The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2020

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Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-17

Part 3, Chapters 18-19

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

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Part 3, Chapters 18-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Chapter 18 Summary: “April 12-July 27, 1945”

In the aftermath of the Yalta conference, President Roosevelt remained “detached and enigmatic” and did not give Anna Roosevelt any recognition for her contributions (271). In his letters to her, Anna Roosevelt’s husband praised her for her hard work and noted the historic nature of the conference, which was much more important than the ones her brothers had attended. Anna Roosevelt traveled on with her father to Egypt, where the President encountered numerous setbacks: Charles de Gaulle was offended at his exclusion from Yalta and refused to meet him; Ibn Saud, the Saudi leader, rejected Roosevelt’s proposal of a new Jewish state in Palestine; and his friend and aide Pa Watson suddenly died while on the trip. Moreover, Harry Hopkins decided to leave the delegation abruptly, shaken by Watson’s death. President Roosevelt barely acknowledged Hopkins when he left, in spite of his 15 years of working closely with him. Due to Hopkins’ absence, Anna worked with speechwriter Sam Rosenman on Roosevelt’s speech.

Back in Washington, President Roosevelt addressed Congress and expressed his desire for a peaceful future. Much of the American media was quick to deem the Yalta Conference a success, but Time magazine published a more critical piece which labeled the conference a “fairy tale,” and hinted that Stalin was the real benefactor of the agreements there (274). The press also became critical about Anna Roosevelt’s role in the administration, with various papers claiming that she had a strong influence over her father’s decisions. Shortly afterward, Roosevelt died suddenly.

A grieving Anna was confronted by her mother, Eleanor Roosevelt, over visits from his old mistress Lucy. Anna acknowledged her role in arranging the visits. After Roosevelt’s funeral, she called Lucy and the two reminisced about her father. Days later, Anna received a letter from Lucy in which Lucy explained how highly her father spoke of her and how much he valued her contributions as an unofficial member of his staff. This gesture was very meaningful to Anna, who had never heard these words of validation from her father directly.

Meanwhile, in London, many members of the British government—including some from Churchill’s own party—criticized the agreements formed in Yalta, specifically the weak, vague commitments to Polish democracy. Churchill defended himself by pointing to the Soviets’ military strength, Britain’s declining influence, and the United States’ lack of conviction on the matter. After Roosevelt’s death, Churchill attended the memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. He began to campaign for re-election; Sarah felt that he was mistaken to accuse the Labour Party of embracing Soviet-style socialism, advising her father that people voted for Labour because they thought the party would improve their opportunities and material conditions.

Awaiting the results of the election, which took weeks to process, Churchill traveled to Potsdam for a conference with President Truman and Stalin. However, in the middle of the conference Churchill learned he had lost the election. Sarah wrote him a letter which insisted that the British people still valued him and expressed her admiration and love for him.

Just a couple months after the Yalta Conference, Kathleen Harriman, who was in Moscow with her father, observed that the leaders’ “honeymoon period” was over as the tensions between the Western Allies and the USSR increased (278). The Allies were successfully defeating the Nazis and the Japanese, but the Americans and British were dismayed to discover that the Soviets were not adhering to their agreement.

American troops experienced mistreatment, such as imprisonment and theft, at the hands of the Red Army, and came to the American embassy in Moscow asking for help. Stalin installed a new leader in Romania and ignored the exiled Polish government while strengthening his preferred Lublin government. He did not take action to help arrange elections, as he had promised. Churchill lamented the “great failure” of the agreement and urged Roosevelt to act, but the President only vaguely voiced his “discouragement” at the situation (280). Ambassador Harriman was frustrated by Roosevelt’s passive approach, and felt that they must take a firmer stance.

Kathleen Harriman and her father were shocked by Roosevelt’s death, and Ambassador Harriman found himself even more ignored by the new president, Harry Truman, and his secretary of state, Jimmy Byrnes. Kathleen looked forward to moving back to New York City and finding her own apartment so she could live independently from her family. When she and her father arrived back in New York, they received two Soviet war horses as a present from Stalin. The Harrimans were unsure of how to interpret this gesture, but kept the horses in a stable with their other horses.

Part 3, Chapter 19 Summary: “After Yalta”

It did not take long for public perception of the Yalta conference to shift from a narrative of cooperation and achievement to that of a “sell-out to a deadly enemy” (297). The author claims that Yalta is often regarded as the moment in which “Allies teetered between World War and Cold War” (297). Many historians and commentators have explored hypothetical questions about how the west might have prevented Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the Cold War. Katz notes that these questions are “endless” and impossible to answer (297).

Ambassador Harriman’s theory was that Stalin had broken his agreements at Yalta when he realized that the Soviets were unpopular in Poland and needed to use force to establish a communist government there. In Britain, the Yalta agreement was considered a failure due to the American and British role in sending back Soviet POWs and displaced people, many of whom were then killed in the USSR. Soon after WWll, Alger Hiss, part of the American delegation at Yalta, was accused of being a Soviet spy and served prison time for lying under oath. This discovery cast the events at Yalta in a more critical light.

Katz considers how the war created opportunities for Sarah, Kathleen, and Anna to break out of their everyday roles and make professional contributions in jobs or by working for their fathers’ administrations. In doing so, they each became closer to their fathers and were able to fulfill some of their personal ambitions. In the post-war years, Pamela Churchill introduced Kathleen to Stanley Mortimer, and the two married. Kathleen became a philanthropist and raised her children. She spoke little about her experiences in World War ll, but she did testify to Congress about visiting the Katyn Forest massacre site during the war. Years later, Pamela Churchill married Averell Harriman, becoming a stepmother to Kathleen. After Averell’s death the two grew apart, with Kathleen suing Pamela for mismanaging her father’s finances.

