Known as "the pocket Hercules of the Foreign Office" for his small stature and industriousness, Sir Frank Roberts played a key role in the early years of the Cold War. In 1945 he advised Churchill at the Yalta conference, serving for two years afterward as minister to Moscow. Later, as Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin's principal private secretary, he negotiated face-to-face with Stalin over the Berlin blockade. The "Cold War" production team interviewed Roberts in August 1995. He died in early 1998 at the age of 90.

On Churchill and Stalin:

[Churchill] never allowed his anti-Soviet inclinations to weaken what he thought was the main objective, which was the defeat of Hitler's Germany. Now as the war went on, and when Russia came into the war... Churchill, in spite of his past anti-Soviet feelings, at once welcomed Stalin's Russia as an ally. He did say to his friends, of course, that he'd have welcomed the devil, if the devil had turned up, to help him defeat Hitler.

But ... Stalin was very skillful in dealing with Roosevelt and Churchill. Even Churchill began to quite like him, you know, and talk about "Uncle Joe," you see, which was quite an affectionate term. And they both had this idea that if you treated [Stalin] the right way ... the phrase was: "If you treat Uncle Joe like a member of our club, perhaps one day he will behave like a member of our club." Rather forgetting that Stalin had a rather different club of his own, which was the communist club.

On the major achievements of Yalta:

The first thing was to make sure that we were all agreed on the strategy required to end the war, and again to confirm the arrangements already made in the European Commission in London for the occupation of Germany after we'd won the war. ...

The second very important topic, and that is now regarded as the whole purpose of Yalta, was the arrangements in Eastern Europe and particularly in Poland.

But there were two other very major things, and for Roosevelt they were the two most important -- I mean apart, of course, from winning the war. One was the war against Japan. And at that time the atom bomb [had] just [been developed]; I think there were only three in existence. Nobody knew how it would work in the heat of battle, so to speak. Nobody knew whether it would actually stop the Japanese. And at least one of the ideas was that if we had to go on island-hopping and eventually attack Japan from the sea, it would have probably meant half a million dead or up to a million casualties. So it was very important [to Roosevelt] to get the Russians to join in the war against Japan and attack the Japanese from the rear, as it were, in Manchuria...

Then the other thing, and this we can hardly criticize: Roosevelt was looking to the future, to the creation of the United Nations -- how we were to organize the world after the war. And ... it was very important that the two great powers should be members of it, and therefore Russia must be persuaded to join the United Nations on acceptable terms. ...

So those were the four topics. For us, of course, the major topic was the future of Eastern Europe and above all Poland. And on that, Stalin obviously was bound to get what he wanted, because the Red Army was in occupation of the whole area, including Poland. They'd already gone through Poland into Germany by the time we were in Yalta. ... [And] in a war, of course, you are rather dependent on what the armies have achieved. ...

We got at Yalta two diplomatic documents which on paper were perfectly satisfactory. I mean, there would be a coalition government in Poland including people from the West; we would decide who they should be; and there would be free elections in Poland. And then there was a declaration covering the whole of Eastern Europe, called the Declaration on Liberated Europe, which again was to be rebuilt on the basis of democracy and free elections and all the rest of it -- phrases which the Russians used but interpreted rather differently. ...

At Yalta, we were all very skeptical about what was going to happen, but [we felt] that it was better to have the Russians committed to the right kind of principle, because at least if they didn't carry them out you could hold them to their promises.

On Stalin's motives:

Well, his immediate territorial ambitions were extremely clear: they were to restore the old Russian empire, by and large. And of course he got his first chance in the [Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact]. And you know, before the war in 1939, when we were trying to negotiate with him to persuade him to join us in deterring Hitler from attacking Poland ... he was offered on the other hand by the Germans, of course, [that] he could have half of Poland ... and several other areas as well. They all amounted really to the old Russian empire. ...

And I've never forgotten that when Hitler attacked Russia, he naturally took all these things back. And when I went to Moscow with Anthony Eden in December 1941, when the Germans were still only 19 kilometers away from us as we talked, the very first thing that Stalin said at that meeting was, "Mr. Eden, I want to have your assurance that at the end of the war you will support my just claim to all these areas" -- [the areas], you see, that we've just mentioned. And Eden said: "Oughtn't we to be thinking about how we win the war?" "No, no," said Stalin, "I would like to have this clear at the very beginning." So Eden obviously had to say we had no authority to discuss how the war was to end. And I remember I made a mental resolution -- because I was dealing with Poland -- I said, "We'll never be able to restore Polish independence unless we do it before Stalin is winning the war."

On how Soviet life changed after Stalin died:

Under Khrushchev, [Moscow] was a quite different place from Moscow under Stalin. ... The whole attitude of the population had changed, you see. In Stalin's time, most people slept with a little case at their sides, lest they might be knocked up in the middle of the night and taken to a concentration camp. Well, that [ended] under Khrushchev. He did still have these medical sort of places where they pushed a lot of people in rather unpleasantly. But the big concentration camps were all finished with. I mean, [the ones] where there were millions and millions of Russians. And the Russians ceased to have this feeling that they might suddenly be arbitrarily arrested or anything like that.

