TEHRAN CONFERENCE BEGINS

Tehran Conference begins

That same global war produced a very different sort of turning point when Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin gathered in Tehran, Iran, for their first full wartime summit. Meeting in the shadow of ongoing campaigns in Italy and the Soviet Union, the three leaders wrestled with questions of timing and burden sharing for a massive cross-Channel invasion of Western Europe. At Tehran, they moved toward firm commitments for what would become Operation Overlord and coordinated plans for Soviet offensives that would align with Allied landings. The conference also touched on postwar questions, from borders to the fate of Germany, though many details remained unsettled. Even as fighting continued on distant fronts, the discussions in Tehran helped lock in a grand strategy that linked American industrial and military power to Allied plans for defeating Nazi Germany on a precise timetable.