by Cita Stelzer
A nice footnote to a memorable evening.
Notes
1. Moran, p. 148
2. Ibid.
3. Gilbert, p. 555
4. Gilbert, Volume VII, p. 564
5. Harriman Papers, Notes on the Teheran Conference, 27 November - 5 December 1943, Box 110, Folder 10
6. Gilbert, Volume VII, p. 569
7. Churchill, Sarah, A Thread in the Tapestry, p. 65
8. Dilks (ed.), Cadogan, p. 578
9. Lavery, Brian, Churchill Goes to War, p. 245
10. Eubank, Keith, Summit at Teheran, p. 177
11. Bullard, Sir Reader, The Camels Must Go, p. 256
12. Mayle, Eureka Summit, p. 51
13. Ismay, General Lord, Memoirs, p. 337
14. Birse, Memoirs of an Interpreter, p. 153
15. Harriman and Abel, p. 263
16. Eisenhower, John, Allies, p. 410
17. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 776
18. Churchill, Sarah, p. 65
19. Cunningham, A Sailor’s Odyssey, p. 588
20. Eubank, p. 342
21. Harriman Papers, Notes on the Teheran Conference, Box 110, Folder 10
22. Mayle, p. 114
23. Ibid.
24. Rees, Laurence, WWII Behind Closed Doors, p. 233
25. Bohlen, UK Edition, p. 149
26. Churchill, Sarah, p. 66
27. Thompson, John, Chicago Tribune, 7 December 1943
28. Danchev and Todman (eds.), p. 488
29. Ismay, p. 341
30. Cunningham, p. 588
31. Pawle, p. 271
32. Gilbert, Volume VII, p. 593
33. Bullard, p. 259
34. Letter from Harriman, State Dept., S8330
CHAPTER 7
Yalta February 1945
“Buckets of Caucasian Champagne.”1
“Our paws are well buttered here.”2
Yalta was certainly not the easiest of locations for the next meeting of the Big Three. But Stalin would not fly, and refused to leave Soviet-controlled territory. The Soviet dictator, once again, had his way. No matter to Churchill, who believed that this meeting would be what US Secretary of State Edward S. Stettinius, Jr. later called “the most important wartime meeting of the leaders of Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States”.3 For Roosevelt, however, the trip to this remote location, crossing parts of Europe still at war, was an arduous undertaking. Hopkins saw the President’s willingness to travel to Yalta as a tribute to his “adventurous spirit [which] was forever leading him to go to unusual places”.4 This, at a time when Roosevelt was so seriously ill that his energies would desert him during the meeting. He would die only two months after the Yalta Conference ended.
En route to Yalta, Churchill and Roosevelt met for lunch aboard the cruiser USS Quincy at Malta, after which the Prime Minister cabled Clementine: “My friend has arrived in the best of health and spirits.”5 He was alone in that view.
Marian Holmes, one of the Prime Minister’s secretaries, noted: “What a change in the President since we saw him in Hyde Park last October. He seems to have lost so much weight, has dark circles under his eyes, looks altogether frail, and hardly as if he is in this world at all”6 – a description borne out by the photographs of him, which show a very sick man indeed.7
After-dinner tête-à-tête
So unwell was the President that the plane to Yalta had to fly very low because of his blood pressure, a problem that would not have seemed serious to Churchill, since his own health during most of the war required the unpressurised planes of that time to fly below 10,000 feet.
Perhaps Churchill saw what he wanted to see on the eve of the Yalta Conference; perhaps he was harking back to his own experience of an almost miraculous return to full health a few years earlier, when he was taken seriously ill with pneumonia but quickly recovered, despite defying his doctors and constantly calling for the forbidden cigars – a defiance repeated when recovering from a broken hip and several strokes
The city of Yalta had become tsarist Russia’s leading seaside resort in the nineteenth century, its extravagant villas patronised by the royal family and the aristocracy. After the revolution it became the pre-eminent holiday destination for Soviet workers. But the war had brought severe destruction. The retreating Germans had destroyed much of its infrastructure and vandalised its palaces. For the conference, the Soviets had to bring with them all the furnishings, plumbing, carpeting, windows and even the domestic staff, who were from the prestigious Metropole Hotel in Moscow.8 Some American delegates who had worked in Moscow recognised familiar faces. Everything had been packed into 1,500 railway coaches9 which had begun arriving in Yalta just a few days before the start of the meetings.
