The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

by Rick Atkinson

  “We left Malta in darkness”: Charles H. Donnelly, “Autobiography,” May 1979, MHI, 719–23; Leahy, I Was There, 295–301 (set their watches ahead).

  Churchill boarded a four-engine C-54: Kuter, Airman at Yalta, 103; Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 575 (“hot pink baby”).

  Down the flight line stood C-54 No. 252: http://www.strategic-air-command.com/aircraft/cargo/c54_skymaster.htm; Bishop, FDR’s Last Year, 300 (caged elevator); Gallagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception, 202 (“a transparency”).

  Spitfire and P-38 fighter escorts: memo, Jan. 27, 1945, Naples, “Trips of the President,” FDR Lib, container 21, file 6-1; William M. Rigdon, log, “The President’s Trip to the Crimea Conference and Great Bitter Lake, Egypt,” Averill Harriman papers, LOC MS Div, 17–18.

  A Fateful Conference

  Wedged into a natural amphitheater: Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 280; Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” http://www.enotes.com/lady-pet-text (“The stories told”).

  That sea—to the ancients Pontus Euxinus: Thomas Spencer Baynes, ed., The Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 3, 795, online ed.; “Notes on the Crimea,” 1945, “WWII Summit Conferences,” Charles H. Donnelly papers, MHI (Cimmerians and Scythians); Ponomarenko, Yalta: A Short Guide, 11, 19–21 (Lenin’s decree); Yhagapov and Shekurov, Greater Yalta, 19–26; Clemens, Yalta, 113 (three dozen sanatoriums).

  Then came the Germans: Leasor, The Clock with Four Hands, 286–87; corr, E. J. Flynn to wife, Feb. 8, 1945, Edward J. Flynn papers, FDR Lib, box 25 (brass doorknobs); John E. Hull, “Unpublished Autobiography,” n.d., MHI, 14-4; Mason, ed., The Atlantic War Remembered, 449–50; Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946, 393 (coat hangers).

  British and American support ships: Buhite, Decisions at Yalta, 4 (“didn’t leave a map”); Olsen, “Full House at Yalta,” American Heritage (Jan. 1972): 1+ (nine hundred hairpin turns); memo, T. W. Sullivan and L. H. Backus, U.S. Navy physicians, Feb. 18, 1945, Ross T. McIntire papers, FDR Lib, box 4 (“marked infestation”).

  Four Soviet regiments arrived: Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, 480–81; Davies, No Simple Victory, 191–92 (dozen Georgians); Plokhy, Yalta, 58, 233 (Eavesdroppers).

  “This may well be a fateful conference”: corr, WSC to FDR, Jan. 8, 1945, GCM Lib, box 62, folder 19; Pawle, The War and Colonel Warden, 358 (“nineteen full colonels”); Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay, 384 (“would have been difficult”).

  Sacred Cow touched down: William M. Rigdon, log, “The President’s Trip to the Crimea Conference and Great Bitter Lake, Egypt,” Averill Harriman papers, LOC MS Div, 19; Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, 80–81 (agent lifted him); Clemens, Yalta, 128 (“Stone Ass”); Guy H. Spaman, “President’s Trip,” July 5, 1945, Secret Service records, FDR Lib, container 4, file 103-1 (ammunition had been confiscated); Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, 234 (“a great icicle”).

  “We will destroy”: Aron Kots version, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale#Russian_lyrics.

  Beside steaming glasses of tea: Charles H. Donnelly, “Autobiography,” May 1979, MHI, 719–23; John E. Hull, “Unpublished Autobiography,” n.d., MHI, 14-4 (“Let’s get going”); Houghton, “That Was Yalta,” New Yorker (May 23, 1953): 86+ (khaki overcoat).

  Soon a weaving convoy: Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, 81; U.S. Navy color footage, FDR Lib, 71-8: 65–67 (women in shawls); Kuter, Airman at Yalta, 114–15; Charles H. Donnelly, “Autobiography,” May 1979, MHI, 719–23; notes, Feb. 3–4, 1945, Anna Roosevelt Halsted papers, FDR Lib, box 84 (a few sheep); William M. Rigdon, log, “The President’s Trip to the Crimea Conference and Great Bitter Lake, Egypt,” Averill Harriman papers, LOC MS Div, 18–20 (Route Romanoff). Author Michael Dobbs notes that at least some of the destruction likely was inflicted by Soviet forces during a 1944 purge of Tatar villages (Six Months in 1945, 24–25, 10 [Don Juan]).

  Churchill and the British contingent: Ismay, The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay, 386–87; Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 703 (“hideosity”); Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 347 (goldfish).

