At the Yalta conference, between the US, the Soviet Union and Britain, the tensions between the Allies became increasingly obvious. Representing Britain, Churchill wanted the Allies’ war effort to be directed in such a way as to limit Soviet control over Central and Eastern Europe. The Soviets wanted to make sure they maximised the area they controlled. And given how powerfully they were surging towards Germany, it was hard to see how they could be blocked. Certainly, the Americans saw no way to stop them and weren’t prepared to go along with Churchill’s schemes for trying.

The result was that the Soviets ended up completely controlling such nations as Poland and Czechoslovakia, and several other countries of Eastern Europe. They also got to Berlin first and symbolically planted a Soviet flag on top of the German Reichstag (parliament) building. With Hitler committing suicide while Soviet forces were only 500 metres away, this meant that when the Nazis surrendered on 8 May (to the western powers) or 9 May (to all the Allies including the Soviets), Stalin was in a powerful position among the victors.

Illustration: A Soviet soldier plants a flag on the Reichstag building in Berlin. Public Domain

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