In the summer of 1942 , Harriman accompanied Churchill to the Moscow Conference to explain to Stalin why the western allies were carrying out operations in North Africa instead of opening the promised second front in France . Harriman was appointed as United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1943 . In his book 1975 memoir '' Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin , 1941-1946 '' , Harriman wrote that Stalin was " the most inscrutable and contradictory character I have ever known " , a mysterious man of " high intelligence and fantastic grasp of detail " who possessed much " shrewdness " and " surprising human sensitivity " . Harriman concluded that Stalin was " better informed than Roosevelt , more realistic than Churchill , in some ways the most effective of the war leaders . At the same time he was , of course , a murderous tyrant " . Harriman , who thoroughly enjoyed living in London , did not want to be U.S ambassador in Moscow and only reluctantly accepted the assignment in October 1943 after Roosevelt told him that he was the only man he wanted in Moscow . Besides for the fact that Harriman regarded London , even in wartime as a more glamorous city than Moscow , his reluctance to leave London was due to his unwillingness to part with his mistress , Pamela Churchill , the wife of Randolph Churchill . Through Harriman was one of the richest men in the United States , running a vast business empire comprising investments in railroads , aviation , banks , utilities , shipbuilding , oil production , steel manufacturing , and resorts , this in fact endeared him to the Soviets whom believed he represented American capitalist ruling class . Nikita Khrushchev later told Harriman : " We like to do business with you , for you are the master and not the lackey " . Stalin viewed the United States through a Marxist prism , which saw American Big Business as the puppeteers and American politicians as the puppets . At a three power conference in Moscow that took place between 19-30 October 1943 , Harriman played a major role in representing United States as part of the American delegation headed by Secretary of State Cordell Hull while the Soviet delegation was headed by the Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and the British delegation headed by the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden . The main American demands at the Moscow conference was to have a new international organization replace the League of Nations to be called the United Nations ; to have Soviet Union to agree to adhere to the " unconditional surrender " formula adopted at the Casablanca conference ( a major point given that the Soviets sometimes hinted that they were willing to sign a separate peace with Germany ) ; and for the " Big Three " powers whom it was assumed would dominate the post-war world to be a " Big Four " as the Americans wanted China to stand alongside the United States , the Soviet Union , and Great Britain as one of the world 's dominant powers . The demand for a " Big Four " instead of a " Big Three " turned out to the main difficulty at the Moscow conference as the British and Soviets did not consider China a major power in any sense . As long as the Soviet Union was engaged in the war against Germany , they not did wish to antagonize Japan with whom they had signed a neutrality agreement with in 1941 , and the Soviets objected that having Foo Ping Shen , the Chinese ambassador to Moscow , sign the proposed Four Power Declaration would cause tensions with Tokyo . Eventually , after much patient diplomacy , Harriman won out , and a Four Power declaration was signed on 30 October 1943 by Hull , Eden , Molotov and Foo stating that the four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would be the United States , Great Britain , the Soviet Union and China . Besides for the Four Power declaration , the other issues at the Moscow conference were whether the United States would recognize the French National Committee of Liberation headed by General Charles de Gaulle as the French government-in-exile . Roosevelt had a strong personal aversion to de Gaulle , and throughout the war , the Americans had an " anybody but de Gaulle " attitude . At Moscow , the Americans very reluctantly agreed to Eden 's insistence that they extend some recognition to de Gaulle , through the Americans still refused to grant him full recognition , a matter which contributed much to de Gaulle 's subsequent anti-Americanism . The question of whom the legitimate government of France was posed a major potential problem since the next year Operation Overlord , the invasion of France , was scheduled to take place . Presuming Overlord was successful , the question would arise over whom the Anglo-Americans would turn France over to . Nothing infuriated de Gaulle more than the implication that the Americans would not hand over France to his National Committee after the liberation . Tensions between Great Britain and the Soviet Union over the Arctic supply convoys were eased while the difficulties over supplies coming over Iran were left unresolved despite Harriman 's best efforts at playing mediator . On the matter of Germany , the Soviet Union agreed to the " unconditional surrender " formula while it agreed that after the war , Germany was to be disarmed and denazified . All of the delegations at the Moscow conference agreed that Germany was to be permanently disarmed after the war , which led to the question of whatever Germany should be also deindustrialized as well in order to ensure that Germany would never be able to build military weapons again ; no consensus was reached over this issue . The question of what Germany 's borders were to be after the war was left unresolved , through everybody at the conference agreed that Germany was going to lose territory with the only question being just how