Empire: World History - 258. The Big Three & The Big Carve Up (Ep 3)

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Where did The Big Three stay as they carved up the post-war world map, and why were their rooms full of bedbugs? Why did FDR refuse to allow the press to photograph him arriving at Yalta? What role did Churchill and FDR’s daughters play in the political negotiations? William and Anita discuss the first day of the Yalta conference and the unlikely alliances that begin to form as The Big Three redesign Europe… Love History? Get our exclusive History Today deal! You can get started with a 3-month trial for only £5 at https://historytoday.com/empire  ----------------- Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com.  ----------------- Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Turimport. So in the last couple of episodes, we told you about the cast list. We told you about their background deals. we told you about their little secrets

and the secrets that they don't even know have been sold to the Soviets. So now they're going to meet. They arrive separately, of course, because they're coming from different places. For Roosevelt, it's a really arduous flight. It's long, it's body joltingly hard. And when they come off the plane,

you've got sort of already a different aspect to both of them. Churchill, you've got sort of swaggering off with a chewing on his cigar, you know, sort of like all cocky and ready. Roosevelt has to be lowered onto the tarmac in his wheelchair. And there is something that he asks his hosts and really insists on that he should not be photographed at such times showing his vulnerabilities. So you won't see images of

him being lowered onto the tarmac, but you will see him in a car driving off. When Churchill and Roosevelt met up prior to this in Malta, Churchill was very keen to get into a back room with Roosevelt to knock out, knock out common positions. And Roosevelt avoided it. He didn't want to be beholden to Churchill in any way and have any deals with him. So already the diminishing of Britain, the kind of post-war Britain which will emerge is sort of the ghost of it is already here in Yalta. The Americans very much their own men, they're not wanting to be beholden to their wartime ally, and they are preparing for a diminished Britain after the war. The second interesting thing that I think is fascinating, is that Stalin is obsessed with security. Before the war, he's already purged

half his party from potential rivals and enemies. In the immediate run up to Yelta, he's cleared out huge numbers of the indigenous Crimean Tatars, and he is terrified that he's going to be assassinated. He's also worried, obviously, that his guests are going to be vulnerable to attack by the Nazis, who are still up and running. And if they had got wind of the Alta Conference, it would be a very quick way to take out the opposition in one go. Yeah, a devastating blow. So they put down incredibly strict protocols

about the arrival patterns of the aircraft coming in from Malta. So they have to go on a particular flight path. They have to go in a particular maneuver. They have to take an immediate sort of left turn at a particular point to come into land, so they can't be mistaken for enemy aircraft. And the anti-aircraft crews all over the Crimea have been given strict instructions to fire if the aircraft do not follow these protocols.

So the whole thing is quite tense. There's an extreme danger that if a stray Nazi fighter doesn't appear or anti-aircraft fire, they might be shot down by friendly fire from the Soviets. Blow them out of the sky. Also, I mean, another very important thing, now it could be because of security concerns, but actually there are those in the British contingent who think it's a very visible snub that Stalin doesn't come and meet them. He sends Molotov to come and shake hands and glad handle them into the cars

that are going to take them some five hours away from the airstrip to where these talks are going to take place. But he's not there. Stalin's not there himself. And Molotov's line is that Stalin hasn't yet arrived that he's been held up with important business in Moscow. And this is not true. This is a straightforward lie that Stalin is already in his bunker all set with all his documents.

and it's the beginning of the game playing and position forming that will ensue over the next few days. But the other thing that worries the British, and this sort of brings back memories of Biden at the end of his attempt at re-election. Everyone is worried that Roosevelt's lost it, that his health is such. And Churchill's doctor, Lord Moran, records of Roosevelt's arrival. The president looked old, thin, and drawn. He sat looking straight ahead with his mouth open. as if he was not taking things in. Remember that open-mouth expression Biden had during the debate? And so the same worries that not only have the Soviets taken Eastern Europe, but there's very little left in terms of negotiating.

But there's very little left of Roosevelt at the conference. Yes, I know. So there's another very interesting anecdote about this is that when they are sort of being taken from their planes, they go to travel in separate cars and separate convoys, there is a moment where, Roosevelt is seated in a car and Churchill's walking next to him on the tarmac. And again, it's somebody in his contingent who is outraged by this saying he looks like some Indian fakir following a palanquin. This is not the projection of power that we need. So right from the get-go, every single thing is going to be analysed and important because it's all international projection. Churchill comes with his most trusted advisors.

