…ate about as usual, was not disturbed at all by the first few days of rough seas…talked and laughed and told stories, was lively at the pre-dinner cocktail parties.”

Byrnes had a slightly different story about the president from Rigdon’s, however. FDR had a cold, according to Byrnes, who was disturbed by his appearance, and stayed in his cabin a great deal, but by the time they reached Malta, the cold was gone, and altogether FDR had improved “greatly.” He attended the field meet the crew put on on the fantail of the ship: sailors competing in three-legged races and at a tug-of-war. In the evening after dinner he watched every movie shown: Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, Here Come the Waves, The Princess and the Pirate, Laura, To Have and Have Not. Even though Byrnes was aboard because FDR had told him he needed him to supply postwar U.S. production numbers, he engaged him in little or no talk about his upcoming role. Their conversations were about the great organization that was coming into existence that would, Roosevelt believed, be his crowning achievement. Byrnes concluded, after spending eleven days on the Quincy, “Our chief objective for the conference was to secure agreement on the Dumbarton Oaks proposals for the creation of an international peace organization.” FDR did not seem concerned about how any other issue would be handled.

As the Quincy sailed slowly into Malta harbor at 9:30 a.m. on February 2, Bohlen, watching, described the sun glistening on the waves, a cloudless sky, flags on British warships as well as on the walls of the city snapping in the light breeze, salutes from the British men-of-war, and the rolling cheers of spectators crowding the quay as they saw Roosevelt sitting on deck, his black cape wrapped around his shoulders.

Churchill awaited. He came aboard for a long-anticipated lunch upon FDR’s arrival, bringing his daughter Sarah Oliver and Anthony Eden. For a change he was in civilian clothes, not his regular naval uniform. Both he and FDR were in high spirits, according to others, and indulged in much joking and talking about the Atlantic Charter, which they remembered they had never signed, and about China and Madame Chiang. However, there was a momentary break when the prime minister referred to China as “the great American Illusion”; the president was curt, according to Stettinius. As he had attempted before the Tehran Conference, Churchill sought to engage FDR in conversations that would lead to their presenting a united front to Stalin: FDR wouldn’t play along.

“Pleasant but no business whatsoever done,” recalled Anthony Eden of the lunch. The “business” Eden had in mind was the Yalta agenda: FDR refused to discuss it. Unfazed, Eden and Churchill arranged to be invited for dinner aboard the Quincy that evening, “specifically for this purpose.”

The dinner was no more successful than the luncheon, from Churchill and Eden’s point of view. Sarah Oliver and Anna Boettiger were present, and undoubtedly as FDR planned, it was a purely social evening. (Harry Hopkins had been invited but was too sick to attend.) “Impossible even to get near business,” Eden reported, later complaining, “We were going into a decisive conference and had so far neither agreed what we would discuss nor how to handle matters with a Bear who would certainly know his own mind.” In fact it was exactly this British desire for partnership that Roosevelt was bent on avoiding: the game was his to play alone. He wasn’t intending to share power. Contrary to Eden’s claim, Stettinius had met with him the previous day and reviewed those conference matters FDR wanted his British allies to know about. Wrote Sarah Oliver, “My father and all the British party felt a withdrawing of the former easy understanding,” conveniently forgetting that the same thing had happened at Tehran.

The Quincy dinner went on much too late. It wasn’t until 10:15 that Churchill, Eden, and Sarah Oliver left the ship. FDR had hoped to be airborne by 10:00, but it was 11:00 p.m. before he and his party drove to Luqa, the RAF airfield on Malta, and boarded the Sacred Cow.

Although FDR was not the first president to fly (that milestone belonged to his cousin Theodore), he was the first to fly while in office; the Sacred Cow was the first presidential airplane, and this was the president’s first use of it. A remodeled Douglas C-54, in its commercial version known as a DC-4, it had a cabin for FDR fitted out with a full-length couch that made up into a bed, an armchair, a desk, and a uniquely large picture window to satisfy the president’s unfailing interest in viewing the lands he was flying over. Maps that pulled down were set into the wall. In line with his passion for all things marine, a painting of a clipper ship hung on the wall above the couch/bed. Forward of FDR’s cabin were two compartments, each with double seats. Behind the passenger cabin was an elevator that could lift FDR, in his wheelchair, into and out of the plane, which eliminated the telltale and therefore dangerous thirty-foot ramp that had previously marked out any plane transporting FDR. FDR had not been enthusiastic about the prospect of a specially built presidential airplane: he didn’t much like flying, because air travel seemed to aggravate his sinus condition, and he was concerned at the cost, so in contrast to his railroad car, appropriately named Ferdinand Magellan, he let others find a name for the plane. As a consequence, when he learned that the ground crews who guarded it and the fliers who tested it were all referring to the aircraft as a sacred cow, FDR let the name stand: Sacred Cow became the official name.

