tensions at yalta

• Grand Alliance was beginning to show cracks by the start of 1945 
• Western powers opened a ‘second front’ in 1944 by invading Nazi-occupied France  
• Soviet forces swept into Poland in August 1944 
• Early 1945 – Soviet western front from the Baltic to the Carpathian Mountains  
• March 1945 – crossed the Oder River 
• Western powers knew liberation of Nazi occupation by USSR 
• FDR committed to post-war reconstruction based on unity among winners 
• Stalin’s guarantee of security through a network of Eastern European allies was a fundamental conflict to it 
• Difference was the focus of tension between East and West in the weeks leading to Yalta