Office of the Historian

Hopkins Papers: Telegram

Prime Minister Churchill to the President’s Special Assistant (Hopkins)1

secret
London, March 30, 1943.

Mr. Harry Hopkins from Prime Minister personal and most secret.

1.
See Bigot number 7892 of March 20, and particularly paragraph five.2 I learned from Anthony that the President was worried about the difficulties which are being discovered in planning Husky , and so am I.3 Do you think the President would send you and Marshall out there to meet me and Brooke in the latter part of April, in order to survey and if possible clinch the business or, in the last resort, to explore alternatives?
2.
Personally I think they are making heavy weather of it. At present there are only 3 weak Italian Divisions there and no German. Events are moving in Tunisia and the enemy is already preparing to evacuate Sfax and Sousse.4
  1. Transmitted via military channels.↩
  2. Telegram 7892, Naf 182, March 20, 1943, from Eisenhower (in Algiers) to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, reported that study of the original outline plan for Husky had revealed certain deficiencies; revision of the plan had been undertaken (Eisenhower Papers, p. 1015). For an account of the strategic planning for Husky , see Garland and Smyth, chapter iii.↩

  3. The discussion of the planning for Husky may have arisen at the White House meeting of March 29, 1943, on the United Nations shipping situation and the capabilities for carrying out planned military operations; see Leighton and Coakley, pp. 699–700. In a note to Roosevelt, dated March 24, 1943, Eden transmitted a personal message from Churchill setting forth the Prime Minister’s anxiety about the shipping situation, particularly the inability of the British to mount their share of the Husky operation without an additional allocation of ships. In a message to Churchill, dated March 29, 1943, Roosevelt stated the following:

    “Replying to your message handed me by Anthony, we shall find all the ships for Husky and are going to scrape the bottom otherwise but we cannot escape the fact that something must give if all of our military operations are to be fully supported. I am going into this matter in detail and Anthony will bring you my immediate views.” (Roosevelt Papers)

    ↩
  4. See Howe, passim, concerning the Allied military campaigns in Northwest Africa culminating in the liberation of Tunisia in May 1943.↩