The end of the World War II: military and political course of events

From February 4 to 11, 1945, held the Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, 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 Premier Joseph Stalin. The conference convened in the Livadia Palace, near Yalta, in Crimea.

Yalta was the second of three wartime conferences among the Big Three. It had been preceded by the Tehran Conference in 1943 and was followed by the Potsdam Conference in July 1945.

All three leaders were attempting to establish an agenda for governing post-war Europe. They wanted to keep peace between post–war countries world. On the Eastern Front, the front line at the end of December 1943 remained in the Soviet Union but, by August 1944, Soviet forces were inside Poland and parts of Romania as part of their drive west. By the time of the Conference, Red Army Marshal Georgy Zhukov's forces were 65 km from Berlin. Stalin's position at the conference was one which he felt was so strong that he could dictate terms. Moreover, Roosevelt hoped for a commitment from Stalin to participate in the United Nations.

Roosevelt wanted the USSR to enter the Pacific War with the Allies. One Soviet precondition for a declaration of war against Japan was an American official recognition of Mongolian independence from China (Mongolian People's Republic had already been the Soviet satellite state in World War One and World War Two), and a recognition of Soviet interests in the Manchurian railways and Port Arthur (but not asking the Chinese to lease), as well as deprivation of Japanese soil (such as Sakhalin and Kuril Islands) to return to Russian custody since the Treaty of Portsmouth; these were agreed without Chinese representation, consultation or consent, with the American desire to end war early by reducing American casualties. Stalin agreed that the Soviet Union would enter the Pacific War three months after the defeat of Germany. Stalin pledged to Roosevelt to keep the nationality of the Korean Peninsula intact as Soviet Union entered the war against Japan.

All three leaders ratified previous agreements about the post-war occupation zones for Germany: three zones of occupation, one for each of the three principal Allies: The Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They also agreed to give France a zone of occupation, carved out of the U.S. and UK zones.

Also, the Big Three agreed that all original governments would be restored to the invaded countries (with the exception of France, whose government was regarded as collaborationist; Romania and Bulgaria, where the Soviets had already liquidated most of the governments; and Poland whose government-in-exile was also excluded by Stalin) and that all civilians would be repatriated.

On March 1, Roosevelt assured Congress that "I come from the Crimea with a firm belief that we have made a start on the road to a world of peace." [2] However the Western Powers soon realized that Stalin would not honor his free elections promise regarding Poland. After receiving considerable criticism in London following Yalta regarding the atrocities committed in Poland by Soviet troops, Churchill wrote Roosevelt a desperate letter referencing the wholesale deportations and liquidations of opposition Poles by the Soviets. [2] On March 11, Roosevelt responded to Churchill, writing, "I most certainly agree that we must stand firm on a correct interpretation of the Crimean decision. You are quite correct in assuming that neither the Government nor the people of this country will support participation in a fraud or a mere whitewash of the Lublin government and the solution must be as we envisaged it in Yalta." [3]

Following Yalta, in Russia, when Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov expressed worry that the Yalta Agreement's wording might impede Stalin's plans, Stalin responded "Never mind. We'll do it our own way later."[2] While the Soviet Union had already annexed several occupied countries as (or into) Soviet Socialist Republics, other countries in eastern Europe that it occupied were converted into Soviet-controlled satellite states, such as the People's Republic of Poland, the People's Republic of Hungary, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the People's Republic of Romania, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the People's Republic of Albania, and later East Germany from the Soviet zone of German occupation. Eventually the United States and the United Kingdom made concessions in recognizing the then Communist-dominated regions, sacrificing the substance of the Yalta Declaration, while it remained in form. [4]

In the Pacific theatre, American forces accompanied by the forces of the Philippine Commonwealth advanced in the Philippines, clearing Leyte by the end of April 1945. They landed on Luzon in January 1945 and recaptured Manila in March following a battle which reduced the city to ruins. Fighting continued on Luzon, Mindanao, and other islands of the Philippines until the end of the war. On the night of 9–10 March, B-29 bombers of the US Army Air Forces struck Tokyo with incendiary bombs, which killed 100,000 people within a few hours. Over the next five months, American bombers firebombed 66 other Japanese cities, causing the destruction of untold numbers of buildings and the deaths of between 350,000–500,000 Japanese civilians.

From 17 July to 2 August 1945 the Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany. Stalin, Churchill, and Truman—as well as Attlee, who participated alongside Churchill while awaiting the outcome of the 1945 general election, and then replaced Churchill as Prime Minister after the Labour Party's defeat of the Conservatives—gathered to decide how to administer punishment to the defeated Nazi Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier, on 8 May. The goals of the conference also included the establishment of post-war order, peace treaty issues, and countering the effects of the war and reiterated the demand for unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces by Japan, specifically stating that "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction". [5] The Allies called for unconditional Japanese surrender in the Potsdam declaration of 27 July, but the Japanese government was internally divided on whether to make peace and did not respond. In early August the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like the Japanese cities previously bombed by American airmen, the US and its allies justified the atomic bombings as military necessity to avoid invading the Japanese home islands which would cost the lives of between 250,000–500,000 Allied troops and millions of Japanese troops and civilians. Between the two bombings, the Soviets, pursuant to the Yalta agreement, began on 9 August 1945, with the Soviet invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and was the last campaign of the Second World War and the largest of the 1945 Soviet–Japanese War which resumed hostilities between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace. Soviet gains on the continent were Manchukuo, Mengjiang (Inner Mongolia) and northern Korea. The Soviet entry into the war and the defeat of the Kwantung Army was a significant factor in the Japanese government's decision to surrender unconditionally, as it made apparent the USSR would no longer be willing to act as a third party in negotiating an end to hostilities on conditional terms. [6] The Red Army also captured Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, with the surrender documents finally signed aboard the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war. The Japanese Instrument of Surrender was the written agreement that formalized the surrender of the Empire of Japan, marking the end of World War II. It was signed by representatives from the Empire of Japan, the United States of America, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of Canada, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Dominion of New Zealand. The signing took place on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. [7]