The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War

Meanwhile, Stalin had arrived in Yalta and was staying at the Koreiz Villa, which he had renovated to include a bomb shelter. His aides had kept him continuously informed about the British and American delegations’ movements, and confirmed the rumors that President Roosevelt was sick. Stalin arrived at Vorontsov palace early, leaving the British Delegation scrambling to meet him in time; Sarah Churchill completely missed his arrival. He had a brief conversation with PM Churchill in his “Map Room,” in which he tracked the Allies’ military progress, and then left for his meeting with President Roosevelt (121).

Roosevelt felt strongly that he had established a “strong personal rapport” with the Soviet dictator and only wanted a translator present at the meeting (122). At their meeting, Roosevelt tried to build on this rapport by hinting that he and Stalin saw eye-to-eye. He encouraged Stalin to revisit his idea that the Allies should execute all of the officers in the German army—a suggestion which Churchill had previously rejected—and criticized British post-war plans with France. Katz claims that Roosevelt wanted to “signal” to Stalin that they could negotiate without the British (123).

By the evening, the three nations’ delegates arrived at the well-guarded Livadia Palace for the first plenary session. Their first priority was to discuss military strategy, focusing on “how to avoid chaos when their respective armies converged on Berlin” (124). In total, there were 28 men present at the negotiation meetings. A particularly important person was Chip Bohlen, the president’s interpreter, who had to translate Stalin’s Russian into English, and the President’s English into Russian, while also taking notes on the meetings. Stalin asked President Roosevelt to speak first, and he asked everyone to speak “frankly and freely” at the meetings (126).

Katz notes that Bohlen was one of the best-informed Americans on the subject of Stalin and the Soviet Union, and he disagreed with Roosevelt that the Soviet Union would continue to be a trustworthy ally in the future. Bohlen did not believe Stalin when he claimed that the Red Army had acted out of “moral duty” to the Allies; he believed that Stalin was acting out of self-interest (127). While Bohlen acknowledged that it was unrealistic for Roosevelt to expect to persuade Stalin to voluntarily limit his influence in Eastern Europe, he “had an obligation to try” (128).

Meanwhile, Sarah Churchill and Kathleen Harriman were eager to catch up with each other since it had been over a year since they had last seen each other. Anna Roosevelt was hurriedly preparing to help her father host a dinner for Soviet and British delegates. Roosevelt’s duties were complicated by the fact that some advisors reacted badly to being left out as they vied for her father’s attention; she felt that she had to be conscious of everyone’s feelings and avoid their angry fits. Roosevelt was relieved that her father’s dinner, which she did not attend herself, went well.

The conference was complicated by the “primitive” conditions at Livadia Palace; delegates and their aides lined up to use the bathrooms, which often only had buckets, there were still bed bugs in the rooms, and it was unclear if it was safer to drink the tap water or mineral water. The Americans and British also struggled to adjust to the Russian diet, which included caviar, black bread, cabbage soup, smoked meats and fish, and vodka. Kathleen, Anna, and Sarah usually dined with their fathers at lunch. While Churchill tended to be all business, Roosevelt was more social and “charming” and dining with him was like a “party” (135).

The Soviet hosts were incredibly hospitable and responsive to their guests, to the point that some people found it “unnerving” (136). For instance, Sarah Churchill mentioned that she liked lemons and soon found that a lemon tree had been put in the orangery. Another Brit noticed that there were only plants, and no fish, in a fishtank. Soon, he found that the tank was filled with fish. This was somewhat eerie, since “Someone had overheard Sarah and Portal. Who, and how, they did not know” (136). The Soviets also offered young women, whom they called “bed warmers,” to their guests, though apparently no one accepted (136).

The day’s meetings began on a positive note, as the representatives learned that the Americans had triumphed over Japanese forces in Manila. While everyone celebrated the news together, Averell Harriman was wary of the Soviets’ negotiation tactics which they had employed in Tehran. He was sure that they would begin by being courteous and collaborative, then switch to being “brusque, gruff and even hostile” in order to get their way, before ending the conference with lavish celebrations (137).

