Big Picture

Questions

1. What common enemy caused the United States and Soviet Union to join forces as Allies during the Second World War?
2. Who were "the Big Three"?
3. How many Soviet citizens died during World War II?
4. What were the key elements of the Yalta agreements?
5. How long did Harry Truman serve as vice president before FDR's death made him president?
6. According to the revisionist historians of the 1960s, which country bore the most responsibility for starting the Cold War?

Answers

1. Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.
2. American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
3. More than 20 million.  Soviet casualties in the war (counting both soldiers and civilians) were about 60 times as high as those suffered by the United States.
4. At Yalta, the leaders of the US, UK, and USSR settled border disputes in Eastern Europe, created the United Nations, organized postwar occupation of Germany, and announced the Declaration of Liberated Europe.  They also, more controversially, unofficially agreed to Soviet control over Eastern Europe. 
5. 82 days.
6. The United States.