Shattered Peace [antikvár]

Russia and the Balkans! It's already an old story, part of our new lore. The repression of German aggressiveness has been or is about to be accomplished forever, hut in the meantime pan-Slavism has been mobilized in the interest of world Marxist revolution. — Maynard Barnes (formerly U.S. minister to Bulgaria), October 1947 ' Prologue: The New Lore Roosevelt was the first to arrive. His plane set down on the icy runway at the airport at Saki, on the Crimean peninsula of the Soviet Union, just after noon on February 3, 1945. It had taken nine hours to fly the 1400 miles from the Mediterranean island of Malta, where he had rendezvoused briefly with Churchill the day before. Roosevelt sat in his plane for twenty minutes until the aircraft bearing the Prime Minister landed. The two Westerners then emerged, to be greeted by a Red Army band and a delegation of high Soviet officials. Roosevelt and Churchill left Saki by car. They drove across the Crimea for more than five hours on a newly paved road, which was guarded by an endless line of soldiers, and which twisted through terrain only recently liberated from the Germans. Later Churchill would remember how sudden was the change as they descended from the chilly, snow-covered mountains toward the coast at Yalta and into the "warm and brilliant sunshine and a most genial climate." Stalin arrived at Yalta the next morning, traveling most of the way from Moscow by train. The weather remained unseasonably mild through the week that followed. The Russians called it "Roosevelt weather," for it matched the mood of the conference. With victory and the end of the war already in sight, the three leaders were meeting to lay the groundwork for what they hoped