much . One matter where agreement was reached was with Austria as it was announced at the Moscow conference that the '' Anschluss '' of 1938 was to be undone and Austria would have its independence restored after the war . Finally , in regards to the '' Reich '' , it was agreed that war crimes trials were to take place after the war with lesser war criminals to be tried in the nations where they had committed their crimes while the leaders of Germany were to be tried by a special court consisting of judges from the United Kingdom , the United States and the Soviet Union . The communique in Moscow which announced that war crimes trials were going to be held after the war was intended primarily as a deterrent to those German officials presently engaged in war crimes as it was hoped that the prospect of facing a hangman 's noose after the war might change their behavior . As for Italy , it was agreed that the Soviet Union was to sent a representative to the Allied Control Commission which governed the liberated parts of Italy and Italy was to pay reparations to the Soviet Union in the form of ships as much of the Italian merchant marine was to be handed over to the Soviet Union . No agreement was reached over the question of the Soviet Union 's borders after the war with the Soviets insisting that their post-war borders should be exactly where they were on 21 June 1941 , a point that the American delegation and to a lesser extent British delegation resisted . At the Tehran Conference in late 1943 Harriman was tasked with placating a suspicious Churchill while Roosevelt attempted to gain the confidence of Stalin . The conference highlighted the divisions between the United States and Britain about the postwar world . Churchill was intent on maintaining Britain 's empire and carving the postwar world into spheres of influence while the United States upheld the principles of self-determination as laid out in the Atlantic Charter . Harriman mistrusted the Soviet leader 's motives and intentions and opposed the spheres approach as it would give Stalin a free hand in eastern Europe . At the Tehran conference , Molotov finally promised Harriman what he long sought , namely that after Germany was defeated , the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan . Starting in February 1944 , Harriman pressed Stalin to open U.S-Soviet staff talks to prepare for when the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan , only to be told this was " premature " as Stalin stated it would require at least 4 infantry divisions to invade Manchuria , which would not be possible given that the Soviets were fully involved in the war against Germany . For the rest of 1944 , Harriman pressed Molotov to bring the head of the Soviet Far Eastern Air Force to Moscow to open staff talks with the U.S military mission about establishing American air bases in either the Vladivostok area or in Kamchatka to allow American aircraft to bomb Japan . Molotov refused to make any firm commitments about allowing American bombers to strike Japan from air bases in the Soviet Union . Another major concern of the Roosevelt administration was in ensuring that the Chinese civil war did not resume with the end of World War II , and as such , the Americans sought a coalition government between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomingtang . In connection with this , Harriman met Stalin on 10 June 1944 to get from him a rather generalized statement declaring his support for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek as China 's only leader and a promise that he would use his influence with Mao Zedong to pressure him to recognize Chiang . In August 1944 , Harriman sought permission for American aircraft flying supplies to the '' Armia Krajowa '' rebels fighting in the Warsaw Uprising to land at the Poltava airbase as otherwise the American aircraft would have no fuel to make it home . On 16 August 1944 , the Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs , Andrei Vyshinsky , told Harriman that " the Soviet government can not of course object to English or American aircraft dropping arms in the region of Warsaw since this is an American or British affair . But they decidedly object to American or British aircraft , after dropping arms in the region of Warsaw , landing on Soviet territory , since the Soviet government does not wish to associate themselves either directly or indirectly with the adventure in Warsaw " . In the summer of 1944 , Stalin promised Harriman that the Americans would be allowed to use air bases in the Soviet Far East to bomb Japan , but only if the Americans supplied the Soviet Air Force with hundreds of four engine bombers . In September 1944 , Stalin expressed much pique to Harriman that the recent Anglo-American communique issued at the Quebec Conference did not mention the Soviet Union , leading him to sarcastically state " if the United States and Great Britain desired to bring the Japanese to their knees without Russian participation , the Russians were ready to do this " . When Harriman protested it was impossible to include the Soviet Union in the plans for victory over Japan until the Soviets opened staff talks , Stalin assented . In early October 1944 , the commanders of military forces in the Soviet Far East arrived in Moscow to begin staff talks with General John Deanne of the U.S. military mission . At the same time , Stalin informed Harriman that Soviet entry into the war against Japan would require American approval of certain political conditions about the future of Manchuria , a point about which he did not elaborate upon . On 14 December 1944 , Stalin spelled out to Harriman what these political conditions were , namely that the Soviet Union be allowed to lease the Chinese Eastern Railroad and the ports on the Liaotung peninsula and for China to recognize the independence of Outer