How It's Used

"Some of his friends are jealous, Mr. Donahue said, and people sometimes stop him on campus to ask to see his famous suite.

"An official plaque on a wall commemorates Roosevelt's years in the rooms. Around it, Mr. Ferrante has erected a makeshift shrine of pictures of Roosevelt, his wife, Eleanor, Teddy Roosevelt, the 'Big Three' (FDR with Stalin and Churchill) and charts showing Roosevelt's presidential election victories in 1936 and 1944."

—Bipasha Ray, "History homework a snap for trio in FDR suite Harvard students win right to live in dorm rooms of former U.S. president Roosevelt," The Globe and Mail (Canada), November 28, 2002, p. A16.

"Mr. Beschloss [in his book The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945] also closely traces the various Big Three meetings among Roosevelt (later Truman), Stalin and Churchill, from Casablanca in 1943, when Roosevelt first suggested the phrase 'unconditional surrender' to define the overall policy toward Germany, to Potsdam in 1945, when the division of Germany into four zones of occupation was made final."

—Richard Bernstein, "Snatching Complications From the Jaws of Victory," The New York Times, December 11, 2002.

"Bush was not wrong to evoke Yalta and its lessons, but his judgment that the conference was, as he put it, an 'attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability' reflects a misunderstanding of what Roosevelt and Churchill hoped the communique would deliver as well as a failure to take the realities of the time into account. It's true that Yalta was not the Anglo-American allies' finest diplomatic hour and, as things turned out, may indeed have been one of their worst. The other Big Three conference, held at Tehran in late 1943, led to agreement about Operation Overlord, the cross-Channel invasion of France. Without that session it is conceivable that D-Day and the ensuing liberation of Western Europe could have been delayed indefinitely. Tehran, then, created something; the legacy of Yalta, on the other hand, was more about ratifying facts on the ground than it was about pressing ahead in new directions."

—Jon Meacham, "Bush, Yalta and the Blur of Hindsight," The Washington Post, May 15, 2005, p. B01.

"The United States did not establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union until 1933, 16 years after the Russian Revolution. Ironically in light of current politics, the first meeting between a U.S. president and the leader of the Soviet Union took place in November 1943 in Tehran, the capital of Iran, where Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill to plan the next stage in the war against Nazi Germany. Needless to say, no Iranians were invited to the sessions of the Big Three."

—James Laxer, "The etiquette of empire: U.S. presidents can talk with powerful enemies but difficult small fry are to be shunned," The Toronto Star, June 4, 2008.

"From the terrace there are views of the Crimean peninsula, with fir trees, dark green cypresses and a shimmering bay. Inside—through a pleasant Italian courtyard—is the room where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt sat together around a wooden table and divided up postwar Europe.

"But almost 65 years after the 'big three' met in the Crimean seaside resort of Yalta—now in Ukraine—the question of zones of influence has come back to haunt Europe. Russia has made it clear that it sees Ukraine as crucial to its bold claim that it is entitled to a zone of influence in its post-Soviet backyard."

—Luke Harding, "Ukraine fears for its future as Moscow muscles in on Crimea: As Ukraine prepares for its first presidential election since the Orange Revolution, there are signs that its giant neighbour to the east will not tolerate a pro-western outcome," The Observer (UK), October 11, 2009.

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D-Day
World War II

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Wikipedia article on the Allied Leaders of World War II

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"The Second World War" by John Keegan