4-11 February: Yalta conference

During the conferences in Teheran (1943) and Yalta (1945) the ‘Big Three’ (Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt) took decisions on Poland’s post-war fate. The USSR’s annexation of the Polish eastern borderlands was approved, with the rest of the country falling within the Soviet orbit of influence. Poland was promised the territories of former East Prussia, while the population from those taken away from Poland east of the Bug river was forced to resettle en masse within the new Polish borders.