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Russians.” In all these military matters a large measure of agreement was reached, and the discussions had the useful result that the Combined Chiefs of Staff were aware of their respective points of view before engaging in talks with their Russian counterparts.

That evening we all dined together on the
Quincy,
to talk over informally the conversations which had taken place on the previous days between Mr. Eden and Mr. Stettinius on the political issues which should be raised at Yalta. That night the exodus began. The “thirty-five” staff which the President had contemplated had been multiplied by both of us tenfold. Transport planes took off at ten-minute intervals to carry some seven hundred persons, forming the British and American delegations, over fourteen hundred miles to the airfield of Saki, in the Crimea. A Royal Air Force contingent had been stationed there for two months beforehand to deal with the technical preparations. I boarded my plane after dinner, and went to bed. After a long and cold flight we landed on the airfield, which was under deep snow. My plane was ahead of the President’s, and we stood for a while awaiting him. When he was carried down the lift from the “Sacred Cow” he looked frail and ill. Together we inspected the guards of honour, the President sitting in an open car, while I walked beside him.

Our party then went into a large marquee for refreshment, with Molotov and the Russian delegation, which had come to meet us.

Presently we set off on a long drive from Saki to Yalta. Lord Moran and Mr. Martin came with me in my car. We had taken the precaution of bringing sandwiches with us, but after we had duly eaten them we came to a house where we were told Molotov awaited us, and we were invited to take places at a magnificent luncheon for about ten people.

The President’s party had apparently slipped past Triumph and Tragedy

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unawares and Molotov was alone with two of his officials.

He was in the best of humours, and offered us all the delicacies of the Russian table. We did our best to conceal the fact that we had already blunted our appetites.

The journey took us nearly eight hours, and the road was often lined by Russian soldiers, some of them women, standing shoulder to shoulder in the village streets and on the main bridges and mountain passes, and at other points in separate detachments. As we crossed the mountains and descended towards the Black Sea we suddenly passed into warm and brilliant sunshine and a most genial climate.

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2

Yalta: Plans for World Peace

The Vorontzov Palace
—
Russian Hospitality —

Stalin Calls on me, February
4 —
The Oder and
the Ardennes — The First Plenary Meeting — The
Future of Germany — Dismemberment and
Reparations — A Momentous Statement by Mr.

Roosevelt — The Second Meeting, February
6 —

Need for a French Zone of Occupation in
Germany — Discussions on Dumbarton Oaks
—

Stalin’s Views — World Organisation and
Unanimity Among the Great Powers — Molotov
Accepts the New Plan, February
7 —
The Russian
Republics and the World Organisation — My
Telegram to the War Cabinet, February
8 —

Agreement at the Third Meeting, February
9 —

Dinner with Stalin at the Yusupov Palace — Grave
and Friendly Speeches — Stalin Discusses the
Past.

T
HE SOVIET HEADQUARTERS at Yalta were in the Yusupov Palace, and from this centre Stalin and Molotov and their generals carried on the government of Russia and the control of their immense front, now in violent action.

President Roosevelt was given the even more splendid Livadia Palace, close at hand, and it was here, in order to spare him physical inconvenience, that all our plenary meetings were held. This exhausted the undamaged accommodation at Yalta. I and the principal members of the Triumph and Tragedy

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British delegation were assigned a very large villa about five miles away which had been built in the early nineteenth century by an English architect for a Russian Prince Vorontzov, one-time Imperial Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

My daughter Sarah, Mr. Eden, Sir Alexander Cadogan, Sir Alan Brooke, Sir Andrew Cunningham, Sir Charles Portal, Field-Marshal Alexander, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, General Ismay, and Lord Moran were among those who stayed with me. The rest of our delegation were put up in two rest-houses about twenty minutes away, five or six people sleeping in a room, including high-ranking officers, but no one seemed to mind. The Germans had evacuated the neighbourhood only ten months earlier, and the surrounding buildings had been badly damaged. We were warned that the area had not been completely cleared of mines, except for the grounds of the villa, which were, as usual, heavily patrolled by Russian guards. Over a thousand men had been at work on the scene before our arrival. Windows and doors had been repaired, and furniture and stores brought down from Moscow.

