In his final volume on the war, "Triumph and Tragedy" Churchill writes of the conference:

"There were many other matters on which it was right to confront the Soviet government, and also the Poles, who, gulping down immense chunks of German territory, had obviously become their ardent puppets. All this negotiation was cut in twain and brought to an untimely conclusion by the result of the [British] general election. To say this is not to blame the ministers of the new government, who were forced to go over [to the Potsdam conference] without any serious preparation, and who naturally were unacquainted with the ideas and plans I had in view, namely, to have a showdown at the end of the conference, and, if necessary, to have a public break rather than allow anything beyond the Oder and the Eastern Niesse to be ceded to Poland.

However, the real time to deal with these issues was, as has been explained in earlier chapters, when the fronts of the mighty allies faced each other in the field, and before the Americans, and to a lesser extent the British, made their vast retirement on a 400 mile front to a depth in some places of 120 miles, thus giving the heart and a great mass of Germany over to the Russians. At that time I desired to have the matter settled before we had made this tremendous retirement and while the Allied armies were still in being. The American view was that we were committed to a definite line of occupation, and I held strongly that this line of occupation could only be taken up when we were satisfied that the whole front, from north to south, was being settled in accordance with the desires and spirit in which our engagements had been made. However, it was impossible to gather Americans support for this, and the Russians, pushing the Poles in front of them, wended on, driving the Germans before them and depopulating large areas of Germany, whose food supplies they had seized, while chasing a multitude of mouths into the overcrowded British and American zones. Even at Potsdam the matter might perhaps have been recovered, but for the destruction of the British national government and my removal from the scene at the time when I still had much influence and power rendered it impossible for satisfactory solutions to be reached."

"Triumphant leadership" as the author claims? Yes, but not without an aspect of profound tragedy — hence the title of Winnie's last volume. While gratuitously attacking president Bush for quoting Churchill out of context, it is the Boston Globe and the author of this piece, Charles M. Sennott, who get their facts and the context wrong.

Could this be liberal bias? Oh please stop being so paranoid!

From Squaring the Boston Globe