By New Year’s Day 1945, American, British, and Red Army offensives were closing in on Germany’s industrial heartland and Berlin from the east, south, and west. At the Argonaut Conference in Yalta—4–11 February—Churchill, Stalin, and an ailing Roosevelt met to map out final strategy for how the Führer would be finished off—and the shape of postwar Europe. Churchill left Yalta disappointed. Roosevelt, clearly ill and in failing health, was unable or unwilling to stand up to Stalin’s demands for hegemony over Eastern Europe. To his chagrin, the “United Nations”—as the Allies had taken to describing themselves in press releases—announced “unanimous” withdrawal of recognition for the Polish government in exile that had been resident in London since 1940. Even before Hitler’s final defeat, the fissures that would dominate European politics for more than four decades were beginning to show. Roosevelt departed from the Crimea convinced that a plan had been put in place for the “cooperative administration”