  “nothing is left out but cleanliness”: Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, 237–38; Leasor, The Clock with Four Hands, 288 (shipped by special train); Richardson, From Churchill’s Secret Circle to the BBC, 198 (“We sleep in droves”); Plokhy, Yalta, 50 (“queuing for a bucket”); Hastings, Winston’s War, 442 (“Riviera of Hades”); Danchev, 656 (“a great northern diver”).

  Ten miles away the Americans settled: Kuter, Airman at Yalta, 121–22, 138 (tea in tall glasses); Olsen, “Full House at Yalta,” American Heritage (Jan. 1972): 1+; Houghton, “That Was Yalta,” New Yorker (May 23, 1953): 86+ (“Please do not pilfer”).

  An air of tragedy: Clemens, Yalta, 113 (two million rubles); Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, 156–64 (reindeer tongue); Plokhy, Yalta, 43–44.

  Now Roosevelt slept: Houghton, “That Was Yalta,” New Yorker (May 23, 1953): 86+.

  At four o’clock on Sunday: William M. Rigdon, log, “The President’s Trip to the Crimea Conference and Great Bitter Lake, Egypt,” Averill Harriman papers, LOC MS Div, photo; OH, John E. Hull, 1974, James W. Wurman, SOOHP, MHI, VI-6, 7; Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, 79 (Hero of the Soviet Union); Dobbs, Six Months in 1945, 35 (talcum powder); Buhite, Decisions at Yalta, 17 (smallpox scars); Houghton, “That Was Yalta,” New Yorker (May 23, 1953): 86+ (rattle the teacups).

  Joseph Stalin intrigued even Franklin Roosevelt: Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929–1969, 180; Fox, “The Super-Powers Then and Now,” International Journal (summer 1980): 417+; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 438. See also William T. R. Fox, The Super-Powers (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1944).

  In other respects the wealthy patrician: Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, 25; Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, 521 (“a Christian gentleman”); Plokhy, Yalta, 56–57, 77; MMB, 527–28; Overy, Why the Allies Won, 259 (“military brain”); Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, 232–33 (“I can handle Stalin”); Roberts, Masters and Commanders, 486 (“bigger coins”).

  Beneath a painting of a farmer: Hastings, Winston’s War, 444 (“You said it!”); Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, 99 (communicate directly).

  The marshal replied that the carnage: Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 468–69, 477–83; FRUS, 571–73 (“sadistic hatred”).

  Roosevelt offered Stalin: Bishop, FDR’s Last Year, 310–11; Kersaudy, Churchill and De Gaulle, 392–93 (“unpleasant and impossible”).

  “Only out of kindness”: FRUS, 571–73; Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, 492 (“Why did nature”).

  Upon Churchill’s arrival: William M. Rigdon, log, “The President’s Trip to the Crimea Conference and Great Bitter Lake, Egypt,” Averill Harriman papers, LOC MS Div, photo; Bishop, FDR’s Last Year, 312–13; Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, 168–69 (diamonds and pearls).

  Much of ARGONAUT’s initial meeting: Bland, ed., George C. Marshall Interviews and Reminiscences for Forrest C. Pogue, 405; FRUS, 575–78. Among other discrepancies, Soviet minutes of the conference quote Marshall as putting German oil production at 40 percent of previous levels (Clemens, Yalta, 124). A Soviet account also reported that Churchill seemed bored by the military recitations (“The Crimea and Potsdam Conferences of the Leaders of the Three Great Powers,” International Affairs, All-Union Society, Moscow [June 1965]: 97).

  The Soviet account: FRUS, 582–83; Erickson, The Road to Berlin, 447–48, 461, 471–72; Read and Fisher, The Fall of Berlin, 211 (“You are now in goddam Germany”).

  The Soviets currently possessed a seven-to-one advantage: Horst Boog, “Invasion to Surrender: The Defense of Germany,” in Brower, ed., World War II in Europe: The Final Year, 132; FRUS, 582–83 (180 to 80); Robert H. Abzug, “The Liberation of the Concentration Camps,” in Liberation 1945, 35–36; “Auschwitz,” USHMM, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005189; Posner and Ware, Mengele: The Complet
e Story, 3–8 (medical experiments); Gill, The Journey Back from Hell, 25–27; Weinberg, A World at Arms, 798–800 (seven tons of women’s hair); Read and Fisher, The Fall of Berlin, 212 (pyramids of dentures).

  “Our wishes”: FRUS, 582–83; Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, 498–99; Weinberg, A World at Arms, 798–800; Erickson, The Road to Berlin, 475–76, 480, 517 (threatened the flanks in East Pomerania); Buell, Master of Seapower, 487 (“It takes a very brave man”).

  By late 1945, an estimated two million German women: Antony Beevor, introduction to Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin, xx; Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, 154–167 (dragged from operating tables and forced migration of 7.5 million Germans); Evans, The Third Reich at War, 710 (“Our men shoot the ones” and “They are going to remember”); Erickson, The Road to Berlin, 466–67 (nailed by their hands).

