"Unlike Chamberlain’s summits, the leaders came to Yalta with detailed briefing books and a body of specialist advisors, including all three foreign ministers, and in many cases they acted on policies already laid down. The deals on prisoners of war, for instance, or Soviet territorial demands in Asia had already been established in outline, while Maisky’s presentation on reparations followed the lines of a report he had drawn up over the winter. At a number of key points, however, the leaders took their own line. Stalin rejected the advice of Beria and others to offer the West more fig leaves on the Polish government. Ignoring his advisors, FDR succumbed to British pressure to accept three Soviet votes in the UN. And Churchill batted aside Eden’s apt questions about why the Western Allies needed to buy Soviet entry into the Far Eastern war. But the British foreign secretary was very effective in obtaining a greater role for postwar France than any of the Big Three, left alone, would have preferred. In September 1938, Halifax had— belatedly—exerted influence in Cabinet, but he never appeared at the conference table. Eden, in contrast, was a real presence at Yalta—vocal if rejected over the Far East, influential over France, and backing up Churchill robustly on Germany. He was far more significant at Yalta than his counterparts, particularly Stettinius. As Eden and Cadogan remarked, Stalin was indeed a skilful negotiator, letting the others do the talking and saving his succinct remarks for the right moment. Nevertheless Churchill’s more bombastic approach should not be underrated: it wore down the other two over France and German reparations. And Roosevelt pushed harder on Poland than the myths might suggest"