This week The Extraordinary Times caught up with Catherine Grace Katz, author of The Daughters of Yalta. Katz is a writer and historian from Chicago, with degrees in history from Harvard and Cambridge. In conjunction with her historical passion, she is currently pursuing her JD degree at Harvard Law School. Her book, The Daughters of Yalta shines a light on three remarkable women—Sarah Churchill, Anna Roosevelt, and Kathleen Harriman—the daughters of Winston Churchill, FDR, and US Ambassador to Moscow Averell Harriman, respectively. In her remarkable story of fathers and daughters whose relationships were tested and strengthened by history, Katz explores the fateful 1945 Yalta conference in present-day Ukraine, where the endgame of World War II was plotted, and the seeds of the Cold War were sown.
The Daughters of Yalta is this year’s Hamilton, Ohio “One City, One Book” public reading selection. Catherine Grace Katz will be speaking at the Parrish Auditorium of Miami University’s Hamilton Campus on Thursday October 20 at 7pm. This is a free public event, cosponsored by the Michael J. Colligan History Project and “One City, One Book.” A book-signing and reception to follow. All are welcome but RSVP encouraged online: miamioh.edu/regionals/rsvp * What inspired you to write The Daughters of Yalta? This journey was really one where coincidences all aligned in ways I never could have imagined. I had studied Churchill in a small way for both my undergrad thesis and graduate dissertation, but thought I was done with history in a formal sense after finishing my MPhil. I went to New York to work in finance like every other recent graduate, and lo and behold, in the lobby of my office was a wonderful bookstore called Chartwell Booksellers—named for Winston Churchill's country home—which specializes in books by and about Churchill. It was fate. Through the owner of the bookstore, I met a group called the International Churchill Society, as well as members of the Churchill family. Right around that time, the Churchill Archives in Cambridge (UK) were opening the papers of Sarah Churchill for the first time and the International Churchill Society asked if I would be interested in writing an article about them. I said yes, thinking it would just be a fun way to stay engaged with history and do a bit of writing—meanwhile I was applying to law school. As soon as I started reading Sarah's papers, I was absolutely fascinated by her wartime experience and the fact that Sarah Churchill, Kathy Harriman, and Anna Roosevelt had all served as their fathers' aides at Yalta. I knew there was a story there just waiting to be told. The rest, as they say, was history! * Why did the allies choose Yalta as the site of their conference? There's that great Churchill quip where he said something along the lines of, "We couldn't have found a worse place for the conference if we had spent ten years looking for one." Yalta was really the least bad of terrible options. Stalin was paranoid about security and refused to leave his own borders. He was also afraid of flying. Practically, he knew he held more cards than did FDR and Churchill at that point, so they realized if they were going to meet in person, they would have to go to him. The Crimea and the Black Sea were about the most western locations that were accessible, and after scouting a few options, Yalta was deemed to have the least run-down accommodations and was the most easily accessed. However, they recognized they would have to fly there, rather than arrive by ship, as the Black Sea was mined. So, by process of elimination, Yalta was it! * Can you briefly describe the process of researching and writing your book? Archival research is a treasure hunt, you never know what you're going to find! It can be both frustrating and exhilarating, and you have to let the sources guide the story. I was able to read the letters and diaries of the daughters, as well as those of a number of other Yalta Conference participants. The families of the three women were incredibly gracious, allowing me to read their papers, and all three families sat for interviews with me. I will always be so grateful for that. I also had the opportunity to interview people like Lady Jane Williams, Churchill's secretary, who is one of the last people alive today to have worked with Churchill. So, between reading about Yalta in the daughters' own words as the action was unfolding and being able to call upon the memories of people still alive today who knew and loved these figures more than anyone, it made a story about grand, high stakes geopolitics something that was deeply personal and familiar. * Which of the daughters--if any--did you most identify with, and why? Though I was the same age as Kathy Harriman (27) when I started working on the book and almost the same age as Sarah Churchill (I was 29, she was 30) when it was published, and I think being that age certainly helped me better understand them, their outlook, their relationships, and their roles at Yalta, I was very cognizant of not writing myself into the story by identifying with one or all of them. Instead, I think one of my friends put it really well. She said she thinks there's a part of each of the daughters in each of us. We like to think of ourselves as Kathy, we aspire to be Sarah, but in our hearts, we all know we have a lot of Anna. At any point in our lives, we may identify with one of the daughters more than the others, but I think their experiences really speak to people because there is something about each of them that resonates with us—even those of us who aren't the daughter of a president or prime minister. * Do you see any strong parallels or connections between the setting of your book in the Crimea and today's battleground of Ukraine? Absolutely. When I started writing this, I thought a lot about Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and how more than 75 years after Yalta, we continue to get it wrong when dealing with Russia. History shapes Russia's outlook on the world, particularly on what it considers its vulnerable western flank—the flatlands of Poland and Ukraine—the pathway of invasion from Napoleon to Hitler. This has created a deep regional paranoia, one shared by the Tsars, Stalin, and Putin today. There are so many parallels between Poland in 1945 and Ukraine today, even beyond the physical battleground and setting of the Yalta Conference, particularly things like the discovery of mass graves. From FDR to recent presidents, there has been a tendency to think about the relationship between the president and the Russian or Soviet leader as one that could be better if only there could be a leader-to-leader personal breakthrough, and this thinking has let us down again and again. We need to learn from history, especially Yalta, to better understand where the American or Western democratic outlook on things like deterring acts of aggression do not line up with the Russian outlook and shift our mindset to reevaluate the kinds of pressure that would actually induce Russia to alter its behavior. * What projects or challenges are next on your horizon? The first project is finishing law school! I am in my third and final year at Harvard Law School, and going forward, I would love to find a way to bring history and law together, not only in telling stories about the past, but also as tools to think about how we can best tackle long standing, complex problems facing our world today. I am also excited to develop Daughters of Yalta in other mediums, including for the screen, and of course dive into my next book (so long as I pass the bar!).
1 Comment
Jim Hurd
7/26/2023 06:43:09 pm
I worked for Pamela Harriman when she was Ambassador in Paris and I had previously worked at the US Embassy in London, so I was very much into the stories surrounding her time in both these places. I wonder how Pamela and Kathy Harriman got along. Would recommend to you an excellent series of books by Lynn Olson, Citizens of London and others, which talk to those times.
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
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