He's got his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. Roosevelt has got his secretary of state, Edward Statenius, sounds like a stutter, but it's hard to say. And the rest, you know, field marshals, generals, stenographers, bodyguards, translators, there are enormous numbers of people who are coming. 25 transport planes will land at Saki Airstrip. And following in their wake, an absolutely nutso entourage. So these 25 transport planes, 750 personnel among those who have travelled to, you know, that a Hades-Riviera, has Churchill famously called it.

And despite the fact that this has been an absolutely sort of leveled war zone only a few months earlier with sort of desperate shell holes and bombed out buildings, on arrival, they find that the Soviets have set up a table filled with vodka, wines, caviar, fish, bread and butter. heaven knows what will follow, writes Lord Moran in his diary. And bizarrely, Churchill, who was very ill and under the weather in Malta and feeling very put out. He had migraine. He had a terrible migraine on the flight. He couldn't bear the sunlight when he got out of the plane.

He now has totally recovered and all the way to Yalta, which he thinks is an interminable. He's very bored by the trip. He's a Christ, five more hours of this. And he fills the time by reciting. This is rather impressive to his daughter. the whole of Don Juan, Don Juan, Don Juan, the Don Juan, the, I should pronounce it properly, the Don Juan, yes, the Byron epic. Who knew that he knew it by heart?

Well, also, who wants to be stuck in a car? For five hours with couples reciting Barron. That just sounds awful. Well, you mentioned the daughter. It is bring your daughters to work day in Yalta, it turns out, because Sarah Churchill, I mean, I'm going to call her Churchill, she has a married name, but just so it's easier to follow that. This wonderful book that we talked about before, Catherine,

Grace Cats, the daughters of the altar. It's filled with wonderful diary entries and letters that the girls or the women have collected of their own recollections. But she has served as Churchill's aide-de-camp, so she has to put up with his recitals and has had to in the past. She was in Tehran as well. But she's actually really quite an important part of his retinue, because she assists with logistics, she relays top-secret messages, she tries to schmooze the Soviets. You know, that's one of her jobs is sort of like a social attache. But it's even more than that because they're all going to be given their own base camps in these different palaces. But to get to their bases for these negotiations, it's dangerous and it's really scary.

So, you know, they have to go through this winding mountain pass, which is quite narrow. Over the highest peak of the Crimea, at 5,050 feet. And it's icy. It's icy. They're skittering near the edge. All along the way, they've got Soviet. soldiers, many of them women soldiers, sort of lining the route. What they don't realize, I think, is that they think they're regular Soviet soldiers. In fact, they're all NKVD. But they're stationed

all along the way. Also just showing how much sort of manpower is at Stalin's disposal. And this is, again, every step of this is a major flex. But it's also, I think, very interesting, it's something that the Soviets copied from the Nazis. When, in the early days, when Molotov went to sign the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, the Nazis lined the, the Nazis lined the whole way from the border with troops every, whatever it was, 10 yards or 50 yards. And the Soviets do this too, in imitation of the Nazis, interestingly. It's a kind of model of copy. Look, Sarah's really interesting.

And she wasn't actress by trade. Then she was a journalist, you know, so she has all of the support that Churchill normally looks to Clemmy for. But Clemmy doesn't like flying and she doesn't like the idea of going to such a god-awful place in the Crimea. So she's not travelled with him, but it is Sarah's job. And with Roosevelt, he brings Anna, his daughter. Anna, I'm going to call her Roosevelt, but she has got a married name, Bertigar. And she's also been a journalist before the war. She's written for ladies' magazines, one that I just laughed.

She used to write them, babies, just babies. Strangely, a magazine which hasn't survived into the present. But, you know, she worked for radio. And she adores her father, just like Sarah really adores Churchill. You know, they've got a very close relationship where they can kind of tease each other. He trusts her. Churchill will insist during this conference of doing most of his reading in bed or in the bath. There's that very nice scene in the movie Darkest Hour where Churchill is sitting on the kind of, you know, soap rack where you normally put a bar of soap or a backscrber.

