Editor's Note:

In February 1944, a frail but upbeat Franklin Roosevelt traveled to Crimea in what was then the Soviet Union for a meeting of the “Big Three.” In discussing the final defeat of Germany and the postwar reorganization of Europe, FDR would test the limits of his wartime friendships at Yalta as he met for what would prove to be the last time. with Churchill and Stalin.

It was Winston Churchill’s opinion that if the Allies had spent ten years on research, they could not have picked a worse place to meet than Yalta. In truth, Yalta itself was a casualty of war. Between the rugged mountains and the Black Sea, it was warmer than most of the surrounding region and had once been deliberately maintained as an unspoiled wilderness. There, Russian czars and the Russian gentry had come to relax, to enjoy its bright sun and warm sea breezes; its aura of health along the coastal waters and its emerald waters in the little harbor of the imperial estate; its groves of cypresses, orchards, and vineyards; and its flowering fruit trees, lilacs, and wisteria. 

There, Nicholas II had constructed an elaborate palace, Livadia, a gorgeous white limestone structure perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, with magnificent rose gardens in the front and views of snowcapped mountains in the back. But then came the Soviets, who converted the imperial estate into a tuberculosis sanatorium. When the vengeful Germans overran the Ukraine, they made a particular point of devastating Yalta and its environs. They had looted the palace, being as thorough there as at the death camps when they took the belongings of their victims. At Livadia, they meticulously removed not just furniture and art, but plumbing fixtures, doorknobs, and locks. It was surprising that they did not tear up the floorboards as well. In the large city of Sebastopol, nearby, the destruction was even more complete; every building appeared to have been shattered. The city’s sports club was nothing more than a square of broken trees and old shell holes; a church was nothing more than a scarred shell.