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for the U.S. war effort against Japan.
YALTA CONFERENCE ENDS:
February 11, 1945
On February 11, 1945, a week of
intensive bargaining by the leaders of
the three major Allied powers ends in
Yalta, a Soviet resort town on the
Black Sea. It was the second
conference of the "Big Three" Allied
leaders--U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier
Joseph Stalin--and the war had
progressed mightily since their last
meeting, which had taken place in
Tehran in late 1943.
What was then called the Crimea
conference was held at the old
summer palace of Czar Nicholas II on
the outskirts of Yalta, now a city in the
independent Ukraine. With victory
over Germany three months away,
Churchill and Stalin were more intent
on dividing Europe into zones of
political influence than in addressing
military considerations. Germany
would be divided into four zones of
occupation administered by the three
major powers and France and was to
be thoroughly demilitarized and its
war criminals brought to trial. The
Soviets were to administer those
European countries they liberated but
promised to hold free elections. The
British and Americans would oversee
the transition to democracy in
countries such as Italy, Austria, and
Greece.
Final plans were made for the
establishment of the United Nations,
and a charter conference was
scheduled to begin in San Francisco in
April.
A frail President Roosevelt, two
months from his death, concentrated
his efforts on gaining Soviet support
TODAY IN HISTORY
Eastern Europe and North Korea into
The secret U.S. atomic bomb project
had not yet tested a weapon, and it was
estimated that an amphibious attack
against Japan could cost hundreds of
thousands of American lives. After
being assured of an occupation zone in
Korea, and possession of Sakhalin
Island and other territories historically
disputed between Russia and Japan,
Stalin agreed to enter the Pacific War
within two to three months of
Germany's surrender.
Most of the Yalta accords remained
secret until after World War II, and the
items that were revealed, such as Allied
plans for Germany and the United
Nations, were generally applauded.
Roosevelt returned to the United States
exhausted, and when he went to address
the U.S. Congress on Yalta he was no
longer strong enough to stand with the
support of braces. In that speech, he
called the conference "a turning point, I
hope, in our history, and therefore in the
history of the world." He would not live
long enough, however, to see the iron
curtain drop along the lines of division
laid out at Yalta. In April, he traveled to
his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia,
to rest and on April 12 died of a cerebral
hemorrhage.
On July 16, the United States
successfully tested an atomic bomb in
the New Mexico desert. On August 6, it
dropped one of these deadly weapons on
Hiroshima, Japan. Two days later, true
to its pledge at Yalta, the Soviet Union
declared war against Japan. The next
day, the United States dropped another
atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and the
Soviets launched a massive offensive
against the Japanese in Manchuria. On
August 15, the combination of the U.S.
atomic attacks and the Soviet offensive
forced a Japanese surrender. At the end
of the month, U.S. troops landed in
Japan unopposed.
When the full text of the Yalta
agreements were released in the years
following World War II, many criticized
Roosevelt and Churchill for delivering
communist domination by conceding
too much to Stalin at Yalta. The
Soviets never allowed free elections
in postwar Eastern Europe, and
communist North Korea was sharply
divided from its southern neighbor.
Eastern Europe, liberated and
occupied by the Red Army, would
have become Soviet satellites
regardless of what had happened at
Yalta. Because of the atomic bomb,
however, Soviet assistance was not
needed to defeat the Japanese.
Without the Soviet invasion of the
Japanese Empire in the last days of
World War II, North Korea and
various other Japanese-held
territories that fell under Soviet
control undoubtedly would have
come under the sway of the United
States. At Yalta, however, Roosevelt
had no guarantee that the atomic
bomb would work, and so he sought
Soviet assistance in what was
predicted to be the costly task of
subduing Japan. Stalin, more willing
than Roosevelt to sacrifice troops in
the hope of territorial gains, happily
accommodated his American ally,
and by the end of the war had
considerably increased Soviet
influence in East Asia.
1858 Virgin Mary appears to
St. Bernadette
In southern France, Marie-Bernarde
Soubirous, a 14-year-old French
peasant girl, first claims to have seen
the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus
Christ and a central figure in the
Roman Catholic religion. The
apparitions, which totaled 18 before
the end of the year, occurred in a
grotto of a rock promontory near
Lourdes, France. Marie explained
that the Virgin Mary revealed herself
as the Immaculate Conception, asked
that a chapel be built on the site of
the vision, and told the girl to drink
from a fountain in the grotto, which
Marie subsequently discovered by
digging into the earth.