He's sitting with an enormous bottle of Bollinger in the bath in the morning with his cigar. It drives his team nuts because they can't enter the boot one. and they can't sort of go and sort of, you know, push in the door. I think they occasionally have to enter it, and he doesn't mind that. That's part of the deal. No, no, no. I mean, that may be in the film that, but actually they complain about the fact that they don't have easy access to him in his bedroom. And they basically have to send his daughter in to say, look, he really needs to get up now and we need to talk to him about this pile of papers that's been sent to him.

Anyway, but Anna's relationship with her father, Roosevelt, is different. If you say he was the Sphinx, as we discussed in the last episode, he's unknowable even to his own. There's a very nice quote about this. Yes, go on. You do it. Go for it. He doesn't know any man and no man knows him, writes Anna. Even his own family don't know anything about him.

There is also a third daughter on this trip. It's not Svet Lama either. No, it's not Svet Lana. Svet Lana's kept very far away from all of this, but it's a young woman called Kathleen Harriman, who is the daughter of Averill Haramon, the American ambassador to Moscow. Who's the most movie star looking of the three? She's a stunner. She is a stunner. Absolutely. But she has sort of been in the forward welcoming party, you know,

to make sure everything is okay for the arrival of the big two. And she describes in just such glorious detail the arrangements that are made because Yalta and Crimea have been bombed to death. They are a mess. These palaces have been gutted. The Nazis have taken everything. They've unscrewed door handles, light fittings, everything else. So there is this sort of mass wave of getting everything from the top Moscow hotels into these palaces to make them look lovely for the arrival of the big two. And a lot of the stuff for the VIP still has the M monogram of the metropole,

which is the Savoy or the kind of or the imperial hotel of Moscow. But they've also kind of raided art galleries as well and they've tried to make it homey. Yeah. So they've got in Churchill's apartments. Half the hermitage is there, is it? They've got sort of British aristocrats that they've dug up from somewhere to put on the war. Oh, I think no, that actually. The British aristocrats are native to the house.

One of the, I think it is one of the Yusopovs or one of whatever princely family it was that had owned the house. had intermarried with the British aristocracy. So actually, fun enough, it's support there was there already. Well, that is interesting because I had heard. And Churchill was very excited by that. He's very excited by that. He likes it and he's very impressed. In fact, he really very much likes the place that he is given.

Having made an enormous fuss about it in advance. Yeah. So he gets to stay at the Villa Veronsov. It's a former residence of a prince. A fantasy castle. It's a mix of Moorish, Scottish. Baroneal style. People are very rude about it. Yes, a fantastically rude description. Is this Alexander Cadogan? What did he say? Go on. It's great. It says,

It is a big house of indiscernible ugliness, a sort of Gothic bar moral with all the furnishings of almost terrifying hideosity. I love that, almost terrifying hideosity. And one of the things that people find particularly hideous about Voronsov are these lions, these great carved lions which outside. They're big and they're brash and they're in your face. But Churchill falls so in love with these lions that he tries to negotiate with the Russians.

Can I take it? Can I take one? Can I have one and take it home? I really, really like it. There's another lovely description of this palace which does look very, very strange and it's hard to imagine anything fulfilling this description, but the palace actually does. It's Swiss

chalet meets mosque. So half of it's sort of Half timber tudor. And the other half is sort of the Alhambra or some sort of Orientalist fantasy. The look of it is odd, but there are also, the amenities are a bit sparse. So going to the loo at the Ronsoff is an absolute nightmare. Sarah Churchill writes back to Clemmy saying things are so bad. You can see three field marshals queuing for a bucket whenever you look out of the window because the plumbing didn't work.

So some of it's sort of spectacularly grand and spectacularly fantastic. And obviously the three presidents all have the working loos with all the amenities and furniture that's been sent down for the metropole. But you've only got to go down two or three ranks below to the rank of Field Marshall to see people queuing for a bucket, exactly. Oh, Marshall goes to the field. I mean, literally it is that bad. In their epaettes. In their epaettes and a copy of a newspaper and a bog roll out into the gardens. It's not good. The American base, though, that's a grander affair.

And again, again, this is like, you know, this is a flex of showing you your place, the LeVardia Palace. Do you want to describe the LaVardia? Well, there's one nice little detail just to show the hierarchy. And Barrier is in charge of this. Stalin, they build a sort of incredible bunker below his palace where it has like 25 feet, 25 meters of concrete. So that even if a direct bomb hit the thing, Stalin would be fine in his office. The Americans get a bunker, but it's not gasproof. and it's only two metres of concrete.

