The Yalta Conference

The February 1945 Yalta Conference was the second wartime meeting of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the conference, the three leaders agreed to demand Germany’s unconditional surrender and began plans for a post-war world. Stalin also agreed to permit free elections in Eastern Europe and to enter the Asian war against Japan, for which he was promised the return of lands lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Although most of these agreements were initially kept secret, the revelations of the conference particulars became controversial after Soviet-American wartime cooperation degenerated into the Cold War.

The Yalta Conference was a meeting of British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt early in February 1945 as WW2 was winding down. The leaders agreed to require Germany’s unconditional surrender and to set up in the conquered nation four zones of occupation to be run by their three countries and France. They scheduled another meeting for April in San Francisco to create the United Nations. Stalin also agreed to permit free elections in Eastern Europe and to enter the Asian war against Japan. In turn, he was promised the return of lands lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. At the time, most of these agreements were kept secret.

Yalta became controversial after Soviet-American wartime cooperation degenerated into the cold war. Stalin broke his promise of free elections in Eastern Europe and installed governments dominated by the Soviet Union. Then American critics charged that Roosevelt, who died two months after the conference, had “sold out” to the Soviets at Yalta.

The Yalta Conference is commonly considered one of the starting points for the Cold War, as it was the base of many hostilities for the U.S. towards the Soviet Union. It was over the issue of the postwar status of Poland, however, that the animosity and mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union that would characterize the Cold War were most readily apparent. Soviet troops were already in control of Poland, a procommunist provisional government had already been established, and Stalin was adamant that Russia’s interests in that nation be recognized. The United States and Great Britain believed that the London-based noncommunist Polish government-in-exile was most representative of the Polish people. The final agreement merely declared that a “more broadly based” government should be established in Poland. Free elections to determine Poland’s future were called for sometime in the future. Many U.S. officials were disgusted with the agreement, which they believed condemned Poland to a communist future. Roosevelt, however, felt that he could do no more at the moment, since the Soviet army was occupying Poland.

As the Cold War became a reality in the years that followed the Yalta Conference, many critics of Roosevelt’s foreign policy accused him of “selling out” at the meeting and naively letting Stalin have his way. It seems doubtful, however, that Roosevelt had much choice. He was able to secure Russian participation in the war against Japan (Russia declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945), established the basic principles of the United Nations, and did as much as possible to settle the Poland issue. With World War II still raging, his primary interest was in maintaining the Grand Alliance. He believed that troublesome political issues could be postponed and solved after the war. Unfortunately, Roosevelt never got that chance—almost exactly two months after the end of the conference, Roosevelt suffered a stroke and died.

Benito Mussolini

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) rose to power in the wake of World War I as a leading proponent of Fascism. Originally a revolutionary Socialist, he forged the paramilitary Fascist movement in 1919 and became prime minister in 1922. Mussolini’s military expenditures in Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Albania made Italy predominant in the Mediterranean region, though they exhausted his armed forces by the late 1930’s. Mussolini allied himself with Hitler, relying on the German dictator to prop up his leadership during WW2, but he was killed shortly after the German surrender in Italy in 1945.

Benito Mussolini’s self-confessed “thirst for military glory” battled his acute intelligence, psychological acumen, and political shrewdness for control over his military policies. Originally a revolutionary Socialist, he abandoned his party to advocate Italian intervention in WW1. Following the war, in which he served as a rifleman, Mussolini decided his destiny was to rule Italy as a modern Caesar and re-create the Roman Empire. He forged the paramilitary Fascist movement in 1919-1921, using it to march on Rome, become prime minister, and then to seize dictatorial power (1925-1926). By subduing Libya (1922-1932), pacifying Somalia (1923-1927), conquering Ethiopia (1935-1936), helping the Nationalists win the Spanish civil war (1936-1939), and seizing Albania (April 1939), Mussolini made Italy predominant in the Mediterranean-Red Sea region. But his military adventures in 1935-1939 left his armed forces exhausted.

National poverty, resource deficiencies, and scientific-industrial weakness, combined with inflexible commanders, plagued the Italian forces. The king, Victor Emmanuel III, provided monarchist officers with an authority figure to impede Mussolini’s dominance of the armed services. An air power enthusiast, Mussolini did create an innovative, Fascist-minded air force. It performed well over Ethiopia and Spain but lagged technologically after 1935. Mussolini promoted Fascists to leadership positions and sponsored some new army thinking in the 1930s. But bitter interservice rivalry crippled joint planning. Mussolini lacked the understanding and power to solve these problems. Thus, he pursued his imperial dreams with politically, strategically, and doctrinally incoherent forces.

Wishful thinking, megalomania, and Fascist ideology gradually overwhelmed Mussolini’s common sense. He interpreted diplomatic victories over Britain and France during the Ethiopian and Spanish wars (1935-1939) as proof of his military genius. Because of his parents’ and older brother’s short lives, Mussolini expected to die young but considered himself uniquely capable of leading Italy to greatness. Therefore he perceived a fleeting historical opportunity (1935-1945) for spectacular Italian aggrandizement by pitting Fascist-Nazi power against French-British decadence. Mussolini decided to gamble for a Mediterranean-African empire through war with the west. Winning Caesarian glory would gain him the prestige necessary to abolish the monarchy and create a truly totalitarian state.

