Office of the Historian

851R.01/61½

Memorandum by Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy 9

Washington, December 24, 1942.

The President desires that I bring the attached despatch to your attention and that I prepare for him a draft reply.

I shall appreciate receiving, as soon as practicable, your suggestions concerning the reply, as well as any comment you may desire to make on the situation discussed in the Prime Minister’s message.

William D. Leahy
[Enclosure]

Telegram No. 239, December 23, 1942, From Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt

Your number 241. Due to the differences between our systems of government it is impossible to achieve exact similarity. For example, by minister I meant political minister and you think diplomatic minister. Again Murphy is the personal representative of you as head of the state. It would be impossible for me to make a similar appointment of a diplomatic character. The best that can be done is to send Macmillan out as “His Majesty’s Government’s Political Representative at General Eisenhower’s Headquarters”, reporting directly to me, and enjoying precise equality of rank with Murphy. Will this suit you?9a

In your number 219 of November 209b you seemed to contemplate the two political representatives being capable of relieving Eisenhower of large part of his political burdens and that real power should be vested in them jointly subject of course to the ultimate military control of the Commander in Chief. I believe this is most urgently necessary as from all I hear the tangles of local French politics and their world implications force themselves into the first place in the military mind and might well become detrimental to operations.

Prime
  1. Addressed to the Secretary of State and the Chief of Staff of the United States Army (Marshall).↩
  2. In his telegram No. 247, December 29, President Roosevelt replied: “The designation of Macmillan as ‘Minister Resident at Allied Headquarters’ is satisfactory to me. It is my understanding that General Eisenhower will continue to have full veto power over all civil officials in the area of operations when in his Eisenhower’s opinion such veto is advantageous to military operations or prospects.” Copy of telegram obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. A White House memorandum of the same date indicated concurrence by the Secretary of State.↩
  3. See Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. iv, The Hinge of Fate (Boston, 1950), p. 635.↩