For the protection of U.S. interests and his own place in history, Secretary of State George Shultz would be well advised to study the records of a famous agreement made by the United States and the U.S.S.R. 40 years ago this month. It is known by the name of the place where the principals met, Yalta.
The Yalta Agreement was greeted with lavish praise by the liberal politicians and media. Majority Leader Alben Barkley called it “one of the most important steps ever taken to promote peace and happiness in the world.”
The New York Times editorialized on February 12, 1945, “This conference marks a milestone on the road to victory and peace.” Time said, “By any standards, the Crimean conference was a great achievement.” Life said, “As conferences go, this one was a success.”
The verdict of history, however, is that Yalta was a sellout and a betrayal. The U.S. Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, Jr., conferred every morning and evening with Alger Hiss, who was later convicted of falsely swearing he was not a Communist spy.
A former State Department official, J. Anthony Panuch, wrote a memorandum warning that Alger Hiss “exercises a Svengali-like influence over the mental processes of Junior Stettinius.”
Three weeks before Yalta began, Stettinius ordered that Hiss be given all the top-secret files and documents pertaining to the Conference. At the negotiating table, Stettinius sat at Roosevelt’s right, and Hiss sat immediately behind the President.
At Yalta, the Soviet Union was given southern Sakhalin, Port Arthur, the Kurile Islands, control of the port of Dairen and the Chinese-Eastern Railroad, and was allowed to keep Outer Mongolia which Russia had seized from China.
At Yalta, Germany was dismembered, disarmed, demilitarized, and required to give slave labor to the Soviet Union. The anti-Communist refugees from Russia were to be forcibly returned, a shameful promise which was later carried out as Operation Keelhaul.
The treatment of Poland at Yalta was a blot on our honor which can never be erased. The United States and Britain agreed to withdraw recognition from the Polish government-in-exile (which had loyally borne the brunt of the war), and instead grant diplomatic recognition to the Communist-controlled Lublin Government.
Yalta decreed that the United Nations would be started with a conference in the United States in April 1945. Membership was to be limited to “peace-loving” countries which had declared war on Germany and Japan. The Soviet Union was given three votes.
When President Roosevelt returned and reported to Congress, he denied that Yalta had anything to do with the Far East. After his death, when it became clear that the Far East concessions to the Soviets were a crucial part of Yalta, his supporters developed the excuse that those concessions were necessary in order to induce Stalin to come into the war against Japan and help us.
The Yalta Papers released by the State Department in 1955, however, clearly prove that this was no excuse. The papers include a report sent by the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Averell Harriman, four months prior to Yalta which said that “we now have a full agreement … not only to participate in the Pacific war, but to enter the war with full effort.”
Furthermore, at least a month before Yalta, Major General Leslie R. Groves, wartime head of the atomic bomb project, had sent word to the President that the atom bomb would be ready to drop August 1, 1945. Also, at least two months before Yalta, General Douglas MacArthur and his staff had correctly concluded that Japan was nearing collapse.
The official Yalta Papers make clear that Stalin had planned from the start to locate the Big Three Conference on his own territory so he could dominate it. Alternative sites considered had included Scotland, Alaska, Athens, Cyprus, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome, and the French Riviera.
Winston Churchill commented that “If we had spent ten years on research we could not have found a worse place in the world than Yalta. … It is good for typhus and deadly lice which thrive in these parts.”
Obviously, the typhus and lice were not the only “bugs” at Yalta. Our diplomats should be constantly on guard against all kinds when they meet with the Soviets.
