This is the failure of the liberal imagination that led to the demand for unconditional surrender and Eastern Europe and China becoming Communist

William Bullitt, who had been his ambassador to Moscow from 1933 to 1936, said Franklin D Roosevelt told him in January 1943 "I have just a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace.”

On March 23, 1945, nineteen days before he died, President Roosevelt confided to Anna Rosenberg, “Averell is right. We can’t do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta.”