Teheran conference

The meeting of the Big Three at the Teheran Conference occured 28 November - on 1 December, 1943. Plans for Operation Overlord, or the Normandy Invasion, were discussed between the participants. British Prime Minister [[[Winston Chuirchill]], U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Josef Stalin were all in attendance.

Secretly it was agreed to let Russia have not only eastern Poland but also part of Finland, the Baltics States and chunks of Roumania. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that the eastern borders of Poland would roughly follow the Curzon Line. The Polish government was not notified of this decision and the only information given was a press release claiming that "We await the day, when all nations of the world will live peacefully, free of tyranny, according to their national needs and conscience ". The result was the loss of the eastern territories, approximately 48% of Poland's pre-war territory, to the Soviet Union.

It was secretly agreed to support the Yugoslav Communist, Joseph Broz Tito, and desert the pro-Western, anti-totalitarian friend, General Mihailovich. Secretly it was also agreed to encourage "people's democracies," which were "friendly to Russia," all along the Soviet boundaries. Upon Roosevelt return to the United States, the President told a joint session of Congress that no secret arrangements had been made.

The toast

During an after dinner banquet Stalin toasted to "unity"" in ordering at least fifty thousand Germans before firing squads "as fast as we capture them." Churchill jumped from his seat, and vigorously protested against the outrage to the Western sense of justice. President Roosevelt offered a compromise. Not fifty thousand but a mere forty-nine thousand five hundred leading Nazis, he suggested, might be liquidated without due process of law. Elliott Roosevelt, son of the American President, expressed the hope that hundred of thousands of Germans would be killed in battle. While Churchill fumed and the British guests kept silence, Stalin was "hugely tickled" and "beaming with pleasure."

External links

• Materials of the Teheran conference, 28 November - 1 December, 1943.