Professional Custom Accounting: Demilitarization and denazification
· The meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe, especially focusing on German reparations and post-war occupation as well as Poland.
· Yalta was the second of three wartime conferences among the Big Three, preceded by the Tehran Conference in 1943 and followed by the Potsdam Conference in July 1945.
· Each leader had an agenda for the Yalta Conference: Roosevelt wanted Soviet support in the U.S. Pacific War against Japan and Soviet participation in the UN; Churchill pressed for free elections and democratic governments in Eastern and Central Europe (specifically Poland); and Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Eastern and Central Europe.
· Stalin pledged to permit free elections in Poland, “because the Russians had greatly sinned against Poland.”
· It was decided that Germany would undergo demilitarization and denazification and be split into four occupied zones: Soviet, British, French, and American zones.