And they began to criticize their leaders; they never criticized Stalin at all. But they didn't like Khrushchev when he went and bashed his shoe on the desk at the United Nations -- they thought that was very undignified. And the Russians like to have dignified leaders, even if they're Stalin. They said this was "uncultured" -- they never quite recovered from that. But on the other hand, he did improve life for Russians in Russia a very great deal. ...

Although they didn't lose their sense of criticism. ... Khrushchev had a great slogan that I think came out about that time, which was: "Now we must catch up with and overtake the Americans." And the story going around Moscow was: "Mmm, Nikita wants us to catch up with and overtake the Americans. Mmm. Difficult. Maybe catch up with. Yes, let's try and catch up with them, but on no account should we overtake them. Why? Because then they would see the patches on the seats of our trousers." That's typical. The Russian public were not easily persuaded that things were as good as Khrushchev hoped they were.

On Khruschev's temperament:

Khrushchev ... loved meeting people, particularly Western ambassadors. He got very bored with his own ambassadors or the communist ambassadors. And he used to go to all sort of receptions ... and he always used to come over and have a talk. Not just passing the time of day, and saying, "It's a nice day," or something, but really getting down to whatever was the subject of the moment. ...

And at one of these parties, suddenly Khrushchev saw me and came over, and said to me, "I want to let you know that I've appointed Major General so-and-so to command our troops around Berlin." Well, although Khrushchev had liberalized the regime a good deal compared to Stalin, still he hadn't inaugurated giving us military secrets. I mean, the appointment of generals was a military secret. So I was very surprised. I mean, I thought, "What can this mean?"

And so I said nothing. And he got a bit annoyed. And he sent for the vice-chief of the general staff. He said, "Will you confirm [this] to the British ambassador?" And, of course, he confirmed [it], you see, and I still couldn't make out what this was [and said nothing].

And then he lost his temper. [He said], "Well, if you take it like that, let me just tell you that I can destroy your country with eight of our nuclear bombs. ..." So I [said to] Khrushchev, "I think that would be a mistake, you know. We're a rather small country. I think six would be enough. But then don't forget that ... the RAF can come and bomb Moscow and about 19 of your other cities and destroy them, and that wouldn't be very good either, would it?"

And so Khrushchev said, "Well, maybe you're right. Let's have a drink." So we had a drink. A kind of extraordinary conversation.

On how close the world came to World War III:

I don't think it was ever really close to war. I remember having a talk in the Kremlin during the second Berlin crisis. Things were getting quite difficult then ... and I met in the Kremlin, at a party, the number two [official] in Russia at that time: a man called Kozlov. ... And I said to Kozlov: "You know, I'm very worried about the [situation]; I think it's getting very dangerous."

And he said, "No, no, no, you needn't worry. It is a difficult position. There may be troubles, [but it is] not dangerous, [and] I'll tell you why. You see, we [think] that at the end of the war a line was drawn down the middle of Europe. We'd have liked it to be more to the West; you would, no doubt, have liked it to be more to the East. But anyway, on one side was yours, on the other side was ours. And we have made, and we will go on making, as much trouble as we can for you on your side of the line, short of any risk of war; and we take it for granted that you also will make as much trouble as you can on our side of the of the line, short of the risk of war."

And then he added, "But you find it much more difficult to make trouble for us on our side than we do on yours." Which in a way was true, but in one way wasn't. Because they got themselves into so much trouble on their side of the line that we didn't have to. But anyway, so I said, "Yes, that's all very well, but that doesn't quite settle Berlin, you see." He said, "Oh yes, I admit Berlin's on our side of the line, but there's a circle around Berlin and there's a line in the middle of Berlin and the same principles apply." And that, I'm sure, simply was how they saw the world.

On the role of the United States during the Cold War:

No country, least of all a country with so many responsibilities as America, failed to make mistakes -- and indeed [Britain] did in the days of [its] greatness. But I think by and large they had it pretty right. ...

And by and large I think also one has to give full marks to Reagan. I mean, you know, people don't like doing that, but I think it was in fact Reagan's [victory]: first of all, in rallying the American sort of national spirit which before Reagan was in a rather poor [way], like the French [before] De Gaulle; and then [in] carrying out this defensive policy -- I mean these wonderful technical weapons they were going to have. I mean ... maybe they were never going to have them, but still they were spending a lot of money on it and they were defensive, they weren't aggressive. And the Russians were pushed into a military effort which was too great for them. And that's what really ended the Cold War and ended communism in Europe, [and] produced Gorbachev and the independence of all the Warsaw Pact countries. And the independence of Russia itself, in a sense.

On who won the Cold War:

Well, I suppose winning the Cold War is ending the Cold War, isn't it, really? I mean it's not like a battle in which you defeat the enemy. And I would have thought the West won the Cold War. We lasted out longer. And the end of the Cold War was not the collapse of the Western system with all its faults, but it was the collapse of Marxism-Leninism and the country in which Marxism-Leninism had been established as the state ideology and religion: the Soviet Union. So I don't see how anyone can for one moment think of the West having lost. But that doesn't mean that the Cold War was an ideal situation; far from it. But it was better than a hot war.