Yalta’s harbour had been so heavily mined, and there were so many sunken ships, that the American and British ships had to anchor at Sebastopol, 90 miles away. Those ships were the “sole link with their home countries, and all messages in and out were transmitted through them”.10 “If we had spent ten years on research we could not have found a worse place,” Churchill complained to Harry Hopkins.11 He was right: Yalta was clearly not the best place for a second meeting of the Big Three, one of whom was obviously failing. Churchill was sufficiently chagrined at the site selection to apologise to Marian Holmes, “What a hole I’ve brought you to.”12 He described the place as a “Riviera of Hades”13 and intended to survive “by bringing an adequate supply of whisky good for typhus and deadly on lice”.14 (Churchill had declared “war on lice” in the trenches of the First World War when he discovered that his men were infested with them.) All attendees complained about bedbugs until the US military sprayed DDT everywhere.
After a few days at Yalta, Churchill revised his initial impression, cabling Attlee and the War Cabinet: “This place has turned out very well … It is a sheltered strip of austere Riviera with winding corniche roads …”15 Perhaps he had found some virtues to the site, or was buoyed by sharing US Secretary of State Edward S. Stettinius, Jr.’s later optimistic assessment of the meetings’ importance: “It was not only the longest meeting; it was also the first time that the three leaders reached fundamental agreements on post-war problems”16 – a bit of an exaggeration since they had earlier agreed on substantial points of war-time strategy at the final lunch at Teheran.
Earlier in the year, Churchill had written to thank the President for two gifts. The first gift was a bound copy of Roosevelt’s Prayer for D-Day; the second was three bow ties which Churchill promised he would wear when they got together at Yalta.17
Churchill was hoping for a resolution to the problem of Poland, unresolved at previous meetings. Roosevelt had a new item on his agenda: the structure of a post-war institution devoted to maintaining world peace. Roosevelt was determined not to meet the fate of a man he much admired, Woodrow Wilson, who, after the Great War, failed to persuade the American Congress to support membership of the League of Nations.
Not only had Stalin been unprepared to accommodate his allies on where to hold this meeting (just as he would later insist that the next meeting be held in Potsdam, in the Soviet Union’s zone of defeated Germany), he also refused to accommodate them on most issues of substance. He was, however, quite prepared to play the gracious host by showering his guests with buckets of champagne and vats of caviar for “breakfast, luncheon and dinner”18 – much appreciated by Churchill – and “lots of lovely butter”,19 a luxury strictly rationed in Britain (and, although less stringently, at the White House.) When one of the British delegation was heard to complain that there were no lemons for their gin and tonics, and Churchill’s daughter, Sarah, commented that caviar tasted better with lemons, the Soviets somehow provided lemon trees with real lemons the next day.20 When another delegate noticed that a fish tank was empty, the Soviets filled it with water and goldfish the next day.
The Prime Minister had taken off very early from his stop-over at Malta, and landed at a run-down airfield in Saki in the Crimea. After a bri
ef ceremonial meeting with Roosevelt, who had arrived earlier, Churchill was then driven to Yalta – some seven or eight hours away, stopping en route at a rest house. The Prime Minister and his daughter Sarah, plus carloads of trailing staff and press, were greeted there by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov and by “a most magnificent luncheon … prepared for me and the President or anyone else. Champagne, caviare, every luxury. Alas we had eaten a good deal before, but still there was a pleasant hour or two of talk and gourmandizing”.21 Sir John Martin, Churchill’s Principal Private Secretary, recalled that “the table groaned with caviare and the pop of champagne bottles went on all the time like machine-gun fire”.22
Vorontsov Palace: Churchill’s villa
Suitably refreshed, the Prime Minister pressed on by car for another three or four hours across rough terrain, and along mostly unpaved road. Saluting Soviet soldiers were stationed at intervals variously reported as at 50, 100 or 200 yards.
