At least in the European theater, the end of the World War II was in sight by the time President Franklin D. Roosevelt prepared to attend the important meeting of “Big Three” Allied leaders at Yalta from February 4 to 11, 1945….Roosevelt was suffering from the serious circulatory problems that sapped his strength during the last year of his life; but according to Charles Bohlen and other American officials who accompanied him to Yalta, the president’s illness did not affect significantly his conduct of diplomacy.
Roosevelt was under substantial domestic pressure to obtain at Yalta a commitment to a postwar world based on such high-minded ideals as self-determination for all peoples and trust in a new international organization to keep the pace. More precisely, according to a growing chorus of criticism in the press and in Congress, the president needed to insure that Russia would participate in the war against Japan after Germany was defeated, that it would not try to dominate Poland and other East European nations, and that it would participate enthusiastically in the proposed United Nations.
Roosevelt was well aware by the beginning of 1945 that these and other demands could not be achieved completely and would require compromises, but he limited his public statements in 1944 and early 1945 to optimistic generalities. Although this approach may well have lessened public disillusionment with Allied relations during wartime, it added to the pressure on the president to maintain at least the appearance of unity between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union.
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