John Lukacs

What Happened at Yalta?

 

The invitation to give a talk at the Central European University while I am in Budapest was sprung upon me only a week ago by the American Embassy.
After a pause I thought I might as well talk of something about which there are so many legends both in the United States and in Europe, including Hungary. That is, this dreadful thing, Yalta, and the division of Europe. About this I will have a fair amount to say, necessarily briefly but, I hope, not superficially. I shall try to proceed from what it was that happened to when it happened, to how it happened, to why it happened.
The first legend that I - and you - must dismiss is that the division of Europe, particularly so far as Hungary was concerned, took place at Yalta in February 1945. At Yalta, the first item on President Roosevelt's agenda was to get the Soviet Union into the United Nations, about to be founded at a conference in San Francisco in April 1945. The idea of the United Nations, of a new and better edition of the League of Nations, which had been Woodrow Wilson's brainchild, was very high on Roosevelt's agenda. The first thing he wanted to achieve, which he thus achieved, was the entry of the Soviet Union into the United Nations. (At Stalin's request, because of the contribution of the Soviet Union to the war, the Ukraine and White Russia would also be granted individual membership to the United Nations.)
The second important matter was to convince Stalin to enter the war against Japan. Japan and the Soviet Union were not at war; they had concluded a nonaggression treaty. Roosevelt and Stalin agreed that Russia would enter the war against Japan three months after the end of the war against Germany. Stalin kept his promise to the word: he went to war with Japan three months after the German surrender. That was very important to Roosevelt, for two reasons. One: there was as yet no American atom bomb, nor was one surely in sight. Nobody knew whether an atom bomb would be perfected and contribute to the defeat of Japan. The American Joint Chiefs of Staff in February 1945 thought that the invasion of Japan might cost as many as 600,000 American lives. In exchange for his promise Stalin got back just about everything that Tsarist Russia had lost in 1904-1905 in the Russo-Japanese war. Roosevelt, rapidly aging and ill, was satisfied with this. Of lesser priority, though occupying much time during the conference, was Churchill's desperate hope to save something for Poland. Poland occupied a large part of the British agenda. (Roosevelt was somewhat bored with the subject.) Some small compromises were made about the composition of a future Polish government. Churchill achieved one thing at the conference - understand that his powers were very limited - this was the inclusion of France as one of the five great powers. He was already looking at the balance of power in Europe at that time, in giving France an occupation zone in Germany. This he was able to achieve, despite Roosevelt's and Stalin's distaste for it.
Last on the Yalta agenda, both in sequence and in order of importance, was the so-called Declaration of Liberation of Europe. This, about which I'll have something to say a little later, is what we, Hungarians, regard as the most important matter. Unfortunately it was very far from that.
Such is a very imperfect summing up of what was discussed at Yalta. Understand that, with the exception of Poland, there was nearly nothing said about anything in Eastern Europe. There was not a word said about Hungary at Yalta.
What is more interesting is that not much was said about Germany either, in spite of the fact that the war was coming to a close. The Russian, American and British armies had already entered Germany. It was evident that the rather senseless Morgenthau Plan, which Roosevelt had accepted in August-September, 1944, was already about to be abandoned. More important: the zoning of Germany, which amounted to the division of Germany, and thus to the division of Europe, had been accepted by the three Great Powers well before Yalta.

This is what happened, and when it happened. And that when is very important. Consider that the Yalta documents were signed and the conference disbanded on the very days Buda fell, 11-13 February in 1945. Consider that not only Hungary but almost all of Eastern Europe was already overrun by the Russian armies. No matter how Churchill tried to do something about Poland, by February 1945 almost all of Poland was occupied by Russian armies. Yalta, in essence, had little to do with the division of Europe - the division of Europe was an accomplished fact by February 1945.
To this I must add that the two principal personages at the Yalta conference were Roosevelt and Stalin. Churchill's reputation was still very high. He enjoyed considerable prestige; but prestige and power, though intimately related, are not the same things. There has to be a certain balance between prestige and power. By 1945 the British contribution to the war had become limited. Three-fourths of the armies involved in the war against Germany in the West were American, only one-fourth British - not to speak of the fact that Britain was weary and financially impoverished. We have seen that there was an actual division, a geographical partition of the Far East between Russia and America in which Churchill played no part. And if we can speak of a division of Europe at all, that occured mostly (though not entirely) between America and Russia, between Roosevelt and Stalin. That division of Europe was achieved not only symbolically but militarily in April 1945, five days before Hitler's suicide (and thirteen days after Roosevelt's death). Even before the surrender of Germany, in the middle of Germany, on the Elbe River near Torgau, only about 30 miles from Wittenberg, where Luther had started the Reformation, American and Russian troops met in the middle of Europe. Among these American and Russian troops that met in a friendly celebration on the 25th of April 1945, there must have been some Americans who had come from the Pacific shores of the United States; and there probably were some Russians who had come from the Russian Far East. They had come all the way across two thirds of the globe to meet in the middle of Germany, and of Europe, as the division of Europe was becoming accomplished.
At that time Churchill was the only statesman who worried about the Russians, and who attempted to correct this division of Europe after President Roosevelt had died. Churchill was aware of something of which Stalin was also aware (of which most Americans and many intellectuals are still not aware): that the question was not Communism or Democracy; that that was but a consequence of whose armies would stand where and when. Meanwhile the collapse of Germany took place so rapidly that when Germany surrendered in May 1945, British and American troops actually stood within what later became, or what was already agreed upon, as the Russian zone of Germany. Another legend is the notion that in 1944 Churchill wanted a Balkan invasion to anticipate the Russians in Eastern Europe. There is some truth in it, but not enough. He wanted to save Greece, which he was able to do. Another legend, that Churchill wanted to get into Berlin and Vienna and Prague to precede the Russians, is also only partly correct. The main opposition to that came from President Roosevelt and, later, from the American military. Churchill tried, especially for the sake of Poland, to convince the otherwise very able and brave new President Harry Truman not to withdraw the American and British troops to the zonal boundaries, unless the Russians were to make some concessions. But this was in May and June; the Americans did not agree; and perhaps it would not have been very useful even if they had.

