Office of the Historian

Hopkins Papers

Draft Joint Statement by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill1

Washington, [May 25, 1943.]

Joint Statement by the President and the Prime Minister

The complete destruction of the Nazi Afrika Korps and their Italian allies in North Africa completed one phase of the military [Page 376] decisions made at Casablanca. Progress on other operations, determined at that time, is proceeding satisfactorily.

Aggressive warfare, however, requires a constant implementation of strategy, based upon military events. Further operations, in addition to those determined upon at Casablanca, must be set afoot. Therefore the President and the Prime Minister decided to meet again with their Chiefs of Staff.

They have agreed on further steps to be taken in the overall planning of a global war. The operations which have been approved include every theatre of war all over the world.

There has been a complete meeting of minds on:

(a)
The war in the Pacific from the Aleutians to Australia.
(b)
The war in China and Southern Asia.
(c)
The situation in the Middle East.
(d)
The war in the Mediterranean.
(e)
The war at sea in the North and South Atlantic.
(f)
The war in Western Europe.
(g)
The war in Eastern Europe—the Russian-German front.2

Action in all these theatres is inter-related in regard to shipping, air power and the command of the seas by our navies.

The war at this time stands far better than when the President, the Prime Minister and the Combined Chiefs of Staff met at Casablanca.

Our unrelenting anti-U–boat campaign is prospering, with the result that there are far more merchant ships available than had been anticipated. The triumphs of the Russian Army have inflicted shattering blows upon the German forces. Heroic China still stands firm. The weight and intensity of the Allied air offensive grows continually.

The vast production of munitions assures to the United Nations the weapons with which to destroy the enemy.

However the Combined Chiefs of Staff remain convinced that all plans must be based on a complete military victory without counting on any possibility of the enemy’s internal collapse.

The President and the Prime Minister also examined with the Chiefs of Staff the forms of temporary civil and military organizations to be set up when the Nazi, Fasicist or Japanese occupied territories are freed.

The fullest possible contacts have been maintained with Marshal Stalin and the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, to whom the final reports have been submitted.

  1. This joint statement, which is typed on White House stationery, bears the following marginal notation in Roosevelt’s handwriting: “Not sent FDR—Evening of May 25 F and W.S.C.” The Hopkins Papers also contain a nearly identical version, bearing a number of amendments and additions in Churchill’s handwriting. All of those alterations are reflected in this version of the statement. Roosevelt and Churchill presumably considered this statement during their meeting on the evening of May 25, 1943; see the editorial note, ante, p. 221.↩
  2. This line is crossed out in the source text.↩