1 feb 1945 anni - Yalta

Descrizione:

Yalta Conference: A meeting in Yalta of President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in February 1945, in which the leaders discussed the treatment of Germany, the status of Poland, the creation of the United Nations, and Russian entry into the war against Japan.
United Nations: An international body founded in San Francisco in 1945, consisting of a General Assembly representing all nations, and a Security Council of the United States, Britain, France, China, the Soviet Union, and six other nations elected on a rotating basis.



With Germany and Japan defeated and Britain and France exhausted, only two geopolitical powers remained standing at the end of World War II. Little had united the United States and the Soviet Union, other than their commitment to defeating the Axis powers. It was likely that the Americans and Soviets would have jostled each other as they moved to fill the postwar power vacuum, even if they shared a common set of interests. But the nations were so sharply divided — by geography, history, ideology, and strategic interest — that their rivalry hardened into a new kind of war.

President Franklin Roosevelt saw the American-Soviet alliance as essential for postwar global stability, even as World War II was still being fought. But FDR also believed that permanent peace and long-term American interests depended on the Wilsonian principles of collective security, self-determination, and free trade (see “Catastrophe at Versailles” in Chapter 20), which ran counter to Soviet aims. At the Yalta Conference of February 1945, these democratic ideals were trumped by the realities of power politics and military might. As Allied forces neared victory in Europe and advanced toward Japan in the Pacific, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met in Yalta, a resort on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. Roosevelt focused on maintaining Allied unity and securing a Soviet commitment to enter the war against Japan. But the fate of Eastern Europe divided the Big Three. Stalin insisted that Russian national security required pro-Soviet governments in Eastern European nations. Roosevelt pressed for an agreement, the “Declaration on Liberated Europe,” that guaranteed self-determination and democratic elections in Poland and other countries in the East. However, given that Soviet troops were already in control of much of Eastern Europe, FDR had to accept a lesser pledge from Stalin: to hold “free and unfettered elections” at a future time. The three leaders also formally committed to dividing Germany into four zones, each controlled by one Allied power (plus France), and to similarly partition the capital city, Berlin, which was located within the Soviet zone.


At the Yalta Conference, the Big Three also agreed to establish an international body to replace the discredited League of Nations. The new organization, to be known as the United Nations, would have both a General Assembly, in which all nations would be represented, and a Security Council composed of the five nations that prevailed over Germany and Japan — the United States, Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union — and six other nations elected on a rotating basis (the number of rotating nations was increased to ten in 1965). The Big Three determined that the five permanent members of the Security Council would have veto power over decisions of the General Assembly. The United Nations was slated to convene for the first time in San Francisco on April 25, 1945. (The current U.N. headquarters in New York City opened in 1952.)

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