At the first gathering of the “Big Three” Allied powers in the wake of Germany's defeat in World War II, there was “no bubbling overflow of talk at luncheons and dinners in the intervals between the appointed meetings, as there had been at their earlier summits,” writes historian Herbert Feis. The presence of a common enemy and a formidable common task—vanquishing the Nazi war machine—had drawn the Soviet Union into a powerful “Grand Alliance” with her sworn capitalist enemies, the United States and Great Britain.
But now, Roosevelt, the charming patrician who had so effectively served as buffer between the loquacious and combative Churchill and the gruff, cryptic Stalin, had died. His replacement was his former vice president, Harry S Truman. Unfortunately, the haberdasher-turned-politician from Missouri had been kept almost entirely out of the picture on war policy in general, and on the delicate matter of negotiations with the Russians in particular. Truman had no previous experience with foreign affairs beyond his exemplary service as a World War I captain of artillery.
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