Meanwhile, Anna Roosevelt and her husband John Boettiger bought a newspaper, the Arizona Times. This business venture soon failed and they went into debt. John’s depression worsened and Anna felt powerless to help him. She was also haunted by the fact that he had molested her daughter Ellie on numerous occasions and Anna had not stopped him. When Ellie later married and had children, Anna apologized to her daughter for not protecting her, and the two reconciled. In the late 1940s, Anna and John divorced and Anna collaborated with her mother Eleanor on a radio program. She remarried a doctor named James Halsted and became more involved in charity work and human rights work. Throughout her career, Anna always defended her father’s actions at Yalta. She passed away at age 69 of throat cancer.

After Churchill lost the election, he and Sarah traveled to Lake Como, Italy, for a vacation. Sarah’s marriage to Vic Oliver was officially over, but she decided to not wed her boyfriend Gil Winant. When he died by suicide a few years later, Sarah felt guilty, believing she could have saved him from his depression. She continued her career as an actor and later married photographer Antony Beauchamp. He, too, died by suicide after six years of marriage. Sarah received an encouraging letter from Anna Roosevelt, whose ex-husband John Boettiger also died by suicide after their divorce. Similarly, Kathleen Harriman’s husband attempted suicide, but she saved his life. Katz attributes these men’s mental health issues to their traumatic experiences as soldiers in the war. After several more tragedies, Sarah Churchill began drinking excessively, and died in the 1980s at the age of 67.

Katz concludes her work by noting that while the Yalta Conference has been discussed by media and historians, most have overlooked these women’s roles in the Conference. She observes the irony that the Yalta Conference was a political failure, but in many ways was a “highlight” in these women’s lives, and in their relationships with their fathers (318).

Part 3, Chapters 18-19 Analysis

In Part 3 of her work, Katz demonstrates how personal relationships intersected with political actions in the three women’s experience of Defying Gender Roles and Expectations. For instance, Harry Hopkins was shaken by Pa Watson’s sudden death, and, fearing for his own health, wanted to leave the trip. President Roosevelt “accused his old friend of wanting to leave because he was bored” (272). Eventually, Roosevelt accepted Hopkins’s request to leave, though made his displeasure known through his dismissive goodbye. This anecdote reveals how President Roosevelt’s lack of understanding ended a long friendship and working relationship with one of his closest advisors. This departure created a void which, in turn, Anna could readily fill, making her an even more central part of his administration’s functioning.

Indeed, over time Anna Roosevelt began to play a substantial role in her father’s administration. While she wanted the public to perceive her as “a private person with no official mandate or political ambition” (275), her father entrusted her with many significant responsibilities in the administration, despite her lack of a title or salary. The American media picked up on her constant presence at her father’s side, and a Life magazine article published after Yalta “established that Anna was anything but a passive resident” (276), suggesting that she had enormous and influence on the President. The article even suggested that she had more power than the president himself, since she was “running Daddy” (276). This discussion reveals the tension between Anna’s desire to help her father survive his illness and the politically and ethically problematic nature of her role in the White House, especially for a woman at the time. Tasked with so many responsibilities and eager to protect her father by controlling his schedule and tasks, Anna was unable to make a distinction between her personal and professional relationship with her father, resulting in her outsized influence in his administration.

While the women in Katz’s work had different childhoods, Katz portrays them as similarly eager to connect with their fathers emotionally and earn their validation both personally and professionally. The author claims, “For Sarah Churchill, Kathleen Harriman, and Anna Roosevelt, Yalta allowed them to become indispensable to the fathers whose love, recognition, and esteem they craved above all” (301). Katz argues that pursuing her father’s recognition and acceptance was a main motivator for Anna Roosevelt’s intense commitment to her father in his final years. While Anna never received a heartfelt thanks or approval from him directly, once more reflecting her invisibility due to her gender, she was moved to hear of his appreciation through his former mistress. Her daughterly devotion thus enabled her to take on a significant political role that, ultimately, gave her personal as well as professional satisfaction.

Likewise, Sarah Churchill had felt a certain emotional distance from her father Winston in her youth, and being his aide and confidante helped her to establish a closer bond with her father. The author explains, “Being at his side these past years had given Sarah the greatest joy of her life” (294), enabling her to get to know her father in a deeper way while assisting him with his political work. Katz presents Kathleen Harriman as similarly appreciative of the bond she established with her father while working alongside him in London and Moscow. However, she was more eager to establish an independent lifestyle upon her return to the US: “[T]he world was moving forward, and Kathy would move with it [. . .] after almost four years abroad their extraordinary partnership was at an end” (286). For Harriman, her time spent abroad with her father helped her develop her journalistic skills and gave her experiences that, otherwise, would have been typically difficult or impossible for most women of the time to have.

The complicated legacy of the Yalta conference also leads to the culmination of The Tensions Between the Western Allies and the USSR. In detailing how the public perception of the conference shifted from favorable to critical in a short period of time, Katz emphasizes how swiftly the post-WWII era morphed into the very different, but highly impactful, Cold War era. In reneging on the agreements over Poland, Stalin signaled his determination to expand and strengthen the Soviet Union, leading to an intense economic and ideological rivalry with his former Allies that would continue to shape much of the rest of 20th-century history.