740.0011 European War 1939/8408: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union ( Steinhardt ) to the Secretary of State
[Received February 15—3:40 p.m.]
287. The Turkish Ambassador6a told me last night that his Government is now convinced that Germany contemplates an attack on Turkey in the relatively near future. He said there is no doubt that Turkey will resist. Insofar as concerns present relations between the Soviet Union and Turkey, he said that he has had no conversations with the Soviet authorities for some time past on other than the most routine matters and that, insofar as he knew, there had been no political discussions between the Soviet Ambassador at Ankara and his Government. He said that the attitude of the Soviet authorities towards him of late had been correct but nothing more. With respect to rumors, first, that Sobolev7 and then that Suritz, the former Soviet Ambassador to Paris, had recently been in Sofia with the object of dissuading the Bulgarian Government from succumbing to German pressure, the Ambassador said he had been unable to confirm these rumors and that if the Soviet Government was endeavoring to influence the Bulgarian Government it was doing so most discreetly. The Ambassador expressed the opinion that Germany has been exerting pressure on Japan during the past few days to yield to the Soviet conditions for a Soviet-Japanese political agreement, and in this connection, he remarked that Germany, the Soviet Union, China, and Great Britain each for reasons, which he said were obvious, are desirous of seeing war between the United States and Japan.