The setting of our abode was impressive. Behind the villa, half Gothic and half Moorish in style, rose the mountains, covered in snow, culminating in the highest peak in the Crimea. Before us lay the dark expanse of the Black Sea, severe, but still agreeable and warm even at this time of the year. Carved white lions guarded the entrance to the house, and beyond the courtyard lay a fine park with sub-tropical plants and cypresses. In the dining-room I recognised the two paintings hanging each side of the fireplace as copies of family portraits of the Herberts at Wilton. It appeared that Prince Vorontzov had married a daughter of the family, and had brought these pictures back with him from England.

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Every effort was made by our hosts to ensure our comfort, and every chance remark noted with kindly attention. On one occasion Portal had admired a large glass tank with plants growing in it, and remarked that it contained no fish.

Two days later a consignment of goldfish arrived. Another time somebody said casually that there was no lemon peel in the cocktails. The next day a lemon tree loaded with fruit was growing in the hall. All must have come by air from far away.

At three o’clock on February 4, the day after our arrival, Stalin called on me, and we had an agreeable discussion about the war against Germany. He was optimistic.

Germany was short of bread and coal; her transport was seriously damaged. I asked what the Russians would do if Hitler moved south — to Dresden, for example. “We shall follow him,” was the reply. He went on to say that the Oder was no longer an obstacle, as the Red Army had several bridgeheads across it and the Germans were using untrained, badly led, and ill-equipped Volksstürm for its defence. They had hoped to withdraw trained troops from the Vistula and use them to defend the river, but the Russian armour had by-passed them. Now they had only a mobile or strategic reserve of twenty or thirty badly trained divisions. They had some good ones in Denmark, Norway, and Italy, and in the West, but on the whole their front was broken and they were merely trying to patch up the gaps.

When I asked Stalin what he thought of Rundstedt’s offensive against the Americans he called it a stupid manoeuvre which had harmed Germany and was done for prestige. The German military body was sick and could not be cured by such methods. The best generals had gone

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and only Guderian was left, and he was an adventurer. If the German divisions cut off in East Prussia had been withdrawn in time they might have been used to defend Berlin, but the Germans were foolish. They still had eleven armoured divisions at Budapest, but they had failed to realise that they were no longer a world-Power and could not have forces wherever they wished. They would understand in due time, but it would be too late.

I then showed him my map-room, already fully mounted by Captain Pim, and after describing our position in the West I asked Field-Marshal Alexander to explain what was happening in Italy. Stalin’s comment was interesting. The Germans were unlikely to attack us. Could we not leave a few British divisions on the front and transfer the rest to Yugoslavia and Hungary and direct them against Vienna?

Here they could join the Red Army and outflank the Germans who were south of the Alps. He added that we might need a considerable force. It cost him nothing to say this now, but I made no reproaches.

“The Red Army,” I answered, “may not give us time to complete the operation.”

At five o’clock the President, Stalin, and I met to review the military situation, and in particular the Russian offensive on the Eastern Front. We heard a detailed account of the progress of the Russian Army, and also set the frame for the coming discussions between our respective Chiefs of Staff. I said that one of the questions we should consider was how long it would take the enemy to move eight divisions from Italy to the battle-front against Russia, and what counter-action we should take. Perhaps we ought to transfer divisions from Northern Italy to strengthen our

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attacking forces elsewhere. Another issue was whether we should try to strike at the head of the Adriatic, through the Ljubljana Gap, and join up with the Russian left flank.

The atmosphere of the meeting was most cordial. General Marshall gave us a brilliantly concise account of Anglo-American operations in the West. Stalin said that the Russian offensive in January had been launched as a moral duty, quite unconnected with the decisions made at Teheran, and he now asked how he could continue to help.

I replied that now was the moment, when the three Staffs were met together, to review the whole question of military co-ordination between the Allies.

The first plenary meeting of the Conference started at a quarter past four on the afternoon of February 5. We met in the Livadia Palace, and took our seats at a round table.

With the three interpreters we were twenty-three. With Stalin and Molotov were Vyshinsky, Maisky, Gousev, the Russian Ambassador in London, and Gromyko, the Russian Ambassador at Washington. Pavlov acted as interpreter. The American delegation was headed by President Roosevelt and Mr. Stettinius, and included Admiral Leahy, Byrnes, Harriman, Hopkins, Matthews, Director of European Affairs in the State Department, and Bohlen, special assistant from the State Department, who also interpreted. Eden sat beside me, and my own party included Sir Alexander Cadogan, Sir Edward Bridges, and Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, our Ambassador in Moscow. Major Birse interpreted for us, as he had always done since my first meeting with Stalin at Moscow in 1942.