Sarah and Winston Churchill walked along the terrace at Vorontsov to look at the Black Sea. Sarah noticed porpoises and seagulls attacking schools of fish, and was disturbed at how the fish continued to huddle and move together rather than swim away individually. Winston agreed with her that the fish would have a better chance of survival if they acted as individuals.

Later in the day, the three leaders and their aides gathered to discuss the future of post-war Germany. Roosevelt suggested that they divide the country into three administration zones—one British, one American, and one Soviet—while managing Berlin together. Stalin rejected this idea and insisted that Germany should be permanently dismantled as a nation state. Churchill was reluctant to consider this option; he wanted to thoroughly study the country itself and weigh the benefits and consequences of such an approach. While he did not say it, he hoped that in the future a recovered Germany could become a more democratic “counterweight” to the Soviet Union’s influence (141). Stalin reiterated that Germany “in principle” should be broken up, but that they could study it further (141). The matter was not really a priority for Stalin, but he pretended it was so that Roosevelt and Churchill would feel obligated to make concessions on other issues.

None of the leaders liked French President in exile Charles de Gaulle, but Churchill felt that as Germany’s neighbor and historical enemy, the French should be given a role in post-war administration of Germany. Roosevelt suddenly announced that the US would not keep soldiers in Europe for longer than two years after the war, but sided with Churchill on the French zone issue. Churchill and Stalin argued about the French and did not come to a clear conclusion. Stalin then raised the matter of reparations, arguing that because of the damage Germany inflicted on the USSR, his country should be allowed to take $10 billion worth of Germany’s heavy industry assets.

Roosevelt and Churchill disagreed. They pointed out that devastating the German economy through punitive reparations and bans on certain industries post-World War l encouraged, rather than prevented, the rise of fascism and World War ll. The British PM and American president were very cautious about emboldening Stalin by allowing him to claim German wealth or demand American loans. Churchill delayed the decision by suggesting a committee to consider the matter.

In person, Stalin was not a very intimidating figure. He was five-foot-six-inches with scarred skin, yellow eyes, and tobacco-stained teeth. Kathleen Harriman was unimpressed with his limp handshake and habit of avoiding eye contact. Stalin was a father of four, including his daughter Svetlana. He rarely included Svetlana in his social gatherings; only Winston Churchill had met her before. Her mother had died by suicide, which Svetlana later attributed to Stalin’s “cruelty and brutality” (148). Stalin disliked Svetlana’s first boyfriend, a Jewish screenwriter, and sent him to a gulag for 10 years. When she married a classmate at age 17, Stalin refused to meet him, and “rarely paid his daughter any attention” (149).

Lavrentiy Beria was the deputy of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. He attended the Yalta conference with his son Sergo. The NKVD managed gulags, prisons, assassinations, and Stalin’s security. Like Stalin, Beria was born to an impoverished family in Georgia. He rose through the ranks of the Cheka, the former name of the Soviet secret police, before becoming the head of the NKVD in 1938, where he organized the deportation of ethnic minorities. Beria was a serial rapist and sometimes had his victims killed or imprisoned in work camps.

At Yalta, his son Sergo, who spoke Georgian, Russian, English, and German, was a part of the Soviet security team assigned to eavesdrop on President Roosevelt through bugs and directional microphones. The Soviets had thoroughly bugged the rooms where the British and Americans were staying and working, and though their guests expected this and swept for bugs, many of them did not contain metal and were therefore undetectable.

Kathleen knew that the NKVD was the “real power” in the Soviet Union, as she said in a letter to her sister (153). Kathleen remembered an incident in which the Soviets and Nazis blamed each other for a mass grave in Katyn Forest, Poland. The Soviet government offered to take journalists to Poland so they could report that the Soviets did not play a role in the massacre. Ambassador Harriman asked Kathleen to join them; he wanted someone he trusted to report to him about the situation. Kathleen was startled by the incredible devastation in Smolensk, Poland, and the morbid scene of reopened mass graves, which the Soviets said contained the bodies of 15,000 Polish troops.