The three villas assigned to the national leaders were about half an hour away from each other. The roads between the villas were cleared of all traffic and heavily patrolled by male Soviet troops, whereas the road from the airport had been patrolled by both male and female troops. Quite a show of power for Stalin, a demonstration he would later repeat at Potsdam.
Churchill and his party were billeted at the Vorontsov Palace, designed by a Victorian architect. Joan Bright, a member of the British staff, describes it as a “pseudo-Scottish-castle-cum-Moorish Palace”.23 Cadogan describes it as “a combination of the Moorish and Gothic styles … a big house of indescribable ugliness – a sort of Gothic Balmoral”.24 It was in fact modelled in part on Windsor Castle, where Count Vorontsov’s father, the Tsar’s Ambassador to London, had been received by Queen Victoria.
Elizabeth Layton, who was with Churchill at Yalta, later recalled:
washing facilities seemed to have been neglected. It appeared that the Prince and Princess Vorontsov had concentrated more on eating than on bathing. One bath and three small washbasins served this enormous Palace, and in the morning one queued with impatient Generals and embarrassed Admirals, all carrying their shaving kit, and wishing that their dressing gowns had been long enough to cover their bare ankles.25
Unusually, only three of the six nights were booked for formal banquets given by the national leaders. But on all days lavish lunches were served for the leaders and their staffs, both military and political. Cadogan tells us that the Soviets had prepared for arrival day “an enormous luncheon – more caviar and smoked salmon, more vodka, and much food of all sorts, ending with tangerines”,26 not available in Britain and considered a wonderful treat by the Churchills. Clementine especially appreciated receiving some as a gift via one of the Americans visiting Britain.
Caviar was so often on offer, and in such huge quantities, that it came to be taken for granted. The Prime Minister complained that it was no substitute for news from his private office in Downing Street. In a letter to John Colville, John Martin quotes Colonel Kent (a code name for Churchill) sadly “calling again and again for news and being only offered caviar”.27
After the midday feast set out on the day of Churchill’s arrival, and throughout the conference, there was a general dinner for the entire British contingent, including staff, but the Prime Minister, who had arrived at around dinner time, slipped off to bed early. “He must have dined in his own room,” Cadogan writes in his diary.28
The absence of formal dinners on the first three nights of the Yalta Conference allowed Churchill to dine privately with his daughter and Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary. Sarah, in a letter to her mother, reported her father’s daily routine:
We dine quietly here – generally just Papa and Anthony and me – which of course is heaven … Morning presents a certain problem as he wakes rather late, and there isn’t any time for breakfast and lunch and work and a little sleep before the “do” at 4 – so now he has just orange juice when he is called and “brunch” at 11:30 – then nothing until 9 o’clock! This seems a very long time …
And should the Prime Minister feel peckish, or should he still have in mind the advice given long ago by his gastro-enterologist that he could reduce his bothersome indigestion by eating lightly every few hours:29
Livadia Palace: Roosevelt’s villa and meeting room
We are going to send him over some chicken soup in a thermos – and when they break for a few minutes for tea – he could have his chicken soup! If he doesn’t have a whisky and soda!30
The American delegation was assigned to the 50-room Livadia Palace built by Tsar Nicholas II as a summer retreat, because the grand rooms on the ground floor would be easily accessible to the President. Stalin had suggested the plenary meetings take place there so that the President did not have to travel between buildings. Today, there is a Churchill Room at Livadia which commemorates the Big Three’s 1945 meeting, furnished with donated volumes about and by Winston Churchill.