Mongolia . In a thinly veiled threat , Stalin boasted to Harriman that the flat open plains of Manchuria and northern China were the perfect country for Soviet combined arms operations , expressing much confidence that the Red Army would have no difficulty defeating the Kwantung Army and that all of northern China would be under Soviet control once the Soviets declared war on Japan . Essentially , Stalin was saying the Soviets would take whatever they wanted in China , regardless if they had an agreement with the United States or not . Harriman also attended the Yalta Conference , where he encouraged taking a stronger line with the Soviet Union — especially on questions of Poland . The American delegation at the Yalta conference stayed at the luxurious Livadia Palace overlooking the Black Sea , and Harriman was given a room of his own to stay , a sign of presidential favor as most of the American delegation had to sleep five men to a room owning to a surplus of delegates and a lack of space in the Livadia Palace . The Livadia palace had been built in 1910-11 as a summer residence for the Emperor Nicholas II and his family , and was designed to house only 61 people , hence the presence of a 215-strong American delegation literally overwhelmed its facilities . The Livadia palace had only six toilets , one of which was reserved exclusively for the president , which made for some discomfort as the American delegation numbered 215 people . On 8 February 1945 , Roosevelt , Harriman and Charles " Chip " Bohlen who served as the interpreter met Stalin , Molotov and the translator Vladimir Pavlov to discuss the Soviet entry into the war against Japan . During the meeting , it was agreed that the Kuriles islands and the southern half of Sahkalin island were to be annexed by the Soviets . Without consulting Chiang , Roosevelt agreed to the Soviet demands for a role in managing the port of Dairen and to own Chinese Eastern Railroad , through with the regard to the former he felt that Dairen should be internationalized . Roosevelt stated that he could not inform the Chinese at present because whatever was said to them " was known to the whole world in twenty-four hours " , but he would tell them when the time was right ; much to Harriman 's mirth , Stalin promised he could " guarantee the security of the Supreme Soviet ! " Once Molotov presented a draft note to Harriman about the future of Manchuria , Harriman complained that the Soviet draft stated the Soviet Union would lease both Dairen and Port Arthur and manage not only the Chinese Eastern Railroad , but the South Manchuria Railroad as well . Harriman objected , stating that Roosevelt wanted the ports on the Liaotung peninsula to be internationalized , not leased by the Soviet Union and for the Manchurian railroads to be run jointly by a Sino-Soviet commission instead of being owned by the Soviet Union . Molotov agreed to Harriman 's amendments , but when Churchill expressed his approval of Stalin 's request for the Soviets to have a naval base at Port Arthur , the latter told Harriman that internationalization would not be possible for Port Arthur . The final draft called for the internationalization of Dairen with a leading role reserved for the Soviet Union ; the Soviets to have a naval base at Port Arthur ; a Sino-Soviet commission to run the railroads of Manchuria ; and China to recognize Outer Mongolia . On 10 February 1944 , Harriman informed Stalin that Roosevelt had agreed to the British call for the " Big Four " to become the " Big Five " by including France in . Specifically , the Americans were backing on the British call to recognize France as one of the great powers of the post-war world and to allow the French to have an occupation zone in Germany . Through Stalin had been opposed to de Gaulle 's claims for the French to have an occupation zone in Germany , the Anglo-American front on this issue , which was relatively unimportant to him , led him to tell Harriman that now agreed on a four-power occupation of Germany . On 11 February 1945 , the conference ended and Harriman went with Roosevelt on a drive in his Packard limousine through the Crimea , at the time a war devastated peninsula almost devoid of human life . On 12 February 1945 , Harriman saw Roosevelt , his friend since childhood , for the last time , as he boarded a C-54 airplane at Saki airfield to take him to Egypt . Roosevelt had decided to go to Egypt to meet King Farouk of Egypt , Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia in an effort to find a solution to the " Palestine Question " as the Jewish-Arab dispute was then known , which he feared would be a problem in the post-war world . On 12 April 1945 , Roosevelt died . At the Yalta conference , it was agreed that American prisoners captured by the Germans and liberated by the Soviets were to immediately repatriated to American forces . The fact that the Soviets made many difficulties about fulfilling this promise such as not allowing American officers into Poland to contact American POWs there led to frequent clashes between Harriman and Molotov , and contributed much to Harriman 's increasing negative feelings about the Soviet Union . On 11 May 1945 , Harriman reported in a cable to Washington that Stalin " feared a separate peace by ourselves with Japan " before the Soviet Union had moved its forces eastwards to take invade Manchuria . After Roosevelt 's death , he attended the final " Big Three " conference at Potsdam . Although the new president , Harry Truman , was receptive to Harriman 's anti-Soviet hard line advice , the new secretary of state , James Byrnes , managed to sideline him . While in Berlin , he noted the tight security imposed by Soviet military authorities and the beginnings of a program of reparations by which the Soviets were stripping out German industry
Yalta Conference
Yalta Conference
W. Averell Harriman