The Soviet doctors claimed that the manner of execution, time of death, and dates on the soldiers’ personal effects proved that they were killed by the Nazis, not the Soviets. Kathleen was unconvinced by the testimonies of the local witnesses, who seemed unsure and gave their comments as if memorized. When she returned to Moscow, Kathleen wrote a report which noted that the Soviet presentation of evidence was biased, “incomplete” and “badly put together” (159). However, she still felt that the Germans were likely responsible; her father believed her and sent in her report to the American government, where it became a part of the official record (159).

Kathleen was incorrect. In reality, when the Soviet Union and the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Stalin ordered the execution of over 21,000 officers, political members, and educated elite. The NKVD murdered these victims with German pistols to avoid blame. Eager to blame the Nazis for these mass graves, the Soviets reopened them and planted evidence. While the Allies had evidence that the Soviets were responsible for the atrocity, they chose to believe Stalin’s claims of innocence, since they desperately needed to keep his friendship and cooperation to win the war.

On February 6, the leaders discussed the possibility of a new global organization for maintaining peace between nations. The three daughters visited Sevastopol. The driver made a wrong turn and became lost, and accidentally took them to Balaklava, the site of a British defeat in the Crimean war. During that conflict, the Russians had tried to expand their control to the south, and the British and French unsuccessfully fought back to contain that empire’s expansion. After the British defeat at Balaklava, Tennyson wrote a poem which referred to it as the “Valley of Death” (166). The three women saw it in another war-torn state, with rusting Nazi tanks and bomb holes visible in the fields.

When they finally arrived at Sevastopol the women observed the extent of the German destruction of the city. Only six buildings still had roofs and even decorative things like statues were destroyed. Sarah was saddened to see Romanian prisoners of war, who had previously fought with the Nazis, living in terrible conditions while laboring to rebuild Sevastopol. Kathleen was unmoved by the sight, since she had “learned to be dispassionate” (171).

Katz claims that Sarah shared many qualities with her father, including her compassion and ability to forgive past enemies. She argues that Sarah could have been Winston Churchill’s successor in politics, but as an aristocratic woman “to pursue a career was almost unimaginable” (171-72). Nonetheless, Sarah had pursued an acting career as a young woman. Her parents disapproved of her engagement to Austrian actor Vic Oliver, so Sarah eloped to New York with him. Her marriage was soon strained by her husband’s criticism and infidelity, and she enlisted in the war effort as soon as she could. By becoming an officer Sarah felt she could recover emotionally from her romantic and professional disappointments. Her father thought that she and her sister, who had also enlisted, were “very heroic” (175).

While still trapped in her troubled marriage to Oliver, Churchill fell in love with American ambassador to the UK Gil Winant, who was also married. She hoped that after the war they could both divorce and remarry each other.

Kathleen wrote to Pamela Churchill, updating her that each leader had expressed their opinions but that there had been little real negotiating so far. On February 6, the leaders began to discuss “how to guarantee a lasting peace” once the war was over (182). Roosevelt was inspired by Woodrow Wilson’s organization, the League of Nations, and wanted to establish something similar but more effective and long-lasting. Roosevelt wanted the leaders to agree on the structure and voting method of this new organization, and in particular its security council, at Yalta. Thus far, Churchill had supported the project in theory but was unconvinced it could stop war between superpowers, while Stalin had not expressed an opinion about it. Roosevelt insisted that by establishing a security council, the great powers would be more likely to communicate constructively and avoid war.

The President then initiated negotiations about Poland, a country which had always been vulnerable to occupation. In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland and divided it between themselves. The leaders discussed where Poland’s borders should be drawn after the war; Stalin did not want to give up border towns that the Soviet Union had claimed. The debate over the Polish government was even more contentious, since Churchill and Roosevelt considered the exiled Polish government in London to be the legitimate administration, while Stalin wanted the Communists in Lublin—who had claimed power in their absence—to be recognized as the real Polish government.

