Tehran Conference 1943

The Tehran Conference took place in November 1943. Tehran is in modern day Iran. At the time of the Tehran conference the Second World War was still raging, and hopes of victory by the allies were small. Therefore the majority of talk at the Tehran conference focussed on how the Second World War would be won.

One major agreement brought about by the Tehran conference was the agreement by Britain and the United States to open up a second front in Europe to help relieve the pressure on Soviet Union who were fighting the Nazis on the Eastern front. A second agreement coming out of Tehran was the support of the Soviet Union in the fight against Japan, but the condition was on the successful defeat of Germany first.

There was some talk about what would happen to Europe after the war, but this mainly focused on Germany. The agreement in principle, meaning no formal agreement, was that only unconditional surrender would be accepted by the Allies. There was also an understanding that German should be left as a weak nation after the war and land it had seized during the expansion of Germany should be returned to those countries who had lost it.

The Tehran Conference caused some tension between the powers, specifically Britain. Churchill wanted the second front to open up in the Balkans rather than Western Europe, and there was some suggestion that the British Empire was a larger threat to global peace than the Soviet Union.