Podcast | Daughter diplomats
ISD may be closed for the holidays, but you can still enjoy episodes of our podcast, Diplomatic Immunity, wherever you listen. The podcast brings you frank and candid conversations about historical and contemporary issues in diplomacy, and we will bring you more episodes in the new year.
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In one of our favorite episodes of season 1, we spoke to the historian Catherine Katz, author of Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans — A Story of Love and War, an innovative new history of the Yalta Conference. Through deft analysis of primary sources — including the Churchill archives and newly released materials from the papers of Churchill’s daughter, Sarah — the book provides new perspectives on the history of the conference, especially the subtle diplomacy that took place behind the scenes.
Read the first part of the episode with Catherine Katz, edited for clarity, below.
It is arguably one of the most famous photos of World War II: The Big Three — Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin — sitting in front of their advisers at the February 1945 Yalta Conference. Churchill, the British prime minister, resembles so many of the English bulldogs named after him over the past 75 years; Stalin, the Soviet premier, looks every bit the cold, hard, totalitarian in his military uniform and matching hat. U.S. President Roosevelt — the man whose voice you hear at the start of our podcast theme tune — is sandwiched between them, looking tired and frail in contrast.
Since then, this photo, depicting both the closing days of World War II and the opening days of the Cold War, has epitomized the Yalta Conference. But it is incomplete, and, while undoubtedly a powerful image of allied unity, only tells a portion of the story. In her new book, The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War, Catherine Katz presents an innovative new history of the conference, the untold story of three daughters, confidantes who helped to shape its outcome.
In October, she sat down for an interview for Diplomatic Immunity to discuss the book, a novel and insightful contribution to the diplomatic history of World War 2.
Let’s listen to the conversation:
Alistair Somerville: Yalta, February 1945. Set the scene for us.
Catherine Katz: We are at the point where the war in Europe is not quite over, but it is beginning to look like peace will be coming in Europe sometime in the spring. The Battle of the Bulge has just ended. The race is now on to see who will liberate Berlin. In the Pacific, things are not quite as far along as the Americans don’t yet know if the atomic bomb will work. They’re looking at the potential for a ground invasion of the Japanese home islands. They’re thinking about how to wrap up the war in Europe and also how to make some progress in the Pacific and FDR hopes to minimize the American casualties in doing so.
Alistair: I really loved the descriptions that you use as you set the scene for the conference itself. At the very beginning of the book you describe the scene that the three daughters find. What scene do the participants in this conference find when they arrive on the Black Sea?
Catherine: Yes, Livadia Palace. It’s almost like a character in its own right in the story. And I think people don’t realize what it took to get there and just how far and how remote, and how dangerous, it was. Churchill has to fly from London, first to Malta, where he meets with FDR, who’s been traveling by ship for more than a week. From Washington, DC, crossing the Atlantic Ocean (where they’re still seeing enemy U-boats); and then once they are in Malta, they have to then fly on to the Crimea.
They have to fly over enemy occupied territory where they’re still being shot at by enemy anti-aircraft units. One of the advance planes does take some fire, they’re flying at very low altitude in unpressurized planes and it’s just incredible to think of anybody allowing this today for the most important figures in the world.
So once they arrive in the Crimea, they land at this airfield, which has been put together haphazardly. The runway’s too short, and then they have to drive six hours over these battle scarred roads. Being guarded by Soviet soldiers, many of whom don’t even have weapons, they finally arrived at Levada Palace, which had been the summer home of Tsar Nicholas. The shore, which is very much like the Mediterranean, was called the Romanov Route. But there’s something a bit haunting about the Black Sea itself and about the history of Livadia Palace.
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