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

861.24/675: Telegram

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State

Moscow, October 11, 1941—3 p.m.
[Received 4:16 p.m.]

1789. For Hopkins from Faymonville.¹⁰ Your list October shipments¹¹ welcomed by General Staff and Government leaders who nevertheless stress urgent and immediate need airplanes, tanks, machine guns, hand arms and ammunition in quantities exceeding wherever possible list which were agreed upon at conference before serious losses of last 7 days occurred.¹² Military situation at Orel and in extreme south serious but not hopeless and General Staff holds that Red army troops almost surrounded at Vyazma are being re-formed and that adequate reserves are being used to prevent encirclement of Moscow. [Faymonville.]

Steinhardt

10. Col. Philip R. Faymonville, formerly American Military Attaché in the Soviet Union, 1934–39; in Office of Defense Aid Reports, 1941; member of the Harriman Special Mission to Moscow, where he remained to participate in possible conversations on the general war effort.
11. Not printed; see footnote 4, p. 843.
12. An announcement was made by President Roosevelt on October 13, 1941, wherein it was stated that supplies for the Soviet Union were constantly leaving from United States ports, and that everything possible was being done to rush supplies to help in the defense of the Soviet Union; Department of State Bulletin, October 18, 1941, p. 296.