The appeasement of Stalin was the only thing that Churchill could do to preserve what was left of the Empire
1. Churchill had already been blackmailed by Roosevelt at Quebec II, when he was threatened that unless he accepted both the Morgenthau Plan and the outline post-war partitioning, then the US would cut off all aid to Britain on VE day
2. The threat to the British Empire came not from Stalin but from Roosevelt; it was US policy to dismantle the Empire after the war, and one that Truman wholeheartedly subscribed to
3. By the time of Yalta, Germany was defeated; the Red Army had just advanced 300 miles and was within 40 miles of Berlin. The occupation of Eastern Europe was de facto
4. It is simply naive to imagine that ANY victor could have left an independent Poland sandwiched between occupied Germany and the Ukraine, with the Baltic states to the North, former East Prussia, Hungary and Czechslovakia all within the Iron Curtain. Poland's post-war fate was decided at Stalingrad.
Roosevelt's stupidity, poor judgement and naivity in trusting Stalin, and his use of the economic cudgel to bring Churchill into line, perhaps made things worse than they need have been, but once the Red Army was within sight of the Elbe Poland's fate was sealed.
Oh yes, and the dates of the wars are different for the Septics* than for the Europeans; WWI was 1917-1918 and WWII was 1941-1946 for the US.
(English rhyming slang; septics = septic tanks)
