title: Yalta Conference
abstract: The Yalta Conference (4–11 February 1945) was the most important and, it transpired, the most controversial Allied summit of World War II. When the conference ended, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin issued a statement proclaiming their utmost commitment to peacetime unity and to the establishment of longterm security for all states. After the conference, there was much talk about the ‘spirit of Yalta,’ and the Allied press lauded the meeting of the ‘Big Three’ as an histor