After the Allied victories of November 1942, Mussolini implored Hitler to make peace with Ioseph Dzhugashvili(a.k.a. Joseph Stalin) and concentrate on defeating the British-American forces. Hitler’s refusal and the Sicilian invasion convinced the king and high command to overthrow Mussolini in July 1943. Hitler rescued him, installing Mussolini as puppet dictator of northern Italy in September. Mussolini facilitated significant war production for the Germans and the creation of large, ruthless Fascist counterinsurgency forces. The April 1945 German surrender in Italy forced Mussolini to flee. Insurgents captured and shot him.

5) The Heist of the Century

Lt. Colonel Montagu “Monty” Reaney Chidson, officially a military attaché during the war, was actually an operative for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI-6 (you know, like James Bond, except without gadgets or gals). He was stationed in Den Hague—The Hague—when Germany invaded the country. Fortunately, the well informed Chidson had been expecting Hitler’s move. He immediately put his top secret operation in motion: to prevent the Nazis from getting their hands on the huge, valuable cache of diamonds held in Amsterdam, he’d have to steal them himself.

Several weeks prior, he’d acquired a key to the main entrance of the Amsterdam diamond market. Now he traveled to the city wearing civilian clothes—which would have gotten him shot as a spy if caught by the enemy—and entered the empty, unguarded building. Although he didn’t have the vault combination, his intelligence gathering had netted a few clues so he set to work. Twenty-four hours later, the door still wasn’t open. Worse, he heard German soldiers in the building, very likely coming to take the diamonds themselves.

Chidson persisted despite the danger. Finally, when it seemed capture was imminent, the vault yielded. He grabbed the entire stock of diamonds and escaped. Despite the invading German army, he managed to flee to England, where he turned the diamonds over to the exiled Queen Wilhelmina.

4) The Traitor on Air

With our modern emphasis on television and the Internet, it can be difficult for us to envision a world where one of the most important factors in obtaining news and entertainment inside the home was the radio, which became a new tool utilized by the Allied and Axis powers to demoralize citizens and soldiers alike.

As the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels used the airwaves and a specially selected group of foreign broadcasters to sow doubt and confusion among Allied forces and in enemy countries. For example, Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) encouraged British soldiers to desert. Tokyo Rose tried to One of the American recruits for German State Radio was Mr. Guess Who, the on-air alias of journalist Robert Henry Best, who called himself the “self appointed correspondent for the New World Order.”

He didn’t keep his alias long. His program, Best’s Berlin Broadcasts sent Nazi socialist propaganda from Berlin to the United States and to American soldiers in the field twice a day. Though he didn’t consider himself a Nazi, he was viciously anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, anti-government, and hated President Roosevelt. He attempted to incite class hatred. Best’s broadcasts were so abusive and vitriolic (he coined the phrase, the “Jewnited States”) that even his Nazi supervisors couldn’t stomach him, and he was taken off the air.

In the United States, Best was convicted of treason against the U.S. After the war in 1948, he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. He served only four years before suffering brain damage in 1951 and dying in 1952.

3) Hallelujah it’s Raining Sheep!

During Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia when Italian troops desperately needed supplies during their march across the Danakil desert, a unique solution saved them from death in a region considered the “cruelest place on earth”—a flying supply column that provided the men with everything they needed, including fresh meat.

The need for speed meant the troops carried minimal baggage, so water, ammunition, and other supplies were dropped by the Italian Air Force utilizing twenty-five planes. Army issue meat rations, however, would have spoiled in the deadly heat. Some genius at military headquarters came up with the idea of strapping sheep and a few bulls into modified harnesses and parachuting them to the soldiers, who could do their own butchering.

The plan worked like a charm.

2) Military Marvel

During the war, the Italians came up with clever ideas such as the “human” or manned torpedo and the EMB, or explosive motorboat. Essentially a boat filled with high explosives, the Italian weapon would be driven at high speed toward a target and the pilot bail out shortly before impact. The British developed their own version, but decided to up the ante: they’d drop their “boom patrol boat” from an aircraft—pilot, explosive payload, and all—to parachute into an enemy harbor. But first, someone had to test the new device.

That intrepid volunteer was Captain David Cox. While the test boat wasn’t filled with explosives, just the equivalent weight of the intended load, the mission was still dangerous. No one had ever done such a thing before. When the time came, Cox was strapped into the device, which was loaded into an RAF Lancaster. The plane flew over Devon to the testing area, the bomb bay doors opened, and the prototype launched successfully.

The parachutes deployed. Cox became the only man during the war to splash down from an airplane while inside a boat. Ultimately, the British War Department decided not to employ the device in battle.

1) Bathroom Troubles

Relieving oneself aboard a submerged submarine doesn’t differ from the usual dry land procedure, but getting rid of the resulting waste is much, much more complicated, requiring advanced technology and the training of personnel to operate the equipment. Unfortunately for the crew of German U-1206, a systems failure was the beginning of unlucky events that would lead to four deaths.

The original toilet or “head” developed for U-boats was a two-valve system that only worked during shallow dives. The newest VIIC U-boats like U-1206 were outfitted with new toilets with a high pressure valve rigged for deep water dives.

On April 14, 1945, while patrolling at 200 feet, 10 miles off Scotland’s coast under the command of Karl-Adolph Schlitt, an improperly flushed toilet aboard U-1206 malfunctioned and began flooding the compartment with sewage and salt water. The water leaked into the batteries, creating deadly chlorine gas. The captain was forced to surface the submarine.

While repairs were being made, U-1206 was spotted by British patrols and fired upon. The captain burned his orders and scuttled the boat. One crewman died in the attack, and three others drowned. Forty-six other crewmen were captured.