THE AMERICAN CONTINGENT WOULD STAY IN THE LIVADIA PALACE, which was built by Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II. The Livadia sat atop a ridge, overlooking the sea nearly 200 feet below. It had magnificent views in three directions, while the slopes surrounding the palace were covered with Mediterranean pine, yews, tall cypress, and craggy cedars. Centered on a small Italianate courtyard, the palace itself was not huge by the standards of the tsars, but still boasted over fifty rooms on three floors. The Americans also occupied two adjacent buildings, one used to house the president’s Secret Service detail and additional military personnel, the other refitted as a communications command center. To facilitate the ability of the president and his Chiefs of Staff to send secure messages to the USS Catoctin and then on to Washington and the Supreme Allied Headquarters in Europe (without the Soviets listening in), US naval engineers installed a landline between this building and Sevastopol, eighty miles to the northwest, over rugged terrain and deep snow at the higher elevations.14
FDR, who had been warned that he’d be put up in shoddy accommodations, was surprised as he was wheeled around the palace. There was a large ballroom, which would serve as the main conference room for the summit. To the left of the entrance hall were his quarters—rooms that had been Nicholas II’s study and bedroom suite. The retreating Germans had stripped the building of almost everything of value, including most of the plumbing. Thus all of the furniture, bedding, kitchen utensils, tableware, bathroom fixtures, and wall décor placed in the palace for the conference had been shipped from Moscow, which left many of the city’s hotels, including the historic Metropole, denuded.15
Since the building had been in a state of disrepair and was infested with vermin and insects, the Russian high command had sent, in the weeks prior to the summit, a contingent of soldiers, painters, plumbers, plasterers, gardeners, hotel staff, and housemaids, all of whom contributed to making the accommodations livable. Perhaps the greatest challenge, however, was the lack of toilets and hot water—not to mention the chambermaids’ custom of walking into toilet facilities without knocking. The Americans built latrines outside, and the naval medical team forewarned the delegates that cooperation and “a little good-naturedness on the part of all concerned” would be required. The medical advance team also sprayed every bed, bedspring, mattress, rug, and palace wall hanging with a 10 percent DDT solution to guard against lice and bedbugs.16
The Livadia Palace, 1940. (Imperial War Museum, London)
About twelve miles to the southwest of the Livadia was the Vorontzov Palace, to which the British delegation had been assigned. In contrast to the Livadia, its furnishings had largely been left in place by the Germans, so at first glance the Vorontzov appeared to be in better shape than the American accommodations. But as Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran, discovered the first morning, first appearances were deceiving. The delegation soon learned that Churchill’s feet had been bitten overnight, that “a more thorough assault” had been carried out on Churchill’s valet, the indefatigable Frank Sawyers, and that “Eden’s right-hand man [Piers] Dixon had been eaten up.” Desperate, Lord Moran immediately contacted Dr. McIntire with the request that he send over his medical team to spray every nook and cranny of the Vorontzov with the same DDT solution.17 The toilet facilities at Vorontzov were not much better than those at the Livadia, although the British delegation did have the use of two bathhouses adjacent to their villa. These were attended by two sturdy Russian ladies who, according to one of Churchill’s female stenographers, “always insist on scrubbing you all over.” This made it much more difficult for the female staff to gain access to the facilities, as there was “always such a run on this… especially by the men!”18
Stalin and the Soviet delegation were housed in the Yusupov Palace, named for the prince who had reputedly assassinated Nicholas II’s close adviser, Rasputin. At Yusupov, which was midway between the other two palaces, Stalin and his generals maintained contacts with generals on the Eastern Front, and refined their tactics to the approaching deliberations—their work supplemented, naturally, by daily intelligence summaries of the bugged conversations of the American and British delegations.19
ANNA’S FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS AFTER THEIR ARRIVAL WAS TO SEND one of the Secret Service staff on a mission to procure gin for her father’s pre-dinner martini ritual. She soon learned that there was not only no gin but no ice or lemon as well. Anna then drew up a dinner list in consultation with her father and immediately sent word out to his chosen invitees.
In lieu of martinis that evening, the maître d’ brought FDR and the hastily assembled dinner party “some sweet concoction” that apparently was a mixture “of just about everything.” Dinner, which included Secretary of State Stettinius, Admirals Leahy and Brown, General Watson, Anna, and Ambassador Harriman and his daughter, Kathleen, was a relaxed affair. An accomplished journalist who was fluent in Russian, Kathleen found FDR “absolutely charming.” She also thought he looked “in fine form” and did not fail to note the irony that their first meeting took place so far from their native New York. Over the coming week, she and Anna, as the only two female guests among the American delegation, would become fast friends, joined by Sarah Churchill, who, like Anna, was there in part to keep her “unruly father” in line.20
The eight-course meal included caviar, cured fish, game, skewered meat and potatoes, two kinds of dessert, white wine, red wine, champagne, and vodka—all of it topped off by a liqueur and coffee. Afterward, FDR was ready to head straight to bed but had to wait until Drs. McIntire and Bruenn checked his blood pressure and heart rate, which were much improved since the flight—a change that Anna attributed in part to her determination not to let any of FDR’s advisers ride with him on the drive from Saki.
