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The '''Yalta Conference''' was the meeting in [[February]] of 1945, the last year of [[World War II]], between [[President]] [[Franklin Roosevelt]], [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics|Soviet]] Premier [[Joseph Stalin]] and [[Great Britain|British]] [[Prime Minister]] [[Winston Churchill]] (the big three) at [[Yalta]] on the [[Crimea]]n Peninsula in the USSR. The conference was held at the Livadia Palace, a former summer home of the [[Tsar|Tsars]] s in the Crimea. It opened [[February]] 4, 1945. the chief questions were : *(1) the adoption of the [[Dumbarton Oaks]] plan for the United Nations, *(2) the conditions of the approaching German surrender, *(3) the treatment of [[Poland ]] and the other liberated countries.  It was during this conference that Roosevelt saw a significant decrease in his health. Upon his return to the [[United States]], he soon became very ill and died in April. The agreement was drafted by Sir [[Gladwyn Jebb]], representing Great BritianBritain, [[Andrei Gromyko]], representing the Soviet Union, and [[Alger Hiss]], representing the United States.<ref>''While You Slept: Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It'', John T. Flynn, New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1951, [http://www.mises.org/books/whileyouslept.pdf pg. 148] pdf.</ref>

Roosevelt agreed that the Kurile Islands would be handed to [[Russia]], as well as southern Sakhalin Island, internationalization of the Port of Dairen ([[Dalian]]), the lease of Port Arthur (Lushun) as a naval base and joint operation of the Chinese Eastern Railway and South Manchuria Railway. <ref>Byrnes, op.cit., p. 32. pg. 43.</ref>

On the eve of Yalta conference the Japanese Foreign Minister asked the Russian Ambassador in Tokyo about the possibility of arranging for a settlement. Stalin did not communicate this to either Roosevelt of or Churchill.<ref>''While You Slept: Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It'', John T. Flynn, New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1951, [http://www.mises.org/books/whileyouslept.pdf pg. 168] pdf.</ref>

==[[Operation Keelhaul]]==

{{Cquote|In their own countries Roosevelt and Churchill are honored as embodiments of statesmanlike wisdom. To us, in our Russian prison conversations, their consistent shortsightedness and stupidity stood out as astonishingly obvious. How could they, in their decline from 1941 to 1945, fail to secure any guarantees whatever of the independence of Eastern Europe? How could they give away broad regions of Saxony and Thuringia in exchange for the preposterous toy of a four-zone Berlin, their own future Achilles' heel? And what was the military or political sense in their surrendering to destruction at Stalin's hands hundreds of thousands of armed Soviet citizens determined not to surrender? They say it was the price they paid for Stalin's agreeing to enter the war against Japan. With the [[atom bomb]] already in their hands, they paid Stalin for not refusing to occupy Manchuria, for strengthening [[Mao Tse-tung]] in China, and for giving [[Kim Il Sung]] control of half Korea! What bankruptcy of political thought! And when subsequently, the Russians pushed out [[/World_War_IIWorld War II#War_in_Europe_1944War in Europe 1944|Mikolajczyk]], when [[Benes]] and [[Masaryk]] came to their ends, when [[Berlin Airlift|Berlin was blockaded]], and Budapest flamed and fell silent, and Korea went up in smoke, and Britain’s Conservatives [[Suez Crisis|fled Suez]], could one really beleive that those among them with the most accurate memories did not at least recall that episode of the [[Operation Keelhaul|Cossacks]]? <ref>''Gulag Archipelago'', Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1956, Part I. Chap. 4., pg. 258 fn. 12</ref><ref>[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0495a.asp Repatriation — The Dark Side of World War II], Part 3