These are the last two days of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. It's been another fun year, even if it did cut into my writing time. Today I'm hoping to finish writing my fourth picture book of the year, so keep your fingers crossed. That's another challenge I put myself up to--participating in 12 x 12: writing one picture book a month for twelve months.
The Yalta Conference to plan the defeat and occupation of Germany took place in February 1945 between the three chief Allied leaders: British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The conferees had already decided on Germany's unconditional surrender and planned to set up four zones of occupation to be run by their three countries and France. In addition, Germany's military would be abolished and major war criminals would be tried before an international court.
Stalin agreed to free elections in Eastern Europe and was secretly promised if they entered the war against Japan that lands they lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) would be returned. They scheduled another meeting in April to create the United Nations.
Yalta proved to be controversial once the details were made public in 1946. As the Soviet Union and the United States headed into cold war, Stalin broke his promise of free elections and installed governments dominated by the Soviet Union. Critics charged that Roosevelt, who had died in office two months after Yalta, had sold out to the Soviets.
