Joseph Stalin had reason to smile at Yalta. Meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin Roosevelt at Livadia Palace, the Russian dictator had a plan. But it was a plan he kept to himself.
FDR, as contemporary pictures clearly show, was weak and tired. Within two months he would be dead of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Dr. Howard Bruenn, the president’s physician, later observed that his patient suffered only from high blood pressure during the critical days of the meeting which marks the start of the Cold War. Roosevelt’s judgment, according to his doctor, was not impaired by his health.
Critics think otherwise. How else to explain Yalta’s secret “deals?” How else to comprehend that entire countries could be
given away by men who did not own them? After the conference was over, it is said FDR told Adolf Berle:
I didn’t say the result was good. I said it was the best I could do.
In reality, the result was much worse than the American leader could have imagined.
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