Sins of the grandfathers

last updated 8 January 2015

Maastricht, Netherlands

Grandsons of the three World War II Allied leaders, meeting for the first time last week, defended their forebears’ decision at Yalta to relegate Eastern Europe to the Soviet sphere. Curtis Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill both argued that by February 1945, when the three wartime leaders met at a Ukrainian resort, the division of Europe was already a fact on the ground. Neither Franklin Roosevelt nor Winston Churchill, their grandsons said, could have saved Eastern Europe. Yevgeni Jugashvili, who looks remarkably like his grandpa Joseph Stalin, simply commented that Stalin was a great leader and that those who called him a tyrant should be “punished.” The three men, all elderly, were invited to the opening of the Graduate School of Governance at Maastricht University.