And poor Churchill's not given a bunker at all. No bunker at all. Not even lose, but not even a bunker. Lovadia Palace is a much grander. An Italianate mansion, it was Sir Nicholas II's folly, and he built it at ruinous expense. It's marble, it's gold, it's yellow satin. They look pretty good in the pictures, don't they? Yeah, mythical beasts on bedposts.

And Roosevelt is utterly thrilled with it. but it too only has one flushing toilet. And so the American contingent, this is 16 kernels, had to share one room, and they had to hastily build extra latrines in the garden. And there's an epidemic of lice and bedbugs too. So all the girls, Anna Churchill and Miss Harriman, are busy sort of popping bedbugs and lice on their mattresses in between all this sort of fantastic Gothic horror.

But the nicest detail, if I may say, is Stalin is staying at the Yusupov, And we talked about Yusupov before. He did in Rasputin. And he had been evacuated by Churchill from the Crimea. At the end of the First World War, when Churchill in a previous incarnation is Lord First High Admiral, what's the phrase? First Lord of the Admiralty. First Lord of the Admiralty. That's the word I'm looking for. Felix Yusuf is spirited with the last of the Romanovs out from the Crimea, and Stalin must know this. The surviving Romanov, great grand duchesses who hadn't been done in, plus Yusufov, are rescued by a British frigate from exactly the key. A lot of this stuff is arriving from it. The guys who don't arrive by air have to come through the mine-bobbed

oat waters of the Black Sea, and the Nazis just left all these mines littered. And so all the ADCs and the kind of support staff are coming by ship through the mines and landing at the very key that Churchill got Yusufov out of the Crimea in the previous round, the end of the First World War. I mean, you also talked about the bedbugs. It is Avril Harriman's daughter. She has the Soviet spray the whole place with DDT, which in retrospect may not have been much safer in the long run. But as well as the bugs in the beds, there are bugs everywhere. Stalin has put listening devices all over the place. And also, you know, they say that the flower beds are bugged. So you can't even go for a walk and have secret conversations because there's always somebody listening. And that's

going to be very, very important because that, again, you know, with Burgess's help and also with the help of this mass surveillance. And even though they are trying to be so careful about not having secret conversations, every evening or every day of the meetings in Yata, Stalin will get his spies to come and brief him personally. So this is late at night. He doesn't just want to know what they said. He wants to know how they said it. You know, did he raise his voice at this point? And he drills him and draws him. So the next day, he knows what their negotiating positions might be. But just remind everybody, this is February 1945. Where are we in the war at the moment, William? So we are at this moment when, as we said in the last episode, because of the then offensive

and then the cock up of the Arnhem bridges, the Western forces have been held up, while the Soviet forces have gone at double speed, having broken the back of the Red Army retreating out of Stalingrad on the way back from the invasion of Russia. And by the time that all these guys are getting to their bedbugs and their buckets in Yalta, the Soviet army is only, is it 50 miles?

40 miles. They're only 40 miles away from Berlin. miles from Berlin. And this had not been the plan at all. When the, you know, the idea was first set up, the hope was that the Allies would all be converging at roughly the same sort of time. But the Soviets have got the whole of Eastern Europe. And this completely changes the reality on the ground behind all the negotiations. So they can negotiate all they like. But they know that not only are the Soviets not going to give up Eastern Europe, but there's very little that the Americans and the British can do in terms of force.

even if they were willing to go to war again against their former ally. They're unlikely to be able to knock the Red Army out of Eastern Europe, whatever happens. So they can wish, they can negotiate, they can use as many tricks that they like. But the reality on the ground means that Yalta is almost certainly going to see the ceiling of the fate of Eastern Europe, which will remain until 1989, which is to have it under the Russian thumb. But not just that. The whole of Eastern Europe will see this conference as the great betrayal of their future. And they all, just to remind you, as we go to the break, everyone has their own

agenda when they've come here. It isn't just about sort of, you know, we, we are about to win the war, now we have to win the peace. Roosevelt wants the Soviets to help him with Japan. He wants his United Nations. Churchill, he entered the war because of Poland, so he's not very happy about the idea of Poland going just handed over on a tray to the Soviets. And he also does not trust the Soviets to be so close in Europe and wants spheres of influence to be created so that they are pushed back. And you've got Stalin, who wants it all, everything that he's now occupying and actually has the upper hand in these negotiations. Let's take a break. Welcome back. Okay. So the conference has like a mission statement, if you like. Churchill put it like this. He said, Yarta presents an immense