  “in very good humor”: FRUS, 589–90.

  Great care had been taken: notes, Feb. 4, 1945, Anna Roosevelt Halsted papers, FDR Lib, box 84; Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 852 (Filipino mess boys); William M. Rigdon, log, “The President’s Trip to the Crimea Conference and Great Bitter Lake, Egypt,” Averill Harriman papers, LOC MS Div, 25 (five types of wine); Bishop, FDR’s Last Year, 319 (“peace for a hundred years”); Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 707 (“drinking buckets”); Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, 111 (recharging his glass).

  Not until the final half hour: FRUS, 589–90.

  “But of your seven million Poles”: Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, 113.

  “The eagle should permit”: FRUS, 589–90.

  “A terrible party”: Eden, The Reckoning, 593.

  Stalin’s attitude toward Germany: FRUS, 611–14, 624–27, 633.

  Glancing at a note slipped to him: ibid., 612–18, 629, 634.

  “I can get the people and Congress”: Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, 127.

  “Germany should be run by those”: FRUS, 612–18.

  “He loves France like a woman”: Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, 241.

  rather than remind Stalin: Fenno, ed., The Yalta Conference, 48–50; FRUS, 612–18, 629 (“France must take her place”).

  But who should pay: Clemens, Yalta, 37 (Stalin had pressed); Smith, American Diplomacy During the Second World War, 132; FRUS, 620–21; Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 26–27.

  Washington and London had second thoughts: Clemens, Yalta, 37–41, 137–39, 172; “The Crimea and Potsdam Conferences of the Leaders of the Three Great Powers,” International Affairs, All-Union Society, Moscow (June 1965): 101; Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 28 ($200 million).

  Recalling the ruinous conditions: FRUS, 621–23.

  On it went for six more days: Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, 185 (“in for ½ hour of it”); Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 319 (“ran away from the interpreter”); Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, 243 (wooden stethoscope); Danchev, 658–59; Roberts, Masters and Commanders, 552–55 (Crimean War battlefields).

  Back at the Villa Livadia: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 365; Hastings, Winston’s War, 417 (“feeble lot of fools”); Clemens, Yalta, 174–177; Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946, 411 (150,000 Polish soldiers); Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, 494 (ten million Red Army troops).

  Rising from his chair: Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929–1969, 187; Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 30–32 (“Within a month’s time”).

  elections would not be held in Poland for two years: Kimball, Forged in War, 307–8; Dobbs, Six Months in 1945, 64, 85 (Missouri); Colville, The Fringes of Power, 555 (“All the Balkans except Greece”); Addison, Churchill, the Unexpected Hero, 206–7 (“Terrible and humbling submissions”).

  For Roosevelt, two paramount concerns: FRUS, 396; Fenno, ed., The Yalta Conference, 96–98; Howarth, ed., Men of War, 104; FCP, “Yalta in Retrospect,” in Snell, ed., The Meaning of Yalta, 201 (huge American casualties); Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, 517; Stoler, George C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the American Century, 126.

  Stalin at the Teheran conference: Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. 3, 527; Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946, 400, 412 (“same horse twice”); Plokhy, Yalta, 285–88; Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, 535 (Japan forfeited its entire empire); Leahy, I Was There, 318–21.

  The second issue preoccupying Roosevelt: Leahy, I Was There, 315; http://www.un.org/en/aboutun/history/ (“United Nations”); Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, 507 (committed to the wider world); Clemens, Yalta, 216–18 (all sixteen Soviet republics); Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, 174–75, 187, 281; Plokhy, Yalta, 289–92, 366–67; Leahy, I Was There, 321 (would remain secret). Stalin at one point offered Roosevelt two extra votes for the United States.

  ARGONAUT staggered to an end: Kimball, Forged in War, 324 (“tired all through”); FRUS, 797–98 (forty-five toasts); diary, William D. Leahy, Feb. 8, 1945, LOC MS Div, micro R-4, container 6, 27 (mosquitoes); Bishop, FDR’s Last Year, 384–85 (“Drink it down!”); FRUS, 797–98; Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 361–62 (“We regard Marshal Stalin’s life”).

  Roosevelt, who had tossed down two cocktails: Bishop, FDR’s Last Year, 384–85. A staff officer who later rose to four-star rank, John E. Hull, described FDR as drinking heavily at one dinner (OH, 1974, James W. Wurman, SOOHP, MHI, VI-6, 7).

  Guests hopped around the table: diary, William D. Leahy, Feb. 8, 1945, LOC MS Div, micro R-4, container 6, 28; Peckham and Snyder, eds., Letters from Fighting Hoosiers, vol. 2, 211 (butter and oily salmon); Cunningham, A Sailor’s Odyssey, 628 (advising the marshal); Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, 493, 516–20 (“our Himmler”).