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The concept of the Immaculate
Conception, in which the Virgin Mary
is regarded free from original sin from
the moment of her conception, had
been accepted just four years previous
by Pope Pius IX. Marie's claims
garnered widespread attention, but
skeptical church authorities subjected
her to severe examinations and refused
to accept her visions. After years of
mistreatment at the hands of the
authorities and the curious public, she
was finally allowed to enter the
convent of Notre-Dame de Nevers,
where she spent her remaining years
in prayer and seclusion. She died of ill
heath at the age of 35.
The sight of her manifestations
subsequently became the most famous
modern shrine of the Virgin Mary, and
in 1933 Marie-Bernarde Soubirous
was canonized as St. Bernadette by the
Roman Catholic Church. Today,
millions travel to Lourdes every year
to visit St. Bernadette's grotto, whose
waters supposedly have curative
powers.
1970 The world's fourth space
power
From the Kagoshima Space Center on
the east coast of Japan's Ohsumi
Peninsula, Ohsumi, Japan's first
satellite, is successfully launched into
an orbit around Earth. The
achievement made Japan the world's
fourth space power, after the Soviet
Union in 1957, the United States in
1958, and France in 1965.
Two months after Japan's launching of
Ohsumi, China became the world's
fifth space power when it successfully
launched Mao 1 into space. The
satellite, named after Mao Zedong, the
leader of communist China, orbited
Earth broadcasting the Chinese
patriotic song The East Is Red once a
minute.
1990 Mandela freed
Nelson Mandela, leader of the
movement to end South African
TODAY IN HISTORY
apartheid, is released from prison after Mandela subsequently led the ANC
27 years on February 11, 1990. in its negotiations with the minority
government for an end to apartheid
In 1944, Mandela, a lawyer, joined the and the establishment of a multiracial
African National Congress (ANC), the government. In 1993, Mandela and
oldest black political organization in de Klerk were jointly awarded the
South Africa, where he became a leader Nobel Peace Prize. One year later,
of Johannesburg's youth wing of the the ANC won an electoral majority in
ANC. In 1952, he became deputy the country's first free elections, and
national president of the ANC, Mandela was elected South African
advocating nonviolent resistance to president.
apartheid--South Africa's
Born On This Day
institutionalized system of white
supremacy and racial segregation.
Thomas A. Edison
However, after the massacre of peaceful 1847-1931
black demonstrators at Sharpeville in Inventor; born in Milan, OH; developed
1960, Nelson helped organize a the first commercially practical telephone,
phonograph, light bulb, and many other
paramilitary branch of the ANC to devices.
engage in guerrilla warfare against the
white minority government. Sidney Sheldon (1917 - )
In 1961, he was arrested for treason, and
although acquitted he was arrested again Leslie Nielsen (1926 - )
in 1962 for illegally leaving the country.
Convicted and sentenced to five years at Brandy (Norwood) (1979 - )
Robben Island Prison, he was put on
trial again in 1964 on charges of Jennifer Aniston (1969 - )
sabotage. In June 1964, he was
convicted along with several other ANC Burt Reynolds (1936 - )
leaders and sentenced to life in prison.
William Henry Fox Talbot
Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 (1800 - 1877)
years in jail at the brutal Robben Island
Prison. Confined to a small cell without Sheryl Crowe (1962 - )
a bed or plumbing, he was forced to do
hard labor in a quarry. He could write Eva Gabor (1921 - 1995)
and receive a letter once every six
months, and once a year he was allowed
to meet with a visitor for 30 minutes.
However, Mandela's resolve remained
unbroken, and while remaining the
symbolic leader of the anti-apartheid
movement, he led a movement of civil
disobedience at the prison that coerced
South African officials into drastically
improving conditions on Robben Island.
He was later moved to another location,
where he lived under house arrest.
In 1989, F.W. de Klerk became South
African president and set about
dismantling apartheid. De Klerk lifted
the ban on the ANC, suspended
executions, and in February 1990
ordered the release of Nelson Mandela.
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