Meeting of the Big Three in Yalta. On February 4, 1945, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin met in Yalta, a Ukrainian city on the Black Sea. During the second and more difficult conference, the three allies reached a compromise on the new postwar world order and discussed the military implications of the war against Japan. With victory over the Germans imminent, the three leaders decided to divide Germany into occupation zones. Roosevelt, weakened (he died two months later), was especially committed to involving Stalin in the war against Japan. Stalin agreed, but only after being promised an occupation zone in Korea and possession, after the war, of territories historically disputed between Russia and Japan. The Soviet entry into the Pacific War hastened the Japanese surrender, but Roosevelt was later accused of having made too many concessions to Stalin with the Yalta agreements and of having ceded Eastern Europe and North Korea to communist control. Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing in the Yalta agreements in particular that prevents Italy, Turkey, Iran, and Greece from spontaneously joining the socialist camp.