  Churchill hosted the final dinner: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 393 (“The fire of war”); Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929–1969, 178–80; Meacham, Franklin and Winston, 320 (“secret weapon”); menu, Feb. 10, 1945, Anna Roosevelt Halsted papers, FDR Lib, box 84; Bishop, FDR’s Last Year, 421–22 (gathered in the foyer).

  They were done: Clemens, Yalta, 300; FRUS, 972–73 (“declaration on liberated Europe”); Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1072 (“We will meet again”); William M. Rigdon, log, “The President’s Trip to the Crimea Conference and Great Bitter Lake, Egypt,” Averill Harriman papers, LOC MS Div, 31 (Target: Germany); Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 242–43 (Two Russian servants); Bishop, FDR’s Last Year, 430–31 (“worked so hard”).

  Churchill had begun the day: Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, 248–49, 251 (chef from the Queen Mary); Clemens, Yalta, 267–68 (“this bloody thing”); Argonaut files, UK NA, PREM 4/77/1B (hampers of gifts).

  “Papa, genial and sprightly”: Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography, 782.

  “I am a bit exhausted”: Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 582; Jonathan Daniels, “The Presidency,” in Goodman, ed., While You Were Gone, 124 (“afraid of getting hit”).

  “in a sulky mood”: Willis, The French in Germany, 13.

  Instead the president again boarded Quincy: OH, W. B. McCarthy, U.S.S. Murphy, March 8, 1945, NARA RG 38, E 11, U.S. Navy WWII Oral Histories; official file, 200-4-E, ship’s logs, FDR Lib, box 67; William M. Rigdon, log, “The President’s Trip to the Crimea Conference and Great Bitter Lake, Egypt,” Averill Harriman papers, LOC MS Div, 43–49 (“harem attire”); Tully, F.D.R. My Boss, 352–53 (“2 Kings & 1 Emperor”).

  “a slender contact with life”: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 397; Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 246 (“It’s been a global war”).

  “We really believed in our hearts”: Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 870. Hopkins had been treated for stomach cancer as early as 1937 (James A. Halsted, “Severe Malnutrition in a Public Servant of the World War II Era: The Medical History of Harry Hopkins,” Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association, 86 (1975), http://www.scribd.com/doc/20368863/Harry-Hopkin
s-Medical-Bio, 23+).

  “For what we have gained here”: Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 226; Danchev, 661 (“Conference is finished”).

  “Stalin doesn’t want anything”: Roberts, Masters and Commanders, 557–58; Stoler, Allies in War, 196 (“I don’t think I’m wrong”); Reynolds, In Command of History, 465 (“great and good man”).

  “justify and surpass most of the hopes”: msg, Jonathan Daniels to S. Early, Feb. 13, 1945, official files, FDR Lib, box 3; memo, Hadley Cantril to FDR, “Public Reaction to the Crimea Conference,” March 13, 1945, official file 200-4-E, FDR Lib, box 67 (Polling results); Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, 45 (“all doubts”).

  “the shadows of victory”: Colville, The Fringes of Power, 562–63; Reynolds, In Command of History, 468 (Neville Chamberlain); Smith, American Diplomacy During the Second World War, 134–35; Clemens, Yalta, 269–71, 277, 280–89; Weinberg, A World at Arms, 809 (Moscow in turn consolidated its grip); Dobbs, Six Months in 1945, 114 (slave laborers), 110 (“partition of Poland”); Kissinger, “The Age of Kennan,” review of John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life, NYT Book Review, Nov. 13, 2011 (sentimentality of ARGONAUT); Stoler, Allies and Adversaries, 231 (“Russian non-cooperation”); Harriman and Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946, 444 (“We can’t do business”); Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1081 (“the best I could do”).

  Recriminations followed: I am particularly grateful to Prof. Mark A. Stoler for his insights on Malta and Yalta. His essay “World War II” provides a fine survey of the subsequent historiography after Yalta, in Schulzinger, ed., A Companion to American Foreign Relations, 188+ (“connotation of shameful failure”).

  For decades the Western delegates would be blamed: Miller, F.D.R.: An Intimate History, 506.

  Roosevelt’s frailty came to be seen: Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, 239–41 (“The shrewdness has gone”); Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, 557; Gallagher, FDR’s Splendid Deception, 169–70 (“extraordinary effort”); Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 585; Plokhy, Yalta, 400 (“trademark ability”); Eden, The Reckoning, 592–93 (“impression of failing powers”); U.S. Navy movie footage, FDR Lib, 71-8: 65–67; transcript, 992nd press conference, Quincy, Feb. 23, 1945, Anna Roosevelt Halsted papers, FDR Lib, box 84.