At the end of WWII it was not the Communists who beat the Nazis but the Russians who beat the Germans. It was the armies of mother Russia who stood on the line dividing east from west, who'd lost 25 million dead to get there. They weren't going to give an inch to anyone...and certainly not to Westerners who they suspected - with good reason - stood by while they suffered and jumped in at the end and grabbed as much as they could.
Sure, Roosevelt could have refused to confirm legitimacy, refused to recognize their conquests. A lot of good that would have done.
What the heck, underage conscripts were cheap then, and Stalin went on to kill another 20 million Russians.
They didn't conquer the east anymore than we conquered the west.
The misleading claim that the Baltics were ceded to the USSR before Yalta ignores the earlier disagreement between Roosevelt and Churchill about the Baltics.
Before officially ending the War, Churchill wanted to prolong the war 6 months in order to roust Russia from the Baltics. This would have meant that troops would move at least from Poland to Greece in a liberating march. Roosevelt strongly opposed Churchill. He said that the US citizenry would not tolerate 6 more months of war.
In fact there was no question of war or of spilling blood. By a grand victory march to the Mediterranian the Western Allies would have established the overthrow of the Third Reich in the Baltics and enforced national boundaries. Russia could not have opposed this move militarily. However, just as in East Germany, Stalin strongly objected to the Allied liberation of the Baltics based on Russia's geopolitical interests.
In fact the US citizenry was chomping at the bit to free the Baltics in a grand victory parade of freedom and democracy. Many Americans hailed from these countries and had strong feelings against Russian occupation. The American people understood that the war was about freedom from opression.
I remember my German and British grandparents were depressed for years over America's failure to liberate these nations so sorely opressed by Hitler. There was a great sense of betrayal here in the US over the failure of the Allies to liberate those nations for whom we went to war.
The left has a deeply rooted vested interest in rewriting history. Their primary impetus seems always to soften criticism of Marxist states and make Utopian claims about socialism. The left equivocates in the face of ghastly realities of mass murder and all forms of vicious opression by Marxist tyrants. ("They have not tried pure Communism MY way," remains the idiotic rejoinder.)
Roosevelt's chief negotiator, Alger Hiss, was a Russian plant, a communist and a traitor. That traitor manipulated Roosevelt into supporting 50 years of tyranny in the Baltics.
Roosevelt was, after all, a dying, weak president with no heart left for shedding American blood. That may be the most positive rationale for this remarkable and shocking act of cowardice.
Shouldn't your name be commielarry?
At the end of WWII ... They weren't going to give an inch to anyone...and certainly not to Westerners who they suspected - with good reason - stood by while they suffered and jumped in at the end and grabbed as much as they could.
Oh, please, pull your head from your rectum for a moment.
The first issue of note was that the Baltics didn't belong to the USSR before WW2, and in fact Stalin's claim to the Baltics was first based on a secret 1939 pact between Stalin and Hitler, then based on a fabrication that the Baltics invited the Communists in.
Only a brain-dead asshat could characterize ending such an occupation of the Baltics "giving an inch" to opportunistic Westerners who fought their way from Northern Africa, then through much of Europe until they were occupying half of Germany.
Funny, I can't think of any lands that those Westerners gobbled up and incorporated into their own nations, can you?
Regardless of whether Roosevelt's decision to abandon the Baltics to soviet tyranny was the better decision at the time, there is no question as Bush asserted that Roosevelt was in on the decision, and certainly a strong argument that the decision was a great injustice to the people to the Baltics.
By the way, as Stalin and his buddies killed more of his own people than the Germans did, I'm not sure Russia's blood sacrifice of WW2 had as much to do with Soviet dogmatism as a simple lust for power and control.