task which will shape the organisation of the world. So this, you know, they know that they've got quite a high mountain to climb. And they have all obviously been allies and they've fought together and between them they have defeated the Nazis. But a new reality is rapidly making itself clear. The Soviets have Eastern Europe and Britain and America have pretty limited leverage at this point. And Churchill's particularly worried about this. Make no mistake, all the Balkans except Greeks are going to be Bolshevized. And his worry is that they're just going to have a conference that basically puts the seal of Western approval on all that Stalin has already grabbed and taken by the force of the Red Army. And I think there's a sense also in which Churchill realizes that Stalin

particularly dislikes him. Molotov regards Churchill as the strongest of the Western leaders and the smartest. But Stalin thinks that Churchill is a bore. He talks too much. He tries to dominate the conversation. He thinks that the British are deceptive. They're not trustworthy. And they trick their allies. This is an extraordinary line that Stalin uses to Milovangilas, the Yugoslav Communist Party head on the eve of Yalta. And he says that perhaps you think that just because we are allies of English, that we have forgotten who they are and who Churchill is, they find nothing sweeter than to trick their allies. During the First World War, they constantly trick the Russians and the French. And Churchill, you know the kind of guy Churchill is. If you don't watch him, he will

slip a Kopeck out of your pocket. Yes, a Kopeck out of your pocket. By God, a Kopeck out of your pocket. And Roosevelt, Roosevelt's not like that. He dips in his hand only for bigger coins. But Churchill, Churchill, even for a Kopeck. So that's a really quite hard felt. With that in my, and by the way, Churchill doesn't like Stalin either. And Churchill's really disturbed by, you know, that kind of vibe that happened in Tehran. And it is a weird vibe right from the get-go at Yalta, too. So America's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Avro Haraman, describes this, this strange. kind of static that's going on between the big three. He says, I think Stalin was afraid of

Roosevelt. Whenever Roosevelt spoke, he would watch him with a certain awe. He was afraid of Roosevelt's influence in the world. But Stalin never displayed the same sense of awe when talking to Churchill. And Roosevelt, again, is sort of very keen to build on this bon or me that he started with Stalin because he's got his own agenda. This is a sick man and he's actually much sicker than anybody knows. maybe even than he knows. He doesn't have much time left. I mean, he would have been shocked at how little time he has left. But he wants a legacy.

So Roosevelt set himself up this target that he will be the man who gives the world the United Nations. That's his gift to the world and come hell or high water. Plus Japan. We mustn't forget that the Manhattan Project is progressing at this point, but the Americans are not at all clear that this bomb will work, that it will change the course that we know in retrospect that, of course, atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima's going to change everything. But this is not clear at Yalta. And so the Americans are terrified. They've got another, you know, decade-long war ahead with Japan.

They've done death projections. And Roosevelt knows that no president can stay in office or have any kind of legacy if those mortality figures become a reality for, you know, GIs coming back. And then we should also mention Stalin is obsessed with the fact, understandably, that 20 million Soviets have been killed in this war. 20 million Soviet war dead. And he wants to ensure a future that this can never happen again. And for the Russians, this means building up a buffer zone in Eastern Europe that they control. So we could never have, as we had with Napoleon in the early 19th century, then again with Hitler. So again, an understandable position. Russia had twice defeated Western European invasions. He doesn't want to be in this position ever again. And he's determined to protect his country as best he can.

And his particular thing is to build up a Soviet-controlled Poland that can never, ever strike Russia in the back or be the means by which an army from the West can invade him. There's a fabulous quote here because, you know, Poland is also a red line for Churchill because it is the reason he entered the war. But Stalin says of that, you know, when they're talking about this behind the scenes, Poland is a matter of honor for Britain. It is a matter of life and death for the Soviet Union. So there was going to be a problem here. And the final thing is growing up in Britain, as Anita and I both did, we've been weaned on this idea of the British American Alliance, which is so much part of the Article of Faith until Trump since this period.

