Editorial Note
No official record of the substance of the discussion at this meeting has been found. The information set forth above is derived from the President’s appointment calendar (Roosevelt Papers) and from the brief published accounts in Churchill, Hinge of Fate, p. 385, and in Alanbrooke, p. 330. These two accounts, while differing in some respects, indicate that the subjects under discussion included the German submarine campaign, proposed operations in the Pacific area, and the possibility of dispatching American forces to the Middle East. Marshall’s report to Stimson on the meeting was summarized by Stimson in his Diary entry for June 22, 1942, as follows:
“… he [Marshall] told me of what had occurred in the evening session that had been called ostensibly for questions of naval cooperation between our Navy and the British in the South Pacific. But after that had been handled and when it was very late at night, the President suddenly suggested that we might throw a large American force into the Middle East and cover the whole front between Alexandria and Teheran. Marshall was of course terribly taken aback and he said to the President that that was such an overthrow of everything they had been planning for, he refused to discuss it at that time of night in any way and he turned and went out of the room.”