Although there had been preparations since 1942 for a cross-Channel offensive to liberate France, nothing had come of them. At Tehran, Churchill still favored operations in the Mediterranean, which Stalin dismissed as “only diversions.” Instead he wanted Overlord and a definite date. He promised that whenever it took place, the Red Army would simultaneously “undertake offensive operations, and would demonstrate by its actions the value it placed on this decision.” He also wanted to know who would be in command. Roosevelt eventually named General Dwight D. Eisenhower and later telegraphed this news to Moscow.50
At dinner on the first evening, Stalin brought up the thorny subject of what was to happen to Nazi Germany. The Soviets, contrary to their later denials, had drawn up extensive plans for Germany’s dismemberment.51 FDR was known for wanting the same thing, but that evening he retired early because of illness. Stalin and Churchill carried on. The prime minister proposed ways of ensuring that Germany did not become a military threat again, but Stalin insistently held to his early position of moving Poland’s western boundaries well into Germany, thus depriving it of land, people, and wealth. Even then he kept saying there was nothing to prevent them from uniting again. He confessed that he “was not sure” whether there should be “four, five, or six independent Germanic states,” and proposed sending the matter for study to one of the committees.52
Even “moderates” among the Soviet leaders like Ivan Maisky were convinced that Soviet security required that Germany be weakened and in addition also undergo a “complete and thorough proletarian revolution as a result of the war, and the creation of a stable new order based on the Soviet model. The psychology of the German people that has been poisoned by fascism, has to be transformed through the fire of such a revolution and the present ruling classes in Germany must be completely exterminated.” Maisky’s notes in his diary from earlier in 1943 sum up what the Soviet leaders wanted to do in Germany, as well as in other countries.53
At Tehran the USSR played the moderates and allowed Roosevelt to harbor the illusion that he was making progress. The president felt that he was better informed about Germany than the other two, for as a young boy he had attended school there. Only recently, he said, did he feel that it should be broken into three or more independent states that would share some infrastructure. He was somewhat dissuaded from this stance by the U.S. State Department, prior to traveling to Tehran.54 However Churchill and Stalin strongly advocated Germany’s dissolution at the conference; FDR went along and moreover opted for its division into five parts.
What the Soviet leader was really after was dominant influence in that country, but he would have to bide his time before making a move in that direction, and for the moment he said only that it “should be broken up and kept broken up,” not allowed any kind of federation or association. Thus he publicly favored Roosevelt’s plan and held to that position until well into 1945, when he began to believe that a Communist transformation of Germany was feasible. It was with that prospect in mind that he became more inclined to keep the country in one piece.55
Without much prodding, the Western Allies consented to vast territorial gains for the USSR. Stalin had told the British early on that he wanted the northern part of East Prussia. He now added that it would provide his country with an ice-free port, “a small piece of German territory which he felt was deserved.”56 In the Soviet version of the minutes, however, the justification for getting this trophy was that it was “traditionally Russian.”57 It was not. Stalin wanted the far bigger prize of what had been eastern Poland up to the Curzon Line. Thus he repeated his claim to lands won as Hitler’s ally in 1939. Churchill suggested that Poland “might move westward,” that is, relinquish its eastern border region to the Soviet Union, and in compensation get a slice of eastern Germany. He knew that this step ignored the Atlantic Charter and the wishes of the Polish government-in-exile in London. Stalin wanted to be on the record as favoring the “restoration and strengthening of Poland,” but he demanded that its borders be changed, with Moscow laying claim to a huge swath of territory. He did so in terms that resonated with many postwar historians, who tend to accept his reasoning that in view of how much the Soviet Union had suffered by invasions through Poland, its “security needs” justified expansion in all directions of the compass.58
Stalin made the astonishing claim that no Poles would be allowed in the area that the USSR was to take. He maligned the “London Poles” as little more than “agents of Hitler” who allegedly incited actions against “partisans” in Poland. He would help the liberated country establish more westerly borders at Germany’s expense along the Oder River, but that was all.
In private Churchill warned the president that Stalin was preparing “a Communist replacement for the Polish government.” A Soviet spy, Sergo Beria, the son of Stalin’s chief of the secret police, who manned the recording equipment bugging their rooms, was surprised to overhear FDR level a counteraccusation at Churchill for trying to engineer an anti-Communist government. Beria recalled thinking how strange it was for the president to “put Churchill and Stalin on the same plane” and think of himself as “the arbiter between them.”59
Roosevelt wanted to distance himself from Polish issues, which he and his advisers saw as “political dynamite” in the upcoming U.S. elections. He asked Stalin, when they were alone on December 1, to understand that he did not want his views on Poland published because of the effect it would have on the ethnic vote. The president’s only question about Poland’s eastern border was whether the land lost by that country to the USSR was about the same size as the land Poland would get from Germany. He wondered whether in areas of mixed population there could be “voluntary transfers.” Stalin happily agreed: that was exactly what he wanted. The president tacitly accepted the Soviet arguments, even though some disagreement persisted about the exact frontier line.60
The concept of what was euphemistically called “population transfers” had been floated by the Polish and Czechoslovakian governments in exile in Britain almost since the first days of the war. Both suggested that selectively expelling Germans (such as known Nazis) living in their countries would help to avoid future conflicts. By mid-1941, however, they were calling for the complete expulsion of “their” Germans. In conversations with Churchill, FDR, and Stalin, the Polish and Czech officials were assured of support for the “transfers.” These would become ethnic-cleansing operations, one of the most horrific features of the late war and early postwar years. Other countries followed the Polish and Czech precedents, which we will investigate in more detail in Chapter 13.61
Roosevelt also gave his blessing to the Soviet acquisition of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In his private meeting with Stalin on December 1, he said that those lands had in history, and again more recently, been a part of Russia. The official protocol states that he “added jokingly that when the Soviet armies re-occupied these areas, he did not intend to go to war with the Soviet Union on this point.” Making matters look worse, he said that “it would be helpful for him personally, if some public declaration could be made in regard to the future elections” in those states. The Soviet leader was only too pleased to keep up appearances, though in the Russian record he insisted that a promise of letting the Baltic peoples express themselves would not mean free and unfettered elections under international supervision.62