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Far from wholly trusting their Russian wartime comrades, Churchill and Roosevelt did not even trust each other. Roosevelt and many of his entourage believed that there would indeed be a postwar struggle. They saw the antagonists as Communist Russia and imperialist Britain. Roosevelt saw his own role as balancing between them, thus keeping the Grand Alliance intact through his own skillful brokerage. Aware of what Roosevelt and his advisers were doing, Churchill had to half-muzzle himself. If he opposed the Russians too strongly, Roosevelt would swing to their side. At one point in the Yalta proceedings, the record shows that Harry Hopkins slipped Rcosevelt a note: "The Russians have given in so much at this conference that I don't think we should let them down. Let the British disagree if they want to." Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential chief of staff, who attended the conference, said that Roosevelt at Yalta "showed great skill and his personality dominated the discussions. Since he was the presiding officer and most of the arguments were between Stalin and Churchill, he played the role of arbiter."
From the record, the conclusion can hardly be escaped that neither the British nor the Americans believed in their hearts what they kept telling themselves: that the postwar world could be organized on a rock of unity with Russia. They knew that democracy and Communism would not blend, but they could not find any other assumption upon which to face the postwar period. Communist propaganda, then very powerful in the U.S. and Britain, contributed to the myth that all but the Communist leaders half believed. But the main damage for which Yalta stands was not contrived by the Communists. It began in the marriage of political dreaming and political cynicism, in the notion that the world is what the powerful want it to be.