World War II Documents

The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin, respectively, for the purpose of discussing Europe's post-war reorganization. The conference convened in the Livadia Palace near Yalta, in the Crimea.

The Allies were pressing down upon Germany from both the east and the west, and with the war in Europe in its final months and nearing an end, the meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. Within a few years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, Yalta became a subject of intense controversy. To some extent, it has remained controversial. Among the agreements, the Conference called for Germany’s unconditional surrender, the split of Berlin, German demilitarization and reparations, the status of Poland, and Russian involvement in the United Nations. 

Yalta was the second of three wartime conferences among the Big Three (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin). It had been preceded by the Tehran Conference in 1943, and it was followed by the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, which was attended by Harry S. Truman in place of the late Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, with Churchill replaced mid-point by the newly elected Prime Minister Clement Attlee.

This edition of the historic Yalta Conference pact is specially formatted with a Table of Contents and is illustrated with pictures of the war’s important leaders, as well as pictures of the Yalta Conference itself.