Memorandum of Conference Held at the White House, by Mr. Harry L. Hopkins, Special Assistant to President Roosevelt 29
| [Present:] | The President. |
| Mr. Vyacheslav Molotov. | |
| Secretary Hull. | |
| Mr. Harry L. Hopkins. | |
| Mr. Pavlov, interpreting for Mr. Molotov. | |
| Professor Cross of Harvard, interpreting for the President. |
Molotov and the President greeted each other very cordially, Molotov expressing his warm appreciation for the invitation to come to America and extending to the President the warm greetings of Stalin. It was pretty difficult to break the ice, although that did not seem to be due to any lack of cordiality and pleasantness on the part of Molotov.
The President had two or three memoranda on his desk which I had never heard of before, which were obviously given him by the Department of State, in which the Department was offering their good offices in alleged difficulties between the Russians and the Iranians on the one hand and the Russians and Turks oh the other. I gathered Molotov was not much impressed. I at any rate so imagined [Page 572] and in front of the President he raised the point that they thought they knew a good deal more about their relations with Iran and Turkey than we did. I confess I did not see in what way our good offices were to be executed.
The State Department also obviously wants Russia either to sign or adhere to the Geneva Convention of 1929 relative to the care and treatment of prisoners of war. This agreement requires that the adhering countries permit a neutral body, such as the International Red Cross, to inspect the prison Camps. You don’t have to know very much about Russia, or for that matter Germany, to know there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell for either Russia or Germany to permit the International Red Cross really to inspect any prison camps. Molotov’s final answer was that “Why should we give the Germans the diplomatic advantage of pretending to adhere to international law. Germany might well say that they would agree and then not, of course, do anything about it because you couldn’t trust them”.
Molotov indicated that it would be a mistake from a propaganda point of view to give Germany the chance to say that they were the people who upheld international law. He said that all the reports that Russia has of the treatment of Russian prisoners indicates that they are getting a very bad deal. Twenty-six prisoners recently escaped from Norwegian prison camps came back telling of starvation and beatings on the part of the Germans. I gather this is going to be a pretty difficult nut to crack for the State Department.
Hull later handed me the attached memorandum30 indicating the things he wanted taken up with Molotov while he is here. One of the interesting things about this is that none of these things has anything to do with the war on the Russian front, although the first four are matters of considerable importance to us but very little to the Russians unless we really mean business.
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