Question

Negotiations at these conferences were difficult.
The leaders of the United States, the USSR, and Great Britain said they wanted to cooperate, so why were negotiations at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences so difficult?

The leaders were not honest about their goals.

Each country wanted its own sphere of influence.

Germany and Japan were still seen as a threat.

The end of the war was still far away.

Answer 1

Each country wanted its own sphere of influence.

Although the leaders publicly pledged cooperation, they had different postwar aims (security and communist-friendly governments for the USSR; open markets and self‑determination for the US and Britain). Those competing interests — plus mutual suspicion and broken promises — made Yalta and Potsdam hard to negotiate.