Now I come to the main thread of my short talk - that Yalta and the division of Europe were two things. The division of Europe had already taken place before Yalta - in some cases, more than a year before Yalta. It went through two or three stages. The first was an agreement between the Americans, British and Russians, actually accomplished by a commission of relatively low rank, the European Advisory Commission in 1944 - not by prime ministers and not by foreign ministers but by commissions and diplomats beneath them. I refer to their agreement about the zoning of Germany. As early as in the Spring of 1944, the commission decided that Germany would be divided into three zones, an American zone, a British zone and a Russian zone (as noted, the French were not included at that stage). Berlin in the middle would be occupied symbolically by all three powers. There was a historic precedent to this - and the Russians accepted it. For this was how the Allied Powers had decided to occupy France after Waterloo: temporarily occupied by Prussian, Russian, British and Austrian troops. The then 18 arrondissements of Paris divided into four, with a rotating governor of the city. In 1915 the Allies planned much the same for Constantinople. Now, in 1944, they came back to this. They regarded this military division of Germany as temporary. However, as a clever Frenchman once said many hundreds of years ago, so much that is temporary tends to become permanent. One interesting thing about the European Advisory Commission in 1944 is that the Russians asked the Americans to occupy a larger portion of Germany. President Roosevelt was much worried about American isolationist sentiment, about keeping American troops in Europe for an extended time instead, only as long as was absolutely necessary. The British asked the Americans to take a larger zone in Germany; so did the Russians! Thus this zoning of Germany was agreed upon even before the invasion of Western Europe by the Western Allies in June 1944. This is very telling since well before June 1944 who could tell where the different armies would meet? It was conceivable that the Russians and the British and the Americans would meet somewhere along the Rhine. What is interesting is that (also before Yalta) the European Advisory Commission also agreed on the division of Austria. The zoning of Austria was along the same lines. There would be a Russian, an American and a British (and eventually a French) zone. Vienna would be occupied by the four powers. The Russian zone of Austria was not large, only two of the eight provinces of Austria. As you know, in Germany, unlike in Austria, these zones eventually hardened into permanence. That was the beginning and, in some ways, the completion of the division of Europe, many months before Yalta.
Another matter about which there are legends was the Percentages Agreement by Churchill and Stalin in October 1944. Again this preceded Yalta by about four months. Churchill had indeed earlier tried to convince the Americans to extend the American and British campaign in Italy so that towards the end of the war British and American troops would enter Slovenia and Croatia, and perhaps even a portion of Western Hungary, moving towards Vienna. By October 1944 he knew that this was impossible. So he wanted to save what was possible. That is why he went to Moscow. (Again it was a tragic Hungarian coincidence that this occurred when the Hungarian attempt to conclude a separate armistice collapsed in October 1944.) Churchill and Stalin agreed that Greece would be in the British, and not in the Russian zone of influence - this despite the fact that Greece and Yugoslavia were the only Balkan countries where there was a very strong Communist underground. It is telling that at Yalta Stalin congratulated Churchill on his success - that is, on the suppression of the Communists in Greece. When anything was brought up at or after Yalta about Poland, Stalin retorted that he kept his word about Greece. He understood something that Churchill understood, but, alas, many people did not, then or later! This was that the issue was not Communism, it was whose armies would be where at the end of the war. Stalin knew that. The Declaration of Liberated Europe consisted of a few words. He knew that they meant little. He was not interfering with anything that happened in the West; "they" would not interfere with anything happening in the East. Sometime later he actually said to a visiting Yugoslav politician: what is ours is ours, what is theirs is theirs. This was much in accord with traditional Russian statecraft. That was how he understood the division of Europe. He knew that the Western allies had some reason to be suspicious, especially about Poland. But Stalin was suspicious, too, soon after Yalta. He had a few reasons: in Italy the American secret services had begun to negotiate with a German SS general about a German surrender in Northern Italy, without telling the Russians much about it. I repeat, "What is ours is ours, what is theirs is theirs." This is how Stalin understood the division of Europe.

