By the time of the Yalta conference in February 1945, between the USA, Soviet Union and Britain, the latter still being treated as a great power though its decline was already clear, there could be little doubt that the war in the west, at least, was heading towards victory for the Allies.

The Soviets were sweeping through eastern Europe and were only 65 km from Berlin.

The D-day landings had gone well, in great part thanks to the brilliant planning work of Admiral Bertram Ramsay, and since then – despite a few setbacks, at least two of the more serious down to Bernard Montgomery – the America and British armies had swept through northern France, liberating Paris, and then Belgium. Meanwhile, another landing, this time by American and French troops, in the south of France had added further momentum to the advance.

The war was drawing to its end. The main leaders of the Allies came to Yalta to discuss what happened to Europe next, once peace had been secured. The decisions we’ll talk about next week, but for now it was clear that all the Allied sides would be negotiating from positions of strength.

Illustration: Driving down the Champs Elysées of newly liberated Paris, with the Arc de Triomphe behind, on 26 August 1945, the halftrack ‘Guernica’ from the Ninth Company – La Nueve – manned by exiled republican veterans of Spain’s civil war, from Philippe Leclerc’s Deuxième DB. Public Domain

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License