Six Months in 1945By: Michael Dobbs When Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met in Yalta in February 1945, Hitlers armies were on the run, and victory was imminent. The Big Three wanted to draft a blueprint for a lasting peacebut instead they set the stage for a forty four year division of Europe into Soviet and Western spheres of influence. After fighting side by side for nearly four years, their political alliance was beginning to fracture.