Hopkins Papers
The British Minister of Supply (Beaverbrook) to the President’s Special Assistant (Hopkins)
My Dear Harry, Some days ago we had conversation together about a proposal from London that American lorries consigned to the Russians should be diverted to the Poles.
There was also a question of shipping the lorries via Karachi instead of Basrah. You told me that the Russians were afraid that, if the lorries were sent through Karachi, we would take them for our own purposes.
I have now received a telegram which informs me that the facilities in the Persian Gulf for unloading and assembling are so congested that it will take forty days to discharge the 2,500 lorries at present en route and more than three months to assemble them.
If a proportion of the lorries are shipped to Karachi, the Russians will get quicker deliveries. In addition, there will be less delay in the turn-round of American ships engaged in this traffic.
So it has been suggested to me that ships carrying approximately one-half of these lorries should be diverted to Karachi.
[Page 342]This has already been discussed with Mr. Kerr, who represents the National Maritime Commission in London. I am informed that he is cabling the Commission about it.
I would like very much to have your directions.1
Yours ever,
- No reply has been found and the subject does not appear to have been discussed at the First Washington Conference. The question of the utilization of Karachi was under discussion with Soviet authorities through Army channels; see T. H. Vail Motter, The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), pp. 141–143.↩