reading about yalta gives one great pause, because it was not what was agreed to at yalta, but the failure of the soviets to keep the agreement, which led to all of the troubles after that time. later, the election, within a span of two years of a polish pope, a teflon president, and an iron lady, the courage of countless dissidents behind the iron curtain and the internal contradictions of a system set against human nature, led to the collapse of the berlin wall and the end of the cold war. as churchill had predicted of russia decades earlier, her people experience every day in growing bigger those complications of human life that will end of call marks out of date and smaller in relation to world problems then they have ever been before. course, the ghosts of yalta were not yet silenced. long after the wall came down and as the united states found itself engaged in another lengthy conflict, this one in the middle east, president george w. bush delivered a latvia on may 7, 2005 as the world part the 60th anniversary of hitler's defeat. in his remarks, those ghosts stirred again. as the pr

yalta was fdr's illness and his declining health. do you believe that if he had been healthy and if he had continued as he was at tehran, that any of the decisions made at yalta or post yalta, even if he lived that long, would have been different based on that or not? >> well that is the most difficult question i've ever been asked. you know, historians are still debating that and it becomes very political and rather partisan debate. i cannot believe that fdr wouldn't have been tougher with marshall starling if he had been in good health in yalta. when you read the documents, there were careful minutes taken during the tehran conference. starling is always deferring to the president. the president is running the conference. well, the fact is, the president didn't run the yalta conference. starling and churchill did and battled over -- over particularly over poland. but whether with so many millions of russian boots on the ground already in poland and so forth, ultimately it would have made that much difference, particularly when the

you talk about tehran and yalta. seems like one of the big differences between tehran and yalta was fdr's illness and his declining health. do you believe that if he had been healthy and if he had continued as he was at tehran, that any of the decisions made in yalta or post-yalta, even if he had lived that long, would have been different, based on his health, or not? >> well that is the most difficult question! i have are been asked! [laughter] historians are still debating that. it becomes a political and rather partisan debate. i cannot believe that fdr would not have been tougher with marshall stalin if he had been in good health in yalta. there were documents taken during the conference. stalin is always deferring to the president. the president was running the conference. the fact is that the president did not run the yalta conference. stalin and churchill did, and battled particularly over poland, but whether with so many millions of russian boots on the ground already in poland, ultimately, they would have ma

narrator: here on the black sea ear the city of yalta in the crimea is the meeting place of the leaders of britain, russia, and the united states, scene of the most successful international conference of the war. the castle. once a summer place of czar an holas ii, here the crime conference is to take place. the surrounding countryside is and busy with preparation. military convoys bring necessary supplies. narrator: special communications lines are strung to the palace. narrator: under three flags at a nearby airfield, russian officials, headed by foreign secretary molotov, await the arrival of the british and american delegation. narrator: anthony eaton, british foreign minister. narrator: edward stettinius, the united states secretary of state. narrator: harry hopkins, advisor to prosecute roos vets with averil harriman, united states ambassador to russia. and winston churchill, prime minister of great britain. narrator: also arriving by plane after a 6,000-mile trip is franklin d roosevelt, president of the united states. narrator: the first of eight days of day and night conference

i'm not sure how clear this is, but this is a map of his voyage to yalta. once again, traveling to get there in the crimea for a second meeting with stalin, to discuss the war's end game. here he is in yalta on the way out with general marshall. here he is arriving in tehran. how to get the russians to help in the war against japan, in a formal way and how to establish the united nations and the u.n. security council as well as discuss the problem of poland. it's something of a miracle of survival. there you can see how ill he looks with churchill there. he just manages to get through the conference. but on board his battle ship coming back -- cruising back to the united states, his military assistant general watson actually dies of a heart attack during the voyage. the point is, the president is not merely sick, he is dying, unable to stand even on his metal stilts when reporting to congress. beyond his patriotic duties, one thing perhaps more than any other has kept him alive since his doctors gave him their sentence of death. months, 12 months before. fo

placed thee, he world's future on the conference table at yalta, made plans to bring together the nations of the world in a just and lasting peace. that first recorded step as the san francisco conference. tothis, his last report congress and the american people, is to be found an example of his life. in the last words of a man grown tired in public service is heritage for all man everywhere. congress roosevelt: thishe american people, conference is the beginning of a permanent structure of peace upon which we can begin to build , under guard, that better world in which our children and grandchildren, yours and mine, the children tend grandchildren of the whole world, mostly then can live. ♪ can live.ve and ♪ is american history tv on c-span3, where each weekend we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nation's past. intonight on "reel america," 1990 six fema training program centered on the 1995 oklahoma city bombing, with leading first responders describing their experiences. here is a preview. city, oklahoma, is a city that just over a year ago experienced devastation, as a ma

next, he looks at the february 1945 yalta conference between allied leaders winston churchill, franklin roosevelt and josef stalin. mr. bishop focused on churchill's role at the meeting and how yalta impacted the british prime minister personally and politically. he also talked about the legacy of yalta and its role in the dawn of the cold war, with churchill becoming one of the leading "cold warriors"

it was very important to him at yalta in these negotiations with stalin and churchill and it was less important to stalin but roosevelt it was absolutely essential but these international institutions would be set up, you know, to persuade the american people among other things that the war had been worth all these sacrifices. >> mr. kershaw, i am sure the british people were impatient with the united states to get into the war. churchill wooed frank and roosevelt and what you talk about that? >> from the first day that churchill enters ten downing street, i can't do much but -- never before, no, i can't do a very good posh accent, michael is w better at it that way. i can do a boorish impression but anyway, that black door, i think it was black in 1940? was and it still black at ten downing street? anyway, if you sick see the pictures of boris ruffling his hair he doesn't apparently before he goes to speak publicly so he looks like anyway, in 1940 churchill entered ten downing street and i think it was the 14th of may, 1940 and never in modern british history did things look so bad.

goodwin: well, what had happened was that, after he came back from the yalta conference, and after he gave this major speech to the congress in march of 1945, everybody could see that his health was failing, and somehow when he went to warm springs, georgia, there had always been this sense that he would recuperate by going down there; that something about the air, the beauty, the simplicity of the place... so they decided that he'd make an extended trip to warm springs. so, at the end of march, he went down to warm springs, and indeed, it did seem... he brought with him his two spinster cousins, laura delano who was a... these are characters, too, these cousins... and margaret suckley, and they kept him company, and he didn't have that much work to do, when he was down there, and for the first week or so, it seemed like he might be getting a little bit of his bounce back, getting some weight back, because he was losing weight tremendously in that last year. and then at a certain point, he invited lucy mercer to come and stay with him, and she arrived about four or five days before he