Some in the American delegation were not so lucky with their room assignments. According to Edward Stettinius, his “State Department group was small enough to be comfortably housed at the Livadia Palace, but this was not true of the military staff, five to seven generals were housed in one room, and ten colonels in another … Some 215 American staff had access to only a very few bathrooms”.31 Only the President had his own bathroom, but he had nowhere to hang his clothes. However, on the second floor of the palace the American military organised a mess hall where American and Soviet foods were served to the American delegation.32
The first official dinner was given by President Roosevelt on 4 February for his two honoured guests, the Prime Minister and the Marshal, plus eleven others. The old billiard room had been converted to a dining room at the Livadia Palace, and the billiard table was used for meals. The fallibility of eyewitnesses’ memories is demonstrated by the varying reports of what foods the Americans laid on for their British and Soviet counterparts. Edward Stettinius noted that what he calls “our” dinner was a typical American one. “Although caviar and sturgeon were added as always at every meal, we had chicken salad, meat pie, fried chicken Southern style, and vegetables.”33 But the official State Department log lists vodka as the first item, followed by “five different kinds of wine, fresh caviar, bread, butter, consommé [an agreeable surprise for Churchill], sturgeon with tomatoes, beef and macaroni [very American], sweet cake, tea, coffee and fruit”.34
The President took to Yalta an assortment of foods including 24 dozen eggs, caviar, oranges, two cases of scotch, one of gin and one of Old Grand-Dad (bourbon) and bottled water.35
An unlikely scenario is put out by the website for the Livadia Museum. It says that so wonderful did President Roosevelt consider the “local cuisine that he even sent his two personal chefs away from Livadia as their services were no longer needed”.36 Mike Reilly, the much-respected head of the American presidential security detail, would never have allowed such a potentially dangerous change. Besides, the President was already ill, and unlikely to experiment with local cuisine. Indeed, at one of the dinners he felt unwell and had to leave the table.
There was Russian champagne, and “much good-humoured jesting with the President over the question of whether he had wired Moscow for 500 bottles of champagne, which Stalin said that anyway he would give it to the President on a long-term credit of thirty years”.37
On 8 February, Stalin was the host at his own conference villa, the Yusupov Palace, built in 1909 by Prince Felix Yusupov who took part in the murder of Rasputin in St. Petersburg in 1916.
Unlike Roosevelt, Stalin included among his 30 guests several of his military chiefs. He also included three daughters who were in Yalta with their fathers: Kathleen Harriman, who proposed a toast in Russian, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger and Sarah Churchill. Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, who had been presented to Churchill in Moscow at an earlier Stalin-Churchill dinner in 1942, was not present.38
Cadogan wrote in his diary that he was relieved not to have been inclu
ded because he was “tired of these silly toasts and speeches”.39 ‘Alan Brooke, who had been promoted to the rank of Field Marshal in January 1944, was included and he was “not looking forward to it”,40 after a day touring two of the sites of the Crimean War, Balaclava and Sebastopol – and, as ever, on the look-out for birds. Stettinius notes that alertness was required at all times at the dinners, as elsewhere.41 He adds that there were “twenty courses, forty-five toasts”,42 confirming Cadogan’s prediction of endless toasting. On the day after Stalin’s dinner, Cadogan – although not present – recorded in his diary: “The PM seems well, though drinking buckets of Caucasian champagne which would undermine the health of any ordinary man.”43
Stettinius went on to describe this dinner as “most cordial, and it proved to be the most important dinner of the Conference. Stalin was in excellent humour and even in high spirits”.44 That night, the President told his fellow guests, he felt “the atmosphere at the dinner was that of a family”.45
The final glass was raised in a toast by the Prime Minister to the interpreters, one of whom, Hugh Lunghi, told the author that amid all the drinking and toasting, Churchill never overdid it, remaining sober throughout the evening. After all, he was there to work: he wooed Stalin to the best of his considerable abilities, appealing for a post-war world in which the Allies remained united, one in which they could lead both the smaller and larger nations “to the broad sunlight of the victorious peace”.46 Marian Holmes reports that after the dinner given by Stalin, “PM just returned from his dinner, he is next door singing The Glory Song”.47
