Stalin offered one of his typically forceful resolutions: (1) to accept “agreement in principle that Germany should be dismembered; (2) to charge a commission of the Foreign Ministers to work out the details; and (3) to add to the surrender terms a clause stating that Germany would be dismembered without giving any details.” He thought that announcing dismemberment in advance “would facilitate acceptance by the whole German people of what was in store for them.”59
On February 6 the foreign ministers reported their agreement with Stalin’s addition to the surrender document, a point glossed over in the Soviet records.60 Some Americans cooled about breaking up the defeated country and, like the British, began to realize that it would be in their interests to have “economically healthy democracies.”61
Up to the present day and contrary to the evidence, respected Russian historians incorrectly assert that “it is well known that Stalin did not share the ideas of the Western Allies to dismember Germany.”62 He was actually a hawk on that score, but once again his remarks at Yalta are not included in the published Soviet record of the meeting.63 Instead of formalizing their agreement, the leaders sent the matter to a new commission on dismembering Germany that commenced its work that March in London.64
The Russian minutes do not make reference to these demands, presumably because by the time they were published, Soviet aims had changed. They were now in favor of keeping Germany whole—in order, in due time, to dominate it all. Erasing part of the record, standard Stalinist practice, might help to avoid their being seen as in league with the evildoers bent on wiping the defeated country from the map.
The Allies settled on dividing Germany into three zones, with some of East Prussia going to Poland and part given outright to the Soviet Union. Discussion turned to whether France should get a zone of occupation. Stalin said that it should not and echoed his claim in 1940 that the French had “opened the gates to the enemy.” However, Churchill was correct that if France was excluded and the United States was unwilling to stay in Europe “for more than two years,” as FDR had said, then Britain would be alone in facing down a possibly resurgent Germany. Stalin agreed to let the French have a zone when the other two said it could be carved out of what was allocated to the United States and Britain.
Austria would also be divided into zones, although there was consensus that it should become an independent state again. Stalin was not particularly interested in exerting permanent influence there, but the Soviets would seek to extract the maximum reparations from their zone. The Americans were initially aloof about even participating in the occupation of Austria.65
Ambassador Ivan Maisky had drawn up a report on reparations on Stalin’s orders, according to which German heavy industry would be cut by 80 percent and all factories “useful only for military purposes” removed. A Soviet-American proposal was eventually signed that foresaw a reparations bill totaling $20 billion, of which 50 percent would go to the USSR; the other countries would receive payments in accordance with their losses and their contributions to victory.66
Britain did not wish to set specific figures, and Churchill recalled what happened after the First World War, when the victors “indulged themselves with fantastic reparations figures.” He began worrying about the specter of eighty million starving Germans and concluded that “if you wished a horse to pull a wagon,” then “you would have to give it fodder.” Stalin retorted that “care should be taken to see that the horse did not turn around and kick you.” Roosevelt also opposed heavy reparations and said that the victors should try not “to kill the people.”67
The president knew Maisky and afterward said to him: “Well, you surprised me with your humility, because with your huge losses and the destruction I was expecting you would ask for $50 billion.” The ambassador responded that he would have been happy to seek $100 billion but knew that the Soviet people did not entertain “baseless fantasies.” The matter, consigned to the Moscow Reparations Commission, was one of many issues never resolved. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union would insist on and get substantial payments in money and kind from various defeated nations.68
The main session on February 6 worked at establishing the United Nations, a priority for Roosevelt. Perhaps knowing how committed the president was, Stalin proved flexible. Indeed, in a speech in 1944 on the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, he had said that he wanted such an international body to maintain the postwar peace.69 At Yalta, without much pressure, he reduced the number of additional seats he claimed in the UN on behalf of the USSR to Ukraine and Byelorussia. He was against having to “submit” to the judgment of small countries and felt that the three major victorious ones should play the dominant role. They finally agreed to the great powers’ veto, which has remained in effect for the UN Security Council. A founding conference was called for San Francisco, to open on April 25, 1945.70
Meanwhile Yalta had to face the thorny Polish question again, and the Big Three agreed that the USSR’s borders would move westward to the so-called Curzon Line. The Poles would be compensated by getting a large strip of eastern Germany and some of East Prussia. Everyone at the conference knew Stalin had the upper hand. In the last three decades, he said, German armies had attacked the USSR via Poland because that country was weak. Now, using Roosevelt’s own words, he wanted to block the way with a “strong, independent and democratic Poland.” What he was after, of course, was a dependent Communist dictatorship.
Stalin maintained that the Red Army was prepared to fight on against Germany, to pay in blood, in order to gain enough to compensate Poland in the west for the land it would lose to the USSR in the east. The Soviet leader disingenuously stated that it was up to the Poles to create their own government and that no one should command them to appear at the conference and be told what to do. “I am called a dictator and not a democrat,” Stalin quipped, “but I have enough democratic feeling to refuse to create a Polish government without the Poles being consulted.” He claimed that, in his view, the two Polish factions had to get together, and for the record he added that all he was seeking for his own country was security. As we have already seen, he was after a great deal more.71
In later sessions, the Big Three talked about free elections in Poland and the status of the Polish government-in-exile. Stalin pretended to yield here and there, for example, by agreeing to include some Poles from abroad in the new government. He confided to Beria, the head of his secret police, however, that he had “not moved one inch.”72
The “good news” was conveyed to Poland, where it was played up as a victory. The Red Army in Warsaw at the end of the month reported that the population was supposedly grateful, with many wondering how they could get a portrait of Stalin.73
Yalta also recognized the agreement worked out by Josip Broz Tito, president of the National Committee of Liberation of Yugoslavia with Ivan Šubašić, the prime minister of the Royal Yugoslav government. The Big Three recommended that the two leaders form a new government, which was announced out of the blue at Yalta on February 12. Tito had not even been informed about the conference and would soon enough demonstrate his independent streak. He and his followers resisted the terms dictated to their country by the Allies, not least the Soviet Union.74