Churchill insisted that establishing free elections in Poland should be a priority, and that the Poles must be able to govern themselves without foreign interference. Stalin stood up and announced that Poland’s future was essential to Russian security because it historically had been a route for attacks on Russia. He claimed he wanted Poland to be “strong” and “powerful” and accused the exiled Polish government of being violent toward the Red Army, claiming that they would start a civil war if they were allowed back into power (188). Churchill did not mention that the British knew about the Red Army’s atrocities against the Polish people, which included rape and murder, but rebutted that the present Communist government in Poland did not represent the will of the people and therefore did not have a right to be in government. Roosevelt abruptly ended the meeting to avoid outright arguments.

That evening, a concerned Roosevelt drafted a letter in which he asked Stalin to consider inviting representatives from Poland’s current Communist party, the exiled Polish government, and other Polish academics and Church leaders to come to Yalta and participate directly in the talks. Averell Harriman delivered the letter to Stalin’s residence, unconvinced that it would make any real difference, since he was certain that Stalin intended to “dominate” Poland for the Soviets’ sake (190).

The next afternoon, Sarah Churchill took a walk at Vorontsov palace. She came across her friend Peter Portal, the head of the RAF. Sarah felt guilty that she had been so frank in one of her letters to her mother, in which she wondered about President Roosevelt’s health and whether he still considered Winston Churchill a friend. She was concerned that the information could leak, embarrassing her father. She wrote to her mother again and asked that she take out that page of the letter and not mention it to anyone. Irritated with the lack of progress between the leaders, Winston Churchill asked Sarah to accompany him back to the Americans’ residence for more negotiations. That day, Stalin agreed to Roosevelt’s proposal about the Security Council’s voting structure. Roosevelt was thrilled with this success.

Kathleen Harriman was well-connected amongst all the aides and representatives at Yalta, and they updated her about the progress of the talks. She was particularly proud of her father for his role in the talks, often receiving positive reports about him from her “spies” (196). Katz questions the honesty of these reports, and Kathleen’s interpretation of them, since other sources were less flattering about Averell Harriman’s contributions. Peter Portal told Pamela Churchill that Harriman was not able to persuade the Soviets, and that he was very stressed as a result.

The author claims that Harriman was always going to lose these negotiations, since the British and Americans did not have the espionage capacity to match the Soviet Union. The Soviets had recruited many spies within MI5, MI6, and the Foreign Office, and as a result were privy to thousands of classified documents and knew about the development of the nuclear bomb, among other secrets. Meanwhile, the British had no spies or special insight into the Soviet government. The Soviets had also infiltrated the American government: the assistant to the Secretary of State, Alger Hiss, had been working for the Soviets since 1936.

On February 8, Stalin invited the leaders and their daughters to a banquet at Koreiz Villa. Anna Roosevelt had tried to protect her father from overexertion, but he worked demanding hours in the negotiations, and was becoming upset about the lack of progress on Poland’s future. Stalin was evasive about Roosevelt’s letter about inviting Polish leaders to Yalta, and claimed that he had not been able to contact the Polish Communists or other Polish leaders. He then abruptly agreed to the Security Council suggestions, evading further pressure on the Polish question.

Roosevelt was desperate to secure the Soviet Union’s guarantee that they would also declare war on Japan, alleviating pressure on the Americans to resolve the war in the Pacific by themselves. Unsure of whether the nuclear bomb would be successfully developed in time, Roosevelt made great concessions to gain the Soviets’ cooperation, such as the Soviets’ right to reclaim certain islands from the Japanese and control ports and rail lines in Northeast China.

Roosevelt’s congestive heart disease continued to worsen. His doctor realized his pulse was weakening, but did not inform him. Anna Roosevelt confided in her husband about Roosevelt’s condition in her letters, vaguely describing the problem and using code names for privacy. Roosevelt was determined to go to Stalin’s banquet and was still convinced that informal, personal diplomacy was the best way to make inroads with the Soviet leader.

Katz considers how for President Roosevelt, secrecy was a way of life. He separated papers among his secretaries so that no one person fully knew what happened in his office, he hid his negotiations with Stalin from Churchill, and he obscured his paralysis from the American public. By not seeking information about his health, he maintained a kind of denial about his illness, too. His daughter Anna concluded that, “He doesn’t know any man and no man knows him” (207).

