2R - US, British and USSR relations in 1945: conflicting ideologies
Learn why the allies could agree on defeating Germany yet struggle to agree on peace, and how ideology, security, leadership and the changing military situation weakened cooperation during 1945.
An alliance with conflicting aims
The Grand Alliance brought Britain, the USA and the USSR together against Nazi Germany; it did not remove their different ideas about a secure international order. American leaders associated peace with representative government, private enterprise and relatively open international trade. Stalin's USSR was a one-party dictatorship with a state-directed economy. Its official communist ideology portrayed capitalism as exploitative and liable to produce conflict. These beliefs encouraged each side to suspect the other's apparently reasonable proposals.
Britain shared the American commitment to parliamentary government, but also sought to preserve its empire and influence in Europe. British support for national self-determination therefore had limits. The Labour government elected in July 1945 favoured public ownership and welfare reform within parliamentary democracy. Its socialism did not make it a Soviet ally: democratic socialism and Stalin's suppression of political opposition were different systems.
Security gave ideological disagreement a geographical focus. Soviet wartime losses and earlier invasions made Stalin determined to prevent another hostile power reaching the USSR through eastern Europe. Western leaders could accept governments friendly to Moscow, but feared that Soviet-controlled governments would remove national independence. A buffer zone could appear defensive to Stalin and expansionist to Churchill. Explaining these competing perceptions does not excuse coercion; it shows why the same development could generate incompatible responses.
Security dilemma
A situation in which a state's measures to increase its own security make another state feel less secure, encouraging countermeasures that deepen the original fear.
Cooperation at Yalta
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta, 4–11 February 1945, while Germany was still fighting. Each needed a successful conclusion to the war, so compromise retained practical value. Roosevelt wanted Soviet participation in the planned United Nations and help against Japan, whose defeat might otherwise require a costly invasion. He hoped that continuing personal diplomacy could keep Stalin within a cooperative postwar system. Stalin used the strength of the advancing Red Army to secure recognition of Soviet interests. Churchill, leading an economically weakened Britain, wanted to protect a European balance of power and avoid becoming a spectator to American-Soviet bargaining.
The leaders agreed on occupation arrangements for Germany, including a French zone, and on the principle of reparations, although important details remained unsettled. They accepted a veto for the permanent members of the UN Security Council. This made Soviet participation possible because Stalin would not have to submit vital interests to a hostile majority. The USSR also agreed to enter the war against Japan after Germany's defeat, in return for concessions in east Asia.
These were substantive agreements, rather than evidence that the conference was merely a failure. However, they were strongest where the leaders could exchange clearly defined benefits. Agreement was harder where a common word, such as democracy, concealed different expectations. Roosevelt's personal confidence in negotiating with Stalin could ease a meeting; it could not guarantee that the governments would implement promises in the same way.
Poland exposed the limits of agreement
Poland mattered to Stalin as a route of invasion, to Churchill as the country for whose independence Britain had entered the war, and to Roosevelt as a test of an acceptable settlement. The Red Army's position gave Stalin immediate leverage that the Western leaders could not match without threatening their ally. At Yalta, Poland was to lose territory in the east and receive compensation in the west. The Soviet-backed provisional government was to be broadened, and elections held.
The disagreement concerned who would decide the composition of that government and what genuine electoral choice meant. Stalin wanted a government reliably friendly to the USSR. Churchill and Roosevelt expected political participation extending beyond those acceptable to Moscow. The arrest of Polish underground leaders by Soviet authorities in March 1945 and the restricted inclusion of non-communists in the new government made Western confidence harder to sustain. A diplomatic promise did not overcome control of troops, police and administration on the ground.
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