The flight to Saki, the nearest airfield to Yalta in reasonable condition (it had a solitary metal strip runway), on the west coast of the Crimean Peninsula ninety miles from Yalta, took almost seven hours.

The Secret Service head, Mike Reilly, in Yalta preparing for the presidential visit, had been alerted that trigger-happy Russian anti-aircraft gunners, mistaking English and American planes for German, had been shooting at and occasionally hitting Allied aircraft. In fact, Russian gunners had just accidentally shot down a British transport plane near Saki on February 1, killing ten passengers, six of them from the British Foreign Office. Because the route of the Sacred Cow would put it directly over several of the Soviet batteries, the U.S. Air Force decreed that a U.S. soldier who could identify his plane had to be placed in command of every Russian anti-aircraft battery on or near the route FDR would fly. When Reilly presented this requirement to General Artikov, Artikov refused to sanction it, prompting Reilly to say, “No Roosevelt then.” Artikov, forced to take it up with Stalin, came back a day later, “obviously amazed,” remembered Reilly, volunteering, “Stalin says ‘absolutely.’ ” As a result, at every Russian anti-aircraft station along the Malta-Saki flight path, as the Sacred Cow and the other planes, flying without lights and with radios silent, roared overhead, a U.S. sergeant stared up into the sky: there were no more incidents.

Escorted by five Lockheed Lightnings, the Sacred Cow came in just after noon at the Saki airfield. The field was outlined by Russian guards standing every twenty feet, tommy guns visible. It had been swept clear of every snowflake. Churchill’s plane arrived shortly after, at which point Roosevelt was lowered by the plane’s elevator to the ground and wheeled into a nearby open jeep provided by the Russians, and the two met. Waiting on the field to greet FDR were Molotov, Deputy Foreign Minister Vyshinsky, General Antonov, Ambassador Gromyko, Ambassador F. T. Gusev, Stettinius, and Harriman. The president reviewed the guard of honor and listened to the “spectacular” brass band waiting to greet him. As Cadogan recorded, not too admiringly, in his diary, smoking a ten-inch cigar, “the PM walked by the side of the President, as in her old age an Indian attendant accompanied Queen Victoria’s phaeton.” There were three refreshment tents on the field dispensing everything from glasses of hot tea with lemon and lump sugar to brandy, champagne, dishes of caviar, smoked salmon, fresh butter, cheese, soft- and hard-boiled eggs: the repast was extensive and lavish and served on china plates and in crystal goblets. Refusing any food, FDR was lifted into a waiting Packard, also supplied by the Russians, and when the ceremonies and the music finished, his motor caravan started out for Yalta. With him in his car were his daughter, Anna, and Mike Reilly. There was two inches of snow on the ground; it was sloppy underfoot. A few sections of the road were paved, but most of it was pretty rough and muddy. The ninety-mile trip took six hours: a Sherman tank would have found it tough going, according to Dr. McIntire, following in another car. The cars were well guarded as they proceeded slowly along the uneven road. Red Army soldiers, many of them young women, all armed with Springfield rifles (old but still deadly sniper rifles supplied by Lend-Lease), formed an unbroken line for the entire passage, springing to attention as the cars came into view. The caravan passed the ruins of war: burned-out tanks, gutted houses, damaged rail equipment. Sarah Oliver, in her father’s car, described it as “a countryside as bleak as the soul in despair.”

