[November 28, 2016] One of the most iconic and crucial meetings between senior leaders happened on this date, November 28, 1943 and was located in Tehran, Iraq. The leader conference was to set the stage in strategizing for the defeat of Nazi Germany and ultimately the Japanese Empire during World War II. An undervalued method for senior leaders to synchronize and enhance their cooperative efforts is through face-to-face meetings and conferences.
This is exactly what happened nearly 75 years ago in Tehran. The war against the Axis powers was not going as well as hoped and the realization that the Soviet Union would have to play a more “harmonious” role in the fight against those powers came as a rather sluggish realization to U.S. President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill.
What has become known as the Tehran Conference was designed specifically to hammer out differences between the Allies and to fix an overall strategy to deal with the Nazi threat and to settle on potential terms for peace once the war was won. The city of Tehran was an important symbolic location in that the U.S. was able to supply the Soviets through Iran when Germany controlled most of Europe, the Balkans, and North Africa.
The “Big Three,” as Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin were known, discussed various strategies to defeat Nazi Germany and agreed upon an invasion of Normandy which was to launch the following year (ultimately on June 6, 1944). Like any good allied meeting, it meant some give and take was to occur.
In return for the U.S. helping in defeating Germany on the eastern front, Stalin promised to help it win its war against Japan.1 It also settled on a more direct route on the eastern front proposed by Roosevelt rather than the more indirect approach favored by Churchill. Discussions on strategy were crucial for the ultimate defeat of the Axis powers by 1945 in that it also set priorities, operational concepts, and general timelines.
After the Tehran Conference, both Churchill and Roosevelt traveled to Cairo, Egypt where they discussed who would lead Operation Overlord, the June 1944 invasion of mainland Europe to take the fight directly to the German war machine. After some discussion, it was agreed that U.S. General Dwight D Eisenhower would lead the effort.
The conference was more than a meeting of three of the largest Allied leaders and the stage to settle on a war strategy. It also became a vehicle to develop trust between these leaders. While Churchill and Roosevelt already had a friendly camaraderie, there was great mistrust of Stalin, the Soviet leader. Those fears would later come back to haunt them when the Soviet Union became an enemy of both the U.S. and Britain.
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