Three leaders sketched the shape of the postwar world while one of them was dying

In February 1945, with Germany's defeat only months away, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in Crimea to decide how occupied Europe would be governed, and to secure Soviet entry into the war against Japan. Roosevelt, visibly exhausted and only weeks from his own death, pushed hard for Stalin's support of the new United Nations. The compromises reached there, especially over Poland's borders, shaped the Cold War's dividing lines for decades.

— Protocol of Proceedings, Crimean Conference, Yalta Conference — 4-11 February 1945