The British understood this perhaps better than the Americans; but they thought they had no power to do much, if anything about it. If there was any kind of an American idea (and there was, not among the military who were very pro-Russian at that time, but among the more intelligent people in the State Department), it was the hope that the Declaration of Liberation of Europe meant that throughout Europe, including the part of Europe occupied by the Russians, and thus Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, there would be obviously pro-Russian governments but not fully Communist ones. That this was not an impossible proposition is shown by the case of Finland. Finland fell within the Russian sphere of Europe; but Stalin, for complicated reasons into which I shall not go, permitted a Finland that was pro-Russian in its foreign policy but not Communist. If the Western powers, and especially the United States, had been more direct and precise about interpreting that vague Declaration of Liberation of Europe, this Finnish example could have perhaps been applied - not everywhere, but here and there - in Eastern Europe. This did not happen. What happened, I repeat, is that by the time of Yalta the division of Europe was an accomplished fact.
Churchill foresaw this even before Russia entered the war, before Hitler invaded Russia in 1941. He saw only two alternatives. Either all of Europe would be ruled by Germany, or the eastern part of Europe would be ruled by Russia, and to lose half of Europe - from the British point of view, the far side of Europe - was better than to lose it all. To this I would add that throughout his life Churchill had nothing but contempt for communism. This does not belong within the scope of my talk, but he also foresaw - amazingly - that communism in Eastern Europe would not last long. In November 1944, General de Gaulle said to him that the Americans are inexperienced, look what the Americans are doing, they are letting half of Europe go to the Russians. Churchill answered, yes, you are right. Russia is now like a hungry wolf amidst a flock of sheep. But after the meal comes the problem of digestion. Churchill foresaw that the Russians would not be able to digest Eastern Europe.
But this is not the principal argument of my talk, which is that the division of Europe preceded Yalta. It continued after Yalta. The Second World War was followed by the so-called Cold War, which ended in 1989. A great many people still understand the Cold War as the struggle between communism and capitalism, or totalitarianism against freedom. Not really: the Cold War was between, principally, the United States and Russia. I have often thought that the Cold War as such developed because of a mutual, a reciprocal misunderstanding. Having seen how Stalin established his power in Eastern Europe (which he thought he had to, as he knew the Communists were the only people who would serve him without reservations), many people thought that the Red tide, whatever that was, would now spread into Western Germany, Italy and France, and that after the victory of Communism in Eastern Europe, Communism would spread into Western Europe; that Stalin wanted to conquer Western Europe - which was not the case. Stalin thought: with this Declaration of Liberation of Europe the Americans let me have Eastern Europe.
Now they are beginning to make noises about politicians, democrats, cardinals, so forth; they are sending agents into Eastern Europe; the Americans, who won the war easily, who possess the atom bomb, who rule Western and Southern Europe, are now beginning to challenge Russia in Eastern Europe - which also was not the case. But such is history, such are the misunderstandings between great powers - misconceptions of reality which are essentially not very different from the misunderstandings and misconceptions that exist between people in all walks of life.
These are not speculations: what happened was very important; and so was when it happened; why it happened; how it happened. Once in a while I disappoint my fellow historians because of my conviction that history consists of words, not of facts - of words in the sense that there is no fact that can be separated from the wording of it. So if we say - and this is a question of words - that Churchill and Roosevelt handed Eastern Europe to Stalin on a platter, there is some truth in such a phrase but not enough. If we say Roosevelt and Churchill allowed Stalin to have a free hand in Eastern Europe, there is more truth in it, but still not quite enough, because "allowed" isn't quite right either. Is it true that among other things Yalta meant the division of Europe, or that it crystallised it? There is some truth there. But allow me not to amuse you but to conclude with something that is my conviction, concerning more than Yalta, but life, human nature, the world we live in. There was an old Irish woman whose neighbours gathered for tea and asked her, "Is this true about the young widow at the end of the village?" And she said, "It's not true, but it's true enough." I have often told my students that the historian should approach matters in the opposite way: there are many things in history that may be true but they are not true enough. And the claim that Yalta sealed the division of Europe.

 

John Lukacs
is a Budapest-born historian, living and teaching in the U.S. since 1946. His books include Budapest 1900 (1988), Confessions of an Original Sinner (1990), The Duel (1990), The End of the Twentieth Century - The End of the Modern Age (1993) and A Thread of Years (1999). This is the edited text of a lecture delivered at the Central European University, Budapest, on June 1, 2005.