But if you actually read what Roosevelt says and does at Yalta, There's absolutely no sense that he regards Churchill as his closest ally, his distant cousin, his best friend, any of that. There's actually Roosevelt thinks that Churchill talks too much, bangs on. But it's mutual, Willie. I mean, you know, just remember Churchill flew to Moscow without Roosevelt and came up with his naughty list. You know, so there's, you know, this brotherhood is an odd situation. Shoulder to shoulder, not quite, maybe back to back. You know, I don't know.

Look, we've talked about sort of their entourages. It's interesting as well that, you know, one of the people that is in the American, I mean, you can tell us a little bit about Molotov, but I'll tell you about Statenius, who is the Secretary of State, Statenius, I should say, because he's a businessman. He's a man who knows a deal. Senior Executive of General Motors and then U.S. Steel. So he knows how to deal with people.

He knows how to be charming and effective in a room. But he's not a political. beast. And some actually say that he was too loyal to Roosevelt and kind of was a bit of a yes man when he should have been saying, you know what, actually, you're trusting Stalin an awful lot. You're thinking that Stalin is going along with things and I don't think that he is, which another man might have said in his stead, but he was not that man. And Molotov, and we've sort of mentioned his name. Tell us a bit more about Molotov. Before we get to Molotov, just this whole thing of having the head of General Motors there at the Yelter.

conference. I mean, you know, we might imagine. Well, no, he's Secretary of State. He was, no, he wasn't the head of General Motors when he went to Yarta. He was the Secretary of State. Understood, but just this business of having major corporate figures in positions of power does not begin with Trump. Does that sound familiar? Exactly. That there is this sort of precedence in American policy, which I have to say I was not particularly aware of that there is this long tradition of this. And Molotov, Molotov has this reputation as being stone arse is what his nickname is.

in diplomatic circles. Stone arse because he is immovable. He likes saying no, 90% of the time, and once he says no, you cannot move his stone ass from that position. Now the irony, long after Yelta, is that Molotov has a spectacular fall from grace and Stalin just decides one day to get rid of him. And he sends his wife, who is Jewish, to the gulag, partly out of anti-Semitism, apparently. and Molotov himself who rose from, I think his father was a storekeeper, a provincial storekeeper and rose to power, is just dismissed in the day. And anyone who's at Yalta would never have guessed this, because apparently he's this hardliner who's Stalin's, the voice of Stalin, Stalin's right-hand man, but things are much more delicate than they appear. And Stalin,

like Trump, can just get out of bed one day and end so on his career. on a whim. I'm just going to tell you one sort of quick story about Stalin playing Roosevelt, just as Roosevelt thinks he's playing Stalin. So this is, you know, sort of of of the day of the first meeting. And Stalin goes to visit both Churchill and Roosevelt in their respective billets, these very grand places. And Roosevelt welcomes Stalin with this sort of charm offensive because he likes mixing a dry martini. That's what he does. It's his signature. He mixes a dry martini for his very, very special guests. And he hands it over to Stalin. And he says, I'm really very sorry because actually a really good martini ought to have a twisted lemon in it. And he sort of

does this little coy smile like this butt, you know, we'll make do. And Stalin doesn't say anything. So has his drink, smiles, goes off and see you, see you tonight as we're, you know, going to have our first plenary session. And also, I'd like you to chair the meeting, which is a great honor because it's, you know, it's Stalin's invitation. It's Stalin's backyard. But he wants Roosevelt. to chair the meeting. The next day, an enormous lemon tree appears at the Lavaldeo Palace, which he has had flown over from Georgia overnight so that Roosevelt will always have a twist of lemon. And it said its branches were laden with 200 ripe lemons. But another thing to read into this whole thing, I would love you, Roosevelt, to chair the plenary session. It's a really shrewd move

by Stalin because if he's chairing, he can't comment as much as if he were a delegate. So in a way, an honour also neuters the most powerful man in the world, the American president, because he can't wade in. So it is now Stalin in the red corner, Churchill in the blue corner, and Roosevelt kind of stuck in the middle, which is going to be sort of an untenable situation in the middle of this conflict. But there's also in this meeting a hint also of what we've been talking about, this surprising degree of distance that Roosevelt puts between himself and Churchill. We imagine them to be close allies. Certainly the Brits always imagine them to be close allies. But here is what Roosevelt says of Churchill. They are funny people, the British. They always want to have their

