The Impossible Alliance, Part 2: Episode 95

2026-02-23

Why did the Yalta Conference end the way it did? Why did Churchill try an end-run around Roosevelt? Why did Roosevelt try to curry Stalin’s favour? What would this mean to post-war history? Author Giles Milton joins to discuss some of the Second World War’s most perplexing questions. People Author Giles Milton His latest book, The Stalin Affair: The impossible alliance that won the war The Big Three: Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churc...

Why did the Yalta Conference end the way it did? Why did Churchill try an end-run around Roosevelt? Why did Roosevelt try to curry Stalin’s favour? What would this mean to post-war history?

Author Giles Milton joins to discuss some of the Second World War’s most perplexing questions.

People

Author Giles Milton

His latest book, The Stalin Affair: The impossible alliance that won the war

The Big Three: Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Kathleen “Kathy” or “Puff” Harriman, daughter of Roosevelt’s right hand and Ambassador to the USSR in 1945, Averell Harriman

Averell Harriman

Pamela Churchill, WInston Churchill’s daughter-in-law in 1945, and later, Mrs. Averell Harriman

Stalin and Churchill at the Moscow Conference, 1944

Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 Map 1: The division of Germany after May 1945

Map 2: Invasion of Poland, 1939 Map 3: Poland moves 100 km west

Sources