Katz explains that Anna Roosevelt had largely been raised by her nannies, since her mother Eleanor Roosevelt preferred to not play a large role in parenting her children. As she came of age, Anna resented that her parents, who were comparatively progressive, made her participate in a “debutante season” which included formal events and “chaperoned outings with suitable young men” (208). During this time, Anna learned from her cousin Susie that her father had had an affair with one of his aides, a young woman named Lucy Mercer, whom Anna had always admired as a child. Later, Eleanor Roosevelt confirmed to Anna that this was true. Roosevelt swore to never see Lucy again and wanted to remain married to Eleanor, since getting divorced would have destroyed his career. Anna Roosevelt now understood why her parents’ marriage had seemed strained, and was angry at her father for betraying her mother.

Years passed, and in 1944 Lucy Mercer’s husband died, and President Roosevelt asked Anna to invite her to dinner at the White House. While Anna disliked the request, she felt it was not her business to judge her father or his marriage, and wanted to honor his wishes since he was dying. She kept his plans a secret from her mother. Anna and her husband joined Lucy and President Roosevelt for dinner, and Anna realized that Lucy’s interest in her father was genuine and that, unlike so many others, she was not trying to exploit a connection to him for any purpose. Anna was happy to be reminded of happier times and was glad her father could be distracted from his stressful work. Lucy soon became a fixture of President Roosevelt’s life once again, and Anna continued to act as a “vault for his secrets” (213).

While at Yalta, President Roosevelt only received one message from his wife, which was work-related. Katz posits that considering her parents’ broken relationship made Anna more determined to maintain her own marriage in spite of her long distance from her soldier husband, and she sent him many encouraging and loving letters while she was at Yalta.

Kathleen was embarrassed because she was included in the banquet invitations but the American military chiefs were left out. Her father told her to make a toast in Russian at the banquet, and she reluctantly agreed. The banquet was small, with only 30 attendees. Kathleen knew everyone at the gathering except for Beria, the NKVD chief. She knew several of his employees, since they had been assigned to accompany her father when he was in Moscow.

One of Beria’s deputies had recently tried to pressure Averell Harriman into revealing more about the American position on Poland by implying that the Soviets would spread rumors about Kathleen’s romantic life. Harriman ignored these veiled threats and did not give away any valuable information. Kathleen did not hear anything of this awkward encounter. Meanwhile, Sarah found it difficult to broach the cultural and linguistic divide between herself and her Russian hosts, who did not understand her jokes.

Stalin opened the banquet with a toast to Churchill, praising his bravery in fighting Hitler. Churchill returned the compliment, flattering Stalin and calling him a “statesman” and a “great man” (226). Stalin then toasted Roosevelt, and lauded his efforts to help the Allies even at the very beginning of the war. Roosevelt responded with a brief speech in which he reflected on how much the world had changed, and how the three leaders must try to create a world in which everyone could have “‘security and well-being’” (227).

The banquet was socially awkward as people struggled to converse with those who either didn’t understand them or they didn’t like. Roosevelt inquired after Beria, and Stalin explained that he was his “Himmler,” in reference to the head of Hitler’s secret police, a comment which disturbed Roosevelt. After much drink, the British ambassador to the Soviet Union toasted Beria with an inappropriate joke about murder, and Churchill publicly chastised his ambassador. Trying to remedy the situation, Churchill spoke again about his desire for a lasting peace, and Stalin responded by praising their alliance and insisting that it was strong because they would not, or could not, deceive the others. Churchill and Roosevelt wanted to believe that Stalin’s feelings were genuine.

Stalin later toasted the three women at the table. Nervously, Kathleen stood up and reciprocated in Russian, thanking her hosts for accommodating them and noting how hard they had worked to overcome the destruction the Germans had left. The party broke up in a generally good mood.

