WW2: What Happened at Yalta?

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In early 1945, with an inevitable defeat of Nazi Germany on the horizon, the Allied leaders of the United States, Britain and Russia came together to decide the postwar future of Europe itself. The ‘Big Three’, made up of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin - met at Yalta in Crimea, with the reorganisation of Germany a top priority to be discussed. But within a few years of the Yalta Conference, any hopes for a new era of peace was shattered by the arrival of the Cold War.

In this episode, James is joined by leading war historian Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, to learn more about what happened at the Yalta conference over those eight momentous days. What deals were struck? Why did the conference fail to stop the Cold War? And why does the Yalta Conference remain such a controversial topic today?

Caroline's book is available here.

Senior Producer was Elena Guthrie. The Assistant Producer was Annie Coloe. Edited by Aidan Lonergan.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	78 years ago in February 1945 the big three Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met in Yolter.
0:09.8	An arduous journey for Churchill and Roosevelt the aim was to finalise the Allies strategy
0:14.8	for the remainder of the Second World War and try and forge a post-war settlement.
0:20.5	However, it would not be long before the Grand Alliance would break up and the Cold War would begin.
0:26.7	So, what went wrong at Yolter? And who really won the final debates and the jostling at the end of the Second World War?
0:36.7	Well, to find out, I'm joined by my old friend and a regular on the warfare podcast,
0:41.0	Professor Caroline Kennedy Pipe.
0:43.2	Caroline is author of Starling's Cold War and Russia and the world since 1917.
0:48.8	We met deep underground in London in the Churchill Warrooms, and I couldn't think of a more fitting place to discuss this monumental conference.
0:58.0	Enjoy. Caroline, welcome to the Warfare Podcast. How you doing today?
1:09.0	Well, thank you, James.
1:10.0	Well, thank you, James. Well, thank you so much for coming down to the Cabinet War rooms, otherwise known as the Churchill War,
1:15.5	is deep underground in the heart of London.
1:18.7	It's here that Churchill and his government would have made deliberations all the way through the war.
1:23.7	They call this the rooms that didn't sleep.
1:26.4	But as we move towards the end of the war,
1:28.2	Churchill would have been able to emerge from underground
1:31.4	and have to start negotiating what the post-war world looked like.
1:35.7	And no greater place did that happen than Yolter in February 1945, 78 years ago this month. Now tell us why was Yolter chosen as the location for these
1:49.1	pivotal talks? So Yolter takes place in the Crimea at the insistence of Joseph Stalin.
1:57.0	Famously Stalin did not like flying and he claimed that on the advice of his doctors he couldn't travel further than literally his backyard.
2:07.0	And so Roosevelt, who as we know was ill at this point in time,
	...

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