Yalta Conference

Source: National Archives & Records Administration The conference table at Yalta

On 4 February 1945 a further conference of the “Big Three” is convened in Yalta and results in a definitive clarification concerning the fate of the German Reich: Germany is to be divided into four occupation zones and supreme command transferred to an „Allied Control Council“. The country is to be completely demilitarised and „denazified“.

Josef Stalin succeeds in getting US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to recognise the eastern and south-eastern European countries as a „Soviet sphere of influence“ and to establish the eastern border of Poland, in the Soviet Union’s favour, along the so-called Curzon Line (from Dünaburg over Brest to Przemysi). The final determination of Poland’s western border is postponed, but in any event Poland is granted a „considerable increase in territory“ at the expense of the German Reich as compensation for the loss of his eastern regions („Poland’s westward shift“). Stalin promises his allies to enter the war against Japan.

A further important resolution: The „Big Three“ adopt the charter of the United Nations which is then signed by 50 nations in San Francisco on 26 June 1945.