Livadia Palace, located in the Crimean resort town of Yalta, was built by the Russian Tsar Nicholas ll as a summer retreat for his family. The Tsar and his family only used the palace a few times before they were murdered by Russian revolutionaries in 1918. The Soviet government turned the palace into a clinic for sick workers, until in 1942 the Nazis invaded Crimea and used the palace as their headquarters. When the Russians reconquered the area, the retreating Nazis destroyed much of the palace interior before leaving. By the winter of 1945, the Russian government was hurriedly restoring the palace, where the Yalta conference would take place. The NKVD, the Russian secret police, combed the surrounding areas for anyone they deemed to be a threat to the conference.

By this time the Nazis were in retreat and an Allied victory was all but certain. The most powerful Allied leaders—Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin—decided to meet to discuss the end of the war and its aftermath. Stalin insisted on meeting within the Soviet Union’s borders, and Churchill and Roosevelt agreed, as they needed the Soviets’ cooperation to win the war on the European and Pacific fronts.