The day got off to a disorganized start, with Harry Hopkins’ photographer son trying to manage the various delegates at a photoshoot. While Kathleen was in a good mood, Anna was frustrated by the conference’s lack of progress and the American delegation’s inefficiencies. She complained in a letter to her husband that many of her father’s aides were “useless” and did not contribute anything to the conference (238). She was also frustrated by her father’s poor communication and the impossible task of protecting him from overexertion.

The three leaders continued to argue over the fate of Poland, with Stalin insisting that the current Lublin government remain while Churchill insisted on fair elections. Roosevelt was determined to keep his relationship with the Soviets friendly and tried to mitigate the tension between the other two leaders. A frustrated Churchill ignored his meeting with Roosevelt to confront Stalin about Polish elections and insist that American and British observers would be allowed to observe the elections process.

Meanwhile, Sarah, Anna, and Kathleen took a trip to the town of Yalta together, accompanied by a Red Army soldier and photographer Robert Hopkins. The women observed the destruction of the town and the impoverishment of the people there, and were disturbed by some of the public art propaganda which demonized the Polish government and bourgeoisie and lionized the communist party. When Anna Roosevelt tried to give a young boy a chocolate bar, the Red Army soldier took it back from him and angrily informed her that Soviet children did not need anyone’s help. Kathleen was unsurprised.

The group stopped at a newspaper office where Anna Roosevelt collected more propaganda ads which celebrated Soviet and Allied advances against the Nazis. The group came across an Orthodox church service which was full of people. Sarah was moved by the sight.

At Livadia Palace, the three leaders had finally successfully compromised on a variety of issues. The Americans agreed that the Soviets should receive billions of dollars’ worth of reparations, while the Soviets agreed to allow observed, democratic elections in Poland which could include members of the “provisional” Communist government currently in Lublin. While Churchill had hoped for a stronger commitment from the Soviets, this seemed better than nothing.

Roosevelt wanted to leave the conference, as he was going to fly to Egypt to meet with the leaders of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia. Stalin and Churchill, on the other hand, did not appreciate being rushed since the three still needed to agree on the exact wording of the “Declaration on Liberated Europe,” among other things (252). Like her father, Sarah Churchill was offended by Roosevelt’s desire to rush away from the conference, which she felt was much more important than whatever other business he might have had.

As the conference drew to a close, many were optimistic about the future. Several members of the American delegation, such as General George Marshall and Harry Hopkins, felt that the Soviets had shown some flexibility and that the conference had been a great success for that reason. The three leaders met for a final time to sign the documents outlining their agreements. One of the last matters to be agreed upon was the repatriation of prisoners of war. Churchill was aware that many Soviet POWs did not want to go back to the Soviet Union, but nevertheless had to agree to their repatriation to guarantee the safe return of British prisoners. The Soviet POWs were in great danger of further imprisonment or execution, since some had chosen to fight against the Red Army, while others were in the Red Army but did not fight to the death as they were expected to.

The conference now over, Churchill decided to follow in Roosevelt’s footsteps and arrange a meeting with the Saudi leader, since that region had been a part of the British Empire’s sphere of influence. The American and British groups would then meet again in Egypt. Anna Roosevelt had a positive report in her letter to her husband, while Kathleen Harriman was equally optimistic when writing to Pamela Churchill. Her father, however, was now more skeptical about Stalin and his true intentions. Averell Harriman was supposed to help ensure that the Soviets honored their commitment to elections in Poland, but he knew that the wording of the agreement was vague enough that they would be able to keep the Communists in power. Roosevelt was dismissive of Harriman’s concerns, claiming that he had done his best.

Churchill abruptly decided to leave Vorontsov immediately. The Americans and Soviets quickly left too, leaving only a few foreign ministers and their assistants behind. Once the Americans communicated everything in the conference agreement by radio to their ship, who communicated it to Washington, the Yalta conference was officially over. Sarah Churchill again marveled at the resilience of the local villagers, eking out an existence in the rubble of their towns. Winston admitted to Sarah that the conference made him feel the burden of his responsibilities more than ever before, and that he still felt “anxiety” more than tiredness (267).