STALIN TRAVELED TO THE CRIMEA by rail ensconced in his private railroad carriage, the green bulletproof saloon car that contained his bedroom with a big, comfortable double bed, desk, chairs, and mirror, a bathroom with shower, a conference room with expandable table that twelve could sit around with curtains that could be drawn for privacy, and a kitchen. The route of the train was through Tula, Orel, and Kursk, where great battles had been fought and where the devastation was unremitting. Shelling had destroyed the landscape: of whole towns and villages, only remnants remained; sketchily built log cabins now took the place of train stations. The train stopped as rarely as possible, if at all, because homeless refugees jammed every station. After three days the train reached Simferopol, the nearest station to Yalta, where Stalin transferred to a car, probably another armored Packard the train carried in one of its cargo carriages, and he too was driven down to Yalta. Unlike at Tehran, where he had brought only Voroshilov, whom he rarely consulted, Stalin had with him a full complement of advisers: as FDR had hoped, Stalin was learning the ropes of diplomacy. With Stalin on the train were his secretary, Poskrebyshev; General Nikolai Vlasik, in charge of Stalin’s personal security detail; Molotov; Admiral Nikolay Kuznetsov, commissar of the navy; General Antonov, of the Red Army; Vyshinsky, Molotov’s deputy for foreign affairs; Marshal of Aviation Sergei Khudyakov; and Maisky. (Andrei Gromyko would come from Washington; F. T. Gusev, ambassador to Great Britain, would come from London.)

NKVD preparation for the conference was thorough. According to Pavel Sudoplatov, in charge of special tasks for the NKVD (the man in charge of planning Trotsky’s murder in Mexico), Molotov gathered together the top personnel of all the intelligence services at the end of December and asked them for information: their opinions of German strength to continue the war, their opinions on possible areas of future peace settlements with America and Britain. They told him what must have been good news: neither the British nor the American delegation had a coherent postwar policy toward Eastern European countries; “the Americans were ready for a compromise…that a flexible position on our part would ensure a fair division of influence in postwar Europe.” Military intelligence personnel, according to Sudoplatov, believed “the political turn of events…was easy to predict.” Presence of the Red Army in the liberated areas would mean the de facto provisional governments would come under their control, even if there was democratic voting.

FOLLOWING PRACTICES THAT HAD BEEN HONED by the Russians for years, developed to cope with their endemic suspicion and fear of foreigners, Sudoplatov was ordered to analyze every American participant known to be coming to Yalta as to personality and attitude and to provide a psychological portrait of each of them. (Alger Hiss, according to Sudoplatov, was identified as “highly sympathetic to the interests of the Soviet Union and a strong supporter of postwar collaboration between American and Soviet institutions” but was not described as an agent.)

IN LINE WITH FDR’S PRACTICE of acquainting Stalin with his thinking on issues ahead of time, which he had first instituted when Molotov was visiting Washington in 1942, he had told Harriman to bring up with both Molotov and Ambassador Maisky in advance the subjects he wanted to discuss at Yalta. Molotov’s diary of January 20 shows that while downplaying the thought that there was an agenda (“The president, of course, does not mean to suggest any agenda”), Harriman, in fact, presented exactly that to Molotov. The agenda included “all the matters dealing with treating Germany, including partition of Germany and others…all the matters left open after the Dumbarton Oaks conference. Next, the president wants to talk about Poland. He also wants to discuss the political and military aspects of the war in the Pacific, as well as in Europe,” according to Molotov’s diary.

What questions would Marshal Stalin like to raise? Harriman asked. Replied Molotov, “The Soviet government has not developed any agenda and would not suggest one…Marshal Stalin will be ready to discuss any questions the President may want to arise.” As at Tehran, Stalin passed. Indicating that the subject of postwar trade and loans would probably be on the table, Harriman also noted that James Byrnes, head of industrial mobilization, would be in the president’s party.

Harriman met with Maisky later that same day. Maisky was very knowledgeable of FDR’s concerns; their conversation was fruitful. Maisky made careful notes. “The president is primarily interested in two questions: a) the future international security organization…At present the political atmosphere in the USA is rather favorable…for strengthening America’s participation in the future international agency. We should seize the moment. Later isolationism can again take hold and create unnecessary difficulties. b) Postwar fate of Germany…It comes down to two issues: the problem of Germany’s partitioning, the problem of reparations from Germany.” Here FDR authorized, according to Harriman, a huge carrot: “Once Germany was out of the war, loans for the Soviet Union would be discussed.” He asked them, according to Maisky, “to detail the wish list of the Soviet side…as well as to outline their own measures so that with the war’s end the American industry could come down to delivering on the Soviet orders immediately.” (Italics mine)

