My thoughts on “The Daughters of Yalta” by Catherine Grace Katz.

The Daughters of Yalta – The Churchills, Roosevelts and Harrimans: A story of love and war (William Collins, 2020) was written by American historian Catherine Grace Katz.  It tells of the part played behind the scenes at the Allied Powers conference at Yalta in February 1945 by Sarah Churchill, Kathleen Harriman and Anna Roosevelt Boettiger.  Their letters and observations describing the atmosphere in the Crimea and the character and mood of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, and their military chiefs, make absorbing and illuminating reading.

Katz also chronicles the fascinating and eventful lives the three women led both before and after the ten days they spent in Yalta as aides to their fathers.  Although Averell Harriman did not attend the plenary sessions, he and his daughter played key roles in setting up the conference and were there throughout.

My favourite quote from the book was that of Roosevelt’s chief of staff Admiral William Leahy concerning the Polish agreement Roosevelt and Churchill had negotiated with Stalin: “Mr. President, this is so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without technically breaking it.”

Stalin got, or would shortly get, everything he wanted.  Everything being control of Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe which was something Churchill opposed, but, not having Roosevelt’s backing, did not have the power to prevent.  The fact that Britain went to war in the cause of Polish freedom did not interest Roosevelt who seems to have been obsessed with setting up the United Nations, and receiving Stalin’s backing for it, above all else.

The book also notes the role played during the war by Sarah Churchill and her sister-in-law Pamela in promoting Anglo-American relations.  Churchill’s habit of welcoming US diplomats into his family home resulted in their affairs with, respectively, the American ambassador to Britain, John Gilbert Winant, and American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman. The two women doubtless did as much to foster the “special relationship” as Churchill, Eden or anyone else in the British Government of the day!