Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1941, General, The Soviet Union, Volume I

761.94/1450

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Secretary of State

[Washington,] July 3, 1941.

The Soviet Ambassador called to see me today at my request.

I told the Ambassador that as he would remember, I had given him in the month of January, in confidence and in the most friendly way for the urgent information of his Government, the information that this Government received reports which it believed entirely authentic that Germany intended to attack Russia and that the time for such attack would presumably be in the early part of the summer of 1941.²⁷ I said that I now desired in the same friendly spirit to inform him that this Government had reports which it believed equally authentic that the Government of Japan had now decided to abrogate the neutrality pact with the Soviet Union²⁸ in the near future and thereafter to declare war upon Russia.²⁹

The Ambassador seemed very much upset upon receiving this information. He stated, “This is very serious indeed.” He asked me if I would say that I believed the information was positively accurate. I said I could make no such commitment but that I believed that the reports received by this Government could be regarded as coming from responsible and reliable sources.³⁰ The Ambassador said he would communicate immediately with his Government.

S[umner] W[elles]

27. See footnote 98, p. 772.
28. Signed at Moscow on April 13, 1941; for text, see Department of State Bulletin, April 29, 1945, p. 812, or British and Foreign State Papers, vol. cxliv, p. 839. For correspondence relating to the negotiation of this treaty, see Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. iv, pp. 905 ff. A statement by Secretary of State Hull on April 14, 1941, upon the conclusion of the treaty, is printed in Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. ii, p. 186.
29. For reports of the information received, see telegram received by Mr. Lauchlin Currie, dated July 2, vol. iv, p. 289; memorandum of July 3, by the Acting Secretary of State, ibid.; and telegram No. 274, July 4, from the the Ambassador in China, ibid., p. 994.
30. In a memorandum of July 7, 1941, Welles noted that he had told Ambassador Umansky that he had no more information to give, but he believed that “the Japanese Government was still bargaining with Germany before entering into a final agreement to attack the Soviet Union.” (761.94/1449)