Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt Divide Europe

The division of Europe between East and West, born during World War II, not only denied independence to more than 100 million East Europeans, but upset the balance of global power, putting Stalin in a position to threaten Western Europe and planting the seeds of the Cold War and the arms race. This book probes the questions and facts surrounding the division of Europe and offers new insight into how it might have been prevented. Looking beyond the conventional assumption that Stalin simply took over Eastern Europe in the postwar years, Remi Nadeau demonstrates how the Soviet leader, having gained power in Eastern Europe through Red Army occupation, was unrestrained by any prior Allied agreements. The Sovietization of Eastern Europe, which is believed to have occurred in the immediate postwar years, actually came about, the author argues, during the war as the Allies failed to limit Stalin. Nadeau shows how the British, who recognized the Soviet threat, repeatedly tried to block it and how Roosevelt, with a different foreign policy approach, did not support them. He demonstrates how Roosevelt’s failure to throw US strength into the political balance was not confined to the Valta Conference in 1945, but was a consistent US policy in East-West encounters throughout the war. Nadeau shows that Roosevelt did not understand Stalin’s intentions and repeatedly failed to support Churchill’s attempts to block Stalin with diplomatic bargaining and military pre-emption.