Stalin had been counting on and working on a loan at least since November 1943. At that time Harriman had pointed out at a meeting with Anastas Mikoyan, commissar for foreign trade, that the granting of a long-term loan to the Soviet Union enabling it to buy American manufactured goods would be in the self-interest of the United States as a means of assuring full employment during the period of transition from wartime to peacetime economy. A few days later, after further discussion, Harriman had written to Washington to make sure it understood “that this question of reconstruction is considered by the Soviet Government as, next to war, the most important political as well as economic problem that confronts them.” Immediately after Tehran, Molotov pursued the idea. At the end of October 1944, Gromyko had suggested to U.S. Lend-Lease officials a loan of $6 billion for a period of thirty years, the money to be used to purchase American manufactured goods—railcars, engines, rails, gas pipes, and the like. On January 3, 1945, Molotov formally requested of Harriman a $6 billion loan in postwar credits over thirty years at an interest rate of 2.5 percent. Harriman favored the loan and transmitted details to Washington. However, at that time the just-appointed secretary of state, Edward Stettinius, had decided that granting such a large credit to the Soviet Union would deprive the United States of its “bargaining” position. He was particularly obdurate, taking this narrow view in response, according to Morgenthau, to the recent Soviet action of taking 170,000 Germans from Romania to Russia for forced labor. At a late morning meeting with FDR on January 10 in the Oval Office, Stettinius had out-argued Morgenthau and persuaded FDR not to raise the issue at Yalta. According to Morgenthau, Stettinius accomplished this by refusing to show FDR Harriman’s cable saying how important the large credit was to Molotov and Stalin, describing the scene as follows: “He wanted to read it…The president finally said, ‘Well, after all, we are not having any finance people with us and I will just tell them we can’t do anything until we get back to Washington…I think it’s very important that we hold this back and don’t give them any promises of finance until we get what we want.’ ” Harriman, in Moscow briefing Maisky, far away from the argument taking place in the Oval Office, gave Maisky the mistaken impression that the loan was going to be discussed.

Harriman’s briefing to Maisky included the questionable information that FDR did not see any future in battling the Soviet Union over control of Poland: “At this particular late stage the President does not see any point for discussion—e.g. situation in Poland is fait accompli.” Maisky would also have reported, from his conversation with Harriman, that “the problem of colonies is not yet highly urgent.”

Stalin also received input from Andrei Gromyko, whom he wanted present at Yalta. Gromyko advised the premier that “the United States government will be forced to recognize the Polish provisionary government.” On the issue of voting in the Security Council, Gromyko advised standing pat: “Americans and the British will have to make concessions on this issue.” On the other hand, Gromyko also advised Molotov that before he left Washington, he had been talking with Stettinius and Leo Pasvolsky, who raised with him the issue of smaller nations’ appealing the actions of great powers in the Security Council, and, he concluded, “Discussion of issues without voting and passing decision might be O.K. with us…since in this case a possibility that the Council passes decisions against us would be ruled out.”

The views of F. T. Gusev, Russian ambassador to Britain, who would also be at Yalta, as to what matters should be discussed at the conference were solicited. Presumably, because he was wrong about Russian entry into the war against Japan (“the Americans and the British are probably no longer interested in our entering the war against Japan”) and Stalin didn’t suffer fools, his role was minor.

Litvinov, absent from the conference, undoubtedly blocked from attending Yalta by Molotov, made perhaps the most accurate assessment of American positions. In January he had predicted, “The USA is not interested in the fate of the Baltic [republics] or Western Ukraine and Belorussia. Under the press of the known circles, Roosevelt will, probably, make ‘ideological’ reservations. He may, for instance, suggest a plebiscite in the Baltic [republics] without attaching any significance to his proposal. Finally, he will put up with the inevitable and recognize the borders we desire.”

Stalin’s key advisers, then, reported that FDR would be amenable to Soviet positions on Poland’s government and borders, that he looked favorably on the long-term loan, and that the American stand on the veto in the Security Council was not as dangerous as previously thought.