Over dinner, FDR instructed Ambassador Harriman to extend an invitation to Stalin to visit the president at the Livadia at 3:00 or 3:30 the next afternoon for a “purely personal talk.” This would be followed by the first plenary session of the conference, which FDR wanted to devote to military matters. Then, if agreeable to the Soviet leader and his foreign secretary, FDR would host them for a small “unofficial dinner” at the Livadia.21
With FDR safely ensconced in his bedroom, Anna took the opportunity to drop in on Harry Hopkins, who had arrived at the palace from Malta earlier that day. Hopkins’s relationship with FDR went all the way back to the latter’s days as governor of the state of New York. As the two men became better acquainted, a mutual respect and affection developed between them that was unique among FDR’s inner circle. This closeness was partly due to their shared conviction that “human welfare is the first and final task of government.” But it also resulted from Hopkins’s uncanny ability to sense when FDR wanted to discuss affairs of state and when he wanted “to escape from the awful consciousness of the Presidency.” In this respect Hopkins was not unlike Daisy Suckley, in that FDR found he could relax in Hopkins’s company when the two of them were not engaged in business. FDR also had a profound sense of trust in Hopkins’s judgment and ability to act on his behalf as an overseas envoy to both Churchill and Stalin during the war.22
Yet by the time the two men had reached Yalta, Hopkins’s stature as the president’s most intimate and trusted adviser seemed a thing of the past. Anna found “Harry in a stew” over the fact that FDR had refused to confer with Churchill before the summit. As soon as Anna arrived, Hopkins launched into a tirade.
“FDR must see Churchill in the morning for a long meeting to dope out how those two are going to map out the conference,” he told Anna. After all, “FDR had asked for this job, and whether he liked it or not, he had to do the work. It was imperative that FDR and Churchill make some prearrangements before the big conference started.”
“Don’t you think this might stir up some distrust among our Russian brethren?” Anna asked.
Brushing off Anna’s comments with a dismissive wave of the hand, Hopkins made no comment. At which point Anna, in her role as her father’s protector, asked:
“Why don’t you and Stettinius and Eden get together beforehand?” This would certainly be “ok,” she went on, promising to raise the matter with the president in the morning.
Hopkins still did not reply. “It certainly did not appear,” Anna later recorded, that “Harry’s mind was clicking or his judgment good.” Perhaps this was understandable, given Hopkins’s chronic health issues, which included terrible bouts of dysentery exacerbated by his penchant for coffee, cigarettes, and late nights and his tendency to abandon the dietary restrictions placed on him by his doctors. “Or maybe,” Anna mused, “it was just that I never realized how pro-British Harry is.”23
Of course, Hopkins’s anger may also have been a sign of his mounting frustration over his diminishing influence within the administration. This could be attributed not only to his health struggles, which necessitated a number of long absences from Washington, but also to Anna’s ascendance. She now occupied a boundary area between her father and the man who once had been his most intimate adviser. No fool, Anna was convinced that Hopkins was resentful over this change of roles, and probably had taken some offense at her determination to act as FDR’s protector—a determination that would be tested in the days ahead. For now, though, it was time to retreat to her room, with its tiny wrought-iron bed. It had been a very long day.
Chapter 5
Sunrise over Yalta
THE HISTORIC CONFERENCE THAT WOULD DO SO MUCH TO DETERMINE the postwar legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt began on a bright, clear Sunday morning. Had FDR decided to rise at dawn that day, he would have witnessed the magnificent sight of the sun breaking above the bay and the rugged coastline that juts out into the Black Sea to the east of the Livadia Palace. But FDR did his best to remain in bed well past dawn that morning. The extra rest would do him good, and the journey to this moment had been long and arduous.