cake and eat it too, which is quite a disloyal. Oh, he slacks him off. Oh, no, he slacks. He slags Churchill off behind his back. It is disloyal. Anyway, five o'clock, grand ballroom, LeVardier Palace. It's going to be the first session. The US, British and Soviet photographers are all falling over themselves. There's a motion picture camera, all trying to get the delegates arrival. An aide pushes Roosevelt into the ballroom in his wheelchair,

and nobody is allowed to take pictures of that. Every single time the cameras are allowed anywhere near him, he has to already be seated, so he's always the first to arrive. Churchill arrives in a colonel's uniform. He comes wearing this Russian hat. It's a very Boris Johnson kind of move, isn't it, really? You know, he wears the Russian hat. And you've got sort of others like General Antonov,

head of the Soviet military delegation. He gives the first situation report of how close they are to Berlin. They get their strategic updates from their different members of military staff. So, you know, the first meeting is basically, look, we are on the verge of taking Berlin. and that's where we are. These are the oil suppliers. This is what we need from you.

This is what we need from you. Talking about their robot bombs and rockets, the V2s, the first ballistic missiles. And they're, you know, huge maps are produced of Berlin and who's going to get what. And they're talking about, look, we're going to get to the nitty gritty and street by street of what we're going to do with a divided Berlin.

But there is one quarter that is missing. So you've got the three of them saying, okay, we're going to carve up this way, that way. The Russians are going to have a slightly strange, bulging part of Berlin, we might get to that later, but the French aren't there. And actually, that is a thing that Churchill is going to lobby for, because he has got de Gaulle sitting in London. He knows that he needs an ally in that part of Europe, and France is nearby and owes loyalty to Britain. Britain gave him harbour during the war. He also has the Polish government in exile

sitting in London as well. But none of that. We're not going to talk about that right now, because we need to get on for the first night. So it's sort of a preliminary thing. Situation reports how quickly it stuns the rest of the allies that how quickly the Russians are about to arrive in Berlin much faster than anybody else. And they already start talking about, okay, let's talk about what we're going to talk about at Yalta.

Let's talk about this map and how we're going to divide it up. Churchill sort of slips in. I think we need to talk about the French having a presence here. Okay, no, they're not at this meeting, but they ought to have some part of Berlin. We can put a pin in that and come back. Stalin immediately says, why should we let the French in?

He regards the French as these sort of, they did nothing. They caved into the Nazis. But, you know, and then they have this massive banquet in the evening. It's all gone fine. You know, and it's just so completely over the top, this first night, you know, champagne, vodka,

five types of wine. And the toasts, it's like being in one of those Viking halls where, you know, they just keep trying to. And I would like to say, you know, you are the greatest that I have ever seen. No, but your laugh is so quite marvelous. And Stalin tries out his bits of the American movies he's heard. And suddenly comes out with, what the hell goes on around here? And you said it.

You said it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually, Roosevelt, it's unlike Roosevelt because he kind of lets down his guard. And he tells Stalin, oh, well, you know what we call. call you in America, we call you Uncle Joe, thinking he's going to take this really well. And Stalin is not delighted by this. Nope. Not delighted at all. But look, the first day, that's fine. They've got the agenda for the next few days. They're sort of swaying back to their own places. The only person who's not actually swaying is Stalin. Stalin is said to be watering down his vodka

drinks and nobody knows it. That they're all knocking back and toast, no to you, Mr. Churchill. No, to you, Mr. Roosevelt. And they are completely, you know, sort of creating one of the greatest hangover as Europe has ever known. But Stalin is not. He's drinking water in between every drink and watching everybody very carefully. And watching him is Anthony Eden on the British side. And he says, Stalin's attitude to small countries strikes me as grim, not to say sinister. They have seven days of this to get through. So that's it. But if you want to join the club, you can hear next week's episode. Now the club is available. We have our wonderful magazine, advanced ticket bookings, all the treats that you could possibly want associated with Empire Pod. And you will be our best friends forever. And come and see us at our annual gathering in London, which we're planning. Anyway. Oh my God.

This is a thing that you've just come up with. I feel like it's more threatening than welcoming. I know you do. I know you're just trying to force it on to the agenda. Look, if you would like to have a drink with us, let us know, you don't have to. This is a William thing that's just come up. I'm going to be left with all our listeners alone. I can see.

Jimmy no mates propping up a bar. Well, everyone else has got better things to do. So if you want to join up, you have to go to EmpirePoduk.com. It's that simple. And so goodbye from me, William Durenpul. And it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnann.