ABSTRACT
World War II had begun less than twenty-one years after what President Woodrow Wilson had called "the war to end all wars" came to a close with the armistice of November 1918. Despite past quarrels and hugely different political and economic systems, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) considered it his most important diplomatic task to convince Josef Stalin of Anglo-American goodwill and to persuade him that Soviet interests would best be served by ongoing collaboration. Roosevelt shared President Wilson's enthusiasm for a world organization but not his reliance upon collective security. Stalin had declined to attend the Casablanca Conference on the grounds that he was needed at home to manage the war effort. Roosevelt finally had a chance to meet him at the Teheran Conference, which began in late November 1943. If Stalin wished to continue the wartime coalition, FDR hoped he would admit enough non-Communists of stature into the provisional government to permit the semblance of an independent Poland.
