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==Cement territorial and political gains at Yalta==

The Yalta Conference took place in February 1945. This was the second wartime meeting of the “Big Three” the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, and US President Franklin Roosevelt). Each brought his own agenda to the Yalta Conference. The British wanted to maintain their empire, the Soviets wished to secure and obtain more land and secure positions in their new zones of influence and interests, and the US wanted to ensure the Soviet’s entry into the Pacific war and discuss postwar settlement.<ref> Geoffery Roberts, "Stalin at the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences," Journal of Cold War Studies 9:4 (Fall 2007): 6-40</ref> From the very opening, Stalin made it clear that his demands regarding Poland were not negotiable: the Soviets were to gain “their territory” from the eastern portion of Poland. Poland was to compensate for that by extending its Western borders, thereby forcing out millions of Germans. Negotiators even signed a declaration forcing the Polish to provide inclusion of Soviet Communists in their postwar national government.<ref> Roberts, p. 245 </ref>

==Post war doctrines, conference reactions and consequences==

Although the initial reaction to the Yalta agreements was celebratory, it was also very short lived. In 1945, the administration of the new US president Harry Truman clashed with the Soviets over their influence in Eastern Europe, and over the United Nations. Many Americans began to criticize Roosevelt’s handling of the Yalta negotiations due to the following lack of Soviet cooperation and even giving Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia away to the Soviet Union.<ref> Plokhii, p. 119</ref> Numerous Central European nations also regard the Conference in Yalta as the “Great Western betrayal” since it allowed the USSR to intervene freely in their domestic affairs, abandoning democratic policies and turning them into Soviet satellites. Yalta effectively allowed the USSR to install Communist regimes in Central Europe with impunity. At the Yalta conference, the Big Three “attempted to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability”, and many believe the decisions and concessions of Roosevelt and Churchill during the summit led to the following power struggle during the Cold War. Nevertheless, Stalin essentially got everything he wanted: a significant territorial sphere of influence and interest as a buffer zone.