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false note, by expounding to the first plenary session his hopes for an Allied drive from northeast Italy through the “Ljubljana Gap.” This idea had been dead for months in the minds of everyone save the prime minister. It seemed otiose now to revive it. With Eisenhower’s armies approaching the Rhine, Churchill sought to flatter the Russians by inviting their advice on large-scale river crossings. Stalin, in his turn, asked Roosevelt and Churchill what they would like the Red Army to do—for all the world as if their answer might cause him to alter his deployments. He declared sanctimoniously that he had considered the launching of Russia’s vast January offensive “a moral duty,” after the Anglo-Americans requested action to relieve pressure from the German offensive in the Ardennes. In reality, it is unlikely that the timing of the Soviet assault was advanced by a single day in deference to Western wishes.

Churchill told Stalin that Eisenhower’s forces wanted the Red Army to do only one thing: keep going. The Soviets always knew, however, that British dollops of flattery masked a fundamental hostility to their objectives, while the U.S. president was much less intractable. “Our guards compared Churchill to a poodle1059 wagging its tail to please Stalin,” wrote Sergo Beria. “We shared friendly feelings towards Roosevelt which did not extend to Churchill.” Yet, Soviet cynicism was evenly apportioned between the two. Molotov quoted an unnamed colleague who said of Roosevelt: “What a crook that man must be1060, to have wormed his way to three terms as president while being paralyzed!” Soviet eavesdroppers laughed heartily1061 when they heard Churchill complain that he could not sleep at night because of the bedbugs.

Each day, the principals met at four p.m. for sessions which lasted four or five hours. In between, there were lunches, dinners, and tense national consultations among the delegations. Stalin was astonishingly amiable, as well he might be, as the most conspicuous profiteer from the war. Roosevelt drifted in and out of consciousness of the proceedings. When he engaged, it was most frequently to press for delay—for instance, in settling German occupation zones—or to accede to Soviet views. Again and again, the British found themselves isolated. Churchill opposed the “dismemberment” of Germany, to which Stalin was committed, and also argued against imposing extravagant reparations on the vanquished. He reminded the conference of the failure of such a policy in 1919: “If you want your horse to pull your cart, you had to give him some hay.” But the Americans and Russians had already settled on a provisional figure of $20 billion, of which the Soviet Union was to receive half.

The Americans joined with the Russians in resisting Churchill’s proposal to give France a seat on the Allied Control Commission in Germany. At British insistence, however, France was grudgingly conceded a zone of occupation. Churchill’s bilateral meetings with Roosevelt were fruitless. At lunches and dinners, platitudes were exchanged, but no business was done. The combination of Roosevelt’s mortal languor and disinclination to indulge Britain was fatal to Churchill’s hopes. There is little doubt that, at Yalta as at Tehran, the president deliberately sought to reach out to Stalin by distancing himself from the prime minister. It is hard to suggest that this tactic did Western interests substantial harm, for Stalin’s course was set. But it certainly conferred no discernible advantage.

Churchill, returning to his villa on the night of February 5, was irked to find that no intelligence brief had arrived from London. John Martin wrote: “It has gone to my heart1062 to hear ‘Colonel Kent’ calling again and again for news and being offered only caviar.” That night, before he went to sleep, Churchill said to his daughter Sarah: “I do not suppose that at any moment in history1063 has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. To-night the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the World.” Churchill’s fund of compassion towards the