Roosevelt, Churchill, and Harriman brought their daughters; Hopkins’s son Robert was also present. Anna Boettiger, whom FDR had not permitted to attend the Tehran Conference, was especially thrilled to be at Yalta. Her mother had wanted to go, but Anna, who had become so important to her father as organizer, with Daisy Suckley, of his leisure time, prevailed. She didn’t feel in the least guilty for being chosen: “If Mother went, I couldn’t go…Harriman and Churchill were bringing their daughters, and there would be no wives.” Sarah Churchill Oliver, who had been at Tehran, whom her father found helpful and good company, was his aide-de-camp. Kathleen, who lived with her father at Spaso House and worked with him, quite naturally accompanied Harriman to Yalta. Missing was Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, eighteen, who spoke excellent English. She and her father were barely on speaking terms. He had sent her first serious boyfriend, a Jewish journalist, to Siberia and had reluctantly permitted her marriage to Grigory Morozov, fellow classmate at Moscow University, who was also Jewish, whom he also disapproved of. Svetlana was in any case five months pregnant. (Stalin also had two sons; the elder, Yakov, by his first wife, had been taken prisoner by the Germans. An offer to Stalin was made through Count Bernadotte to swap Yakov for Field Marshal Paulus, but Stalin had regretfully refused: “I had to refuse…What would they have said of me, our millions of Party fathers…? No, I had no right.” Yakov was subsequently killed. Although it was never conclusively proved, the most common account of Yakov’s death was that he hurled himself against the outer prison fence, forcing his guards to shoot him. Stalin’s second son, Vasily, entered the war at twenty as a captain and at twenty-four had been promoted to lieutenant general. Young, spoiled, not up to the responsibility, unfit to command, he became an alcoholic.)

IT WAS AGAINST THIS BACKDROP that Roosevelt worked to further his ideas for a peaceful future world at Yalta, worked to fashion a world organization strong enough to keep a nation from spilling out of its borders into another nation’s territory—worked to end war. He had two partners: both ready to oppress foreign nations to save their own, neither willing to admit it. There was, of course, a world of difference between Churchill and Stalin. If you were within Churchill’s magic circle—if you were white—you were safe. No one was safe with Stalin. Except, possibly, Molotov and FDR.

British disagreements with Roosevelt, of course, were more like disagreements among members of a family. British mistrust of Stalin ran much deeper. As Churchill said of Stalin, in a statement that at the same time reveals his antagonism bordering on hatred, “Trying to maintain good relations with a communist is like wooing a crocodile. You do not know whether to tickle it under the chin or to beat it over the head.”

Eden and Churchill were aware that with Roosevelt in control of the form the postwar world would take, they had a problem: his bedrock disapproval of the principle of white supremacy, upon which rested the British Empire and Britain’s right to rule its colonies. But they looked beyond the president’s philosophical mind-set and believed he saw economic gain as a side benefit. FDR, Eden believed, “did not confine his dislike of colonialism to the British Empire alone, but it was a principle with him, not the less cherished for its possible advantages.” FDR “hoped that former colonial territories, once free of their masters, would become politically and economically dependent upon the United States.” Neither Eden nor Churchill understood FDR’s idea that independence, not dependence, was the best economic solution to the world’s problems. Nor did they understand that he believed the pursuit and maintenance of colonial empires was a root cause of World War II (as did Stalin). Roosevelt saw the future as a world of independent nations, always excepting the British and Soviet subject nations, kept in check by a world security organization—a UN force—policing the world. Neither Eden nor Churchill understood this. Stalin did; Molotov probably did not.

Yalta must be seen against this backdrop of Churchill’s deep mistrust of Stalin, as well as Stalin’s deep mistrust of Churchill, their joint (measured) confidence in Roosevelt’s sense of history and fair play, and Roosevelt’s view that he could handle both men and make them get along. Roosevelt, with his keen insight, formulated the idea that he could act as moderator between the two leaders before he had even met Stalin. He saw himself as the leader, the forger of the future alliance of nations when the war was over. As he explained to Mackenzie King a year after Pearl Harbor, “I doubt if Winston and Stalin together could have their minds meet over some of these postwar questions. I could perhaps act as a medium between them, in helping to bring them together. It seems to me that when there are two great powers that come near each other but never quite combine, there is always a bit of a barrier in between them. I could perhaps help to get views reconciled.”

It was indeed a common thought of those watching the three leaders at Yalta that Roosevelt was the intermediary between the other two, and it is visually enforced: in photographs FDR is always between them.

Roosevelt’s optimistic view of himself as moderator/peacemaker gives a good clue to his conduct at Yalta and shows that he saw no roadblocks between Stalin and Churchill that he could not bridge. He was looking forward to the conference with the firm expectation that he would be the moderator.

The conference went on for eight days. Sun and overcast seemed to alternate each day. The temperature stayed at a steady fifty degrees. Each afternoon the three heads of state met in a long plenary session, usually lasting four hours, seated around the round table in the grand ballroom of the Livadia Palace. The following morning the foreign ministers and military chiefs met to settle the questions that the plenary session had left unresolved. There were dinners given by each leader. FDR and Churchill both met privately with Stalin; they did not themselves meet except at lunch.

