James F. Byrnes: Unwitting Yalta Myth-Maker
> The Yalta Conference of February 4-11, 1945, has become a symbol for the critics' of the Roosevelt administration's Soviet policy. These critics have pointed to the Conference as confirming the worthlessness of Soviet promises and therefore the senselessness of attempting to reach a detente through negotiations. They have also asserted that the perfidious and sinister nature of Soviet objectives should have been obvious to any sensible statesman. In addition, they have inaccurately depicted the Conference as President Roosevelt's personal, secretive action. Lastly, they have denounced the Conference's agreements as harmful and unnecessary, as having contributed to, or resulted in, the communization of Eastern Europe and China and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a major world power. Significantly, these appraisals of Yalta ignore the limitations on and the possibilities open to U.S. policy as of February 1945. They distort the nature of the Conference and the expectations of the conferees. This failure, even unwillingness, to examine the Yalta Conference as a diplomatic conference seeking to delineate areas of