Stephen Kotkin has written an article for The Economist on Feb 11 2025 titled: "Jaw-jawing at Yalta, 80 years ago:The neglect of Asia was the great failure of Yalta".
Not a word on India!
My favorite writer Diana Preston has written a book : "Eight Days at Yalta: How Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin Shaped the Post-War World", 2019.
It has India. How Churchill was reluctant to talk about India's independence with FDR.
I quote a few lines from the book.
"...Roosevelt acquiesced in Stalin’s proposal that he should stay in the Soviet Legation in Teheran so he would be safer from Nazi agents. At their private meetings he emphasized disagreements with Churchill on issues such as India, the role of France and the date of the cross-Channel invasion...."
"...(Churchill’s fellow anti-appeaser but reluctant wartime Secretary of State for India Leo) Amery complained that Churchill had a ‘Hitler-like attitude towards India’ and was ‘shouting’ about India and claiming its then 500 million inhabitants were ‘breeding like rabbits’. On one occasion Amery questioned whether ‘on this subject of India he [Churchill] is really quite sane – there is no relation between his manner, physical and intellectual, on this theme and the equability and dominant good sense he displays on issues directly affecting the conduct of the war.’..."
"...Perhaps partly because of his generally hostile attitude, Churchill had been slow to realize the seriousness of the 1940s Bengal famine in which more than 1 million people died. The press in America as well as in Britain and India castigated the feeble relief attempts by the British government and also by local Indian authorities. Nevertheless, it took considerable pressure, including a threat to resign by the British viceroy in India Lord Wavell, as well as from Leo Amery and Parliament to overturn the government’s ‘scandalous’ inaction. Finally convinced, in April 1944 Churchill wrote to Roosevelt asking to borrow American merchant ships to import wheat to India from Australia...."
"...Churchill’s almost hysterical opposition to any suggestion of Indian independence was well known to both Roosevelt and Stalin. Roosevelt himself at Teheran discussed Churchill’s stance privately with Stalin, who agreed that the empire was a sore spot for Churchill. In Washington over the New Year of 1941/2, Roosevelt suggested that Churchill promise India independence and propose a timescale for achieving it as the US had for the Philippines. Churchill responded that he would resign before he would ‘yield an inch of the territory that was under the British flag’. On the fringes of the Casablanca Conference, after jocularly offering to hand Gandhi over to the United States – ‘He’s awfully cheap to keep, now that’s he’s on hunger strike’ – Churchill continued:
There are always earnest spinsters in Pennsylvania, Utah, Edinburgh or Dublin persistently writing letters and signing petitions and ardently giving their advice . . . urging that India be given back to the Indians and South Africa back to the Zulus or Boers, but as long as I am called by His Majesty the King to be his First Minister, I shall not assist at the dismemberment of the British Empire...."
"...Roosevelt also reflected, ‘The British were in too embarrassing a situation from the standpoint of the make-up of the British Empire to oppose the Russian request. India was not self-governing – and Churchill had made it clear earlier that he did not favor Indian independence – and yet India was to have a vote.’..."
India appears 40 odd times in the book, and China 50 odd times. Fair.
Sarah Churchill, Anna Roosevelt and Kathleen Harriman (from left) at Livadia Palace, the site of the Yalta Conference