As at Tehran, Roosevelt was not only the chair of the conference but in control in every way. His first act upon arrival at the Livadia Palace was to direct Harriman to call on Molotov at the Yusupov Palace to work out conference plans with Stalin. Harriman transmitted to Molotov Roosevelt’s request that Stalin meet with him at the Livadia Palace the following afternoon to discuss the military question, after which the plenary session would begin at 4:00 and be attended by the military staffs and the foreign secretaries as well as themselves. FDR also directed Harriman to tell Molotov that he wanted to give the first dinner—small, unofficial—following the first plenary session. After conferring with Stalin, Molotov told Harriman that Stalin, whose days always started late, preferred that the plenary session start at 5:00 rather than 4:00; he would therefore call on FDR at 4:00; he accepted the dinner invitation.

It must be noted that Churchill and his staff were informed rather than consulted on conference plans, which must have been an aggravation to them.

The next morning FDR met with his military chiefs on the sunporch overlooking the sea. It was a beautiful clear day; the water was calm as a millpond. At 10:30, Stettinius, Harriman, Matthews, Hiss, and Bohlen joined them, and there was general discussion of U.S. positions. At 4:00 p.m. FDR and Bohlen waited in Roosevelt’s red velvet study at the palace. Stalin and Molotov, accompanied by their interpreter, Pavlov, arrived promptly in a large black Packard limousine. The two leaders met, observed Bohlen, as two old friends, grasping each other’s hands, both smiling.

The military situation, which Harriman and Molotov had agreed should be the first thing their leaders discussed, was, FDR and Stalin both now acknowledged, considerably improved since their last meeting. Stalin informed FDR that the Soviet armies were moving very successfully onto the line of the Oder River. FDR replied that he had made a number of bets on board the Quincy coming over as to whether the Russians would get to Berlin before the Americans got to Manila.

Stalin said he was certain the Americans would get to Manila first. (They did, entering it the next day.)

Roosevelt then said he had been “very much struck by the extent of German destruction in the Crimea and therefore he was more bloodthirsty in regard to the Germans than he had been a year ago.” In line with the profile he wished to present to Stalin of being no closer to Churchill than he was to Stalin, FDR picked up on his remark that Churchill had taken such exception to at Tehran, saying that “he hoped that Marshal Stalin would again propose a toast to the execution of 50,000 officers of the German army.”

Stalin replied that everyone was more bloodthirsty, that the destruction in the Crimea was nothing compared with that which had occurred in the Ukraine; the Germans were savages and seemed to have a sadistic hatred for the creative work of human beings.

Roosevelt informed Stalin that Eisenhower was planning an offensive for February 8 and another on the twelfth but that the main blow would take place in March. He asked that General Eisenhower and his staff be permitted to communicate directly with the Soviet staff through General Deane in Moscow, as the armies were getting close enough to have contact between them, rather than going through the chiefs of staff in London and Washington as they had been doing. (General Marshall, citing British reluctance for the change, which he had to overrule, had asked FDR to discuss this with Stalin.) Stalin agreed, promising to work out the details.

As the conversation turned to France’s role, FDR, knowing from Tehran that Stalin shared his negative view of de Gaulle, spoke of his conversation with de Gaulle in Casablanca two years earlier, when de Gaulle had compared himself with Joan of Arc as the spiritual leader of France and Clemenceau as the political leader.

Stalin replied that “in actual fact the French contribution at the present time to military operations on the Western Front was very small and that in 1940 they had not fought at all.”

FDR then said he would now tell the marshal something indiscreet, because he would not wish to say it in front of Prime Minister Churchill, namely that the British for two years had had the idea of artificially building up France into a strong power that would have 200,000 troops on its eastern border to hold the line for the period required to assemble a strong British army. He said the British were a peculiar people and wished to have their cake and eat it too.

They then discussed the German zones that each of them would occupy. FDR said he would have preferred the northwest zone but the British seemed to think that the Americans should restore order in France and then return political control to the British. Stalin asked whether FDR thought France should have a zone. FDR attached great importance to giving France a zone of occupation, and Stettinius had made this known to Eden at Malta, but aware of Stalin’s strong negative view of all things French, he now said that “it was not a bad idea,” then added that “it was only out of kindness.”

Both Stalin and Molotov then spoke up vigorously and said that would be the only reason to give France a zone.

As it was almost five, Roosevelt suggested they proceed to the grand ballroom to begin the first plenary session, which they did.