In many respects it was a journey that began in the days that followed America’s dramatic entrance into the war in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack more than three years before. It was then, at that all-too-perilous moment—when Hitler’s Wehrmacht was but fifteen miles from Moscow, the British army was locked in a desperate struggle with Rommel in North Africa, and the Japanese were furiously advancing on Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Malaya—that FDR, in his first wartime fireside chat, warned the American people that the world and all its oceans and continents had become “one gigantic battlefield.” It was not going to be easy to achieve the “absolute victory” he called for in his famous Pearl Harbor address, he cautioned. This was going to be “a long… hard war.” But given that the American people were now “all in” this struggle, he was confident that the United States and its Allies would not only win the war but also “win the peace that follows.” After all, he observed, we Americans “are not destroyers—we are builders.” We fight “not for conquest… or vengeance, but for a world in which this nation, and all that this nation represents, will be safe for our children.”1
As FDR prepared to greet this thirty-third of his last 100 days, it was clear that the moment at which America and its Allies must begin to win the peace and construct that better world had now arrived. But the circumstances in which the president found himself at Yalta differed from those he envisioned in the dark days following Pearl Harbor. Pressed, even at that early date, to support a list of territorial demands delineated by Joseph Stalin—a list that included the Baltic States and much of the ground gained by the USSR through the 1939 pact with Hitler—FDR insisted that it was far too early in the conflict to begin any discussion of a postwar settlement. This resistance stemmed in part from his belief that the Allies should concentrate on the war—the actual outcome of which was still very much in doubt. But it also resulted from his conviction that these matters would be best left until victory had been achieved, at which point FDR fully expected there would be a major peace conference. Equally important, however, was his conviction that the United States—under-armed and still reeling from the devastating Japanese attack on Hawaii and the Philippines—was in far too weak a position to enter into any serious discussion about the nature of the world after the conflict. Far better to wait until US armed forces had been brought up to strength and were fully deployed in the struggle against Germany and Japan, before he or members of his administration entered into any negotiations about the future of Poland or other parts of the world. For all these reasons, then, FDR tended to follow what one of his advisers called “a policy of procrastination.” This entailed putting off difficult discussions about future issues in the full expectation that the United States would be in a far better position to come to a settlement over various territorial questions and other political matters later in the war.2
But there was an important flaw in FDR’s early thinking that had now returned to haunt him, for it was not only the United States that was stronger: Russia, too, had gained strength—tremendous strength. Indeed, the Soviets not only had survived Hitler’s initial onslaught but had driven the Wehrmacht from Russian soil, had overrun Poland, and were now poised to begin the final assault on Berlin. Stalin, in short, had achieved his territorial ambitions on his own, without the need for negotiations, although at a staggering cost in blood and treasure.
FDR, in the meantime, had not only overseen an astounding buildup in US military and industrial power but had also come a long way toward establishing the institutional structure he needed to bring his postwar vision for the world into reality. He, too, had marched forward—through the Four Freedoms, the Atlantic Charter, the Declaration of United Nations, and the Dumbarton Oaks conference—to bring the world but a few short steps away from the creation of the United Nations Organization that would serve as the basis for the future peace and Great Power cooperation. And while FDR had always intended to use the crisis of the war and the cooperation it entailed to move his vision forward, he still clung to the hope that such important questions as the future frontiers of Poland and the final disposition of Germany might be held in abeyance until the war was truly over and a proper peace conference—held in collaboration with the new world organization—could be organized. Unfortunately, however, Stalin’s victories on the battlefield, and his insistence that his government had every right to establish a buffer of friendly states on his Western border, had rendered it impossible for FDR to avoid coming to terms with such issues as the final disposition of Poland. The unintended consequence of such developments was to turn Yalta into something it was never intended to be: a kind of “premature peace conference,” pitting the security demands of the Soviet Union against the principles that were supposed to stand behind the yet-to-be-constructed United Nations Organization. This placed FDR in one of the most profound dilemmas of his political career.3
WELL AWARE OF HER FATHER’S DESIRE TO HAVE A LIE-IN ON THAT first morning in Yalta, Anna managed to slip quietly into the private bathroom that adjoined FDR’s suite before returning to take breakfast in her small room. She then made a quick visit to check in on Harry Hopkins, who, to her relief, was in a much calmer mood than on the previous evening, and seemed to have given up on his insistence that FDR and Churchill hold a long tête-à-tête before seeing Stalin. By the time she looked in on FDR it was shortly before 10:00 a.m. Pleased that her father seemed fine and that Hopkins was no longer on the warpath, Anna made no mention of their discussion the prior evening. Afterward, she felt free to take a walk with “Kathy” Harriman and Dr. Bruenn, who had finished his morning checkup of the president.4
As agreed the prior evening, FDR began his day meeting his Chiefs of Staff and senior foreign policy advisers. The discussion with the Chiefs focused mainly on how best to establish communication between the Western Allies and the Russian High Command during the final push into Germany. Secretary Stettinius then presented the attendees with a seven-point document, outlining the main political questions that the State Department believed the conference needed to address. These included not only the future of Germany and Poland and the outstanding issues concerni
ng the United Nations Organization but also whether France should be granted a zone of occupation and a role in governing occupied Germany after the war. Then there was the question of a proposal for the establishment of a European High Commission to oversee the transition from war to peace in liberated areas as well as a set of guidelines to govern their conduct in these areas, titled the Declaration of Liberated Europe.5
After the meeting, Anna found her father alone, “wheeling around the [sun] porch” outside her room, taking in the view. As was now her routine, she asked him whom he would like to dine with at noon. The names in hand, she dashed off to extend the invitations and to arrange the seating in the president’s private dining room. Following this “very quiet lunch,” Anna put “the clamps on” and insisted that the luncheon party leave, so that her father, who was clearly fatigued after the long journey from Malta, could take an hour or more’s nap before his scheduled meeting with Stalin.6
The Last 100 Days Page 9