Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
The President’s Chief of Staff (Leahy) to the Assistant to the President’s Military Aide (Hammond)
Black 8. Transmit following message to the Prime Minister, the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of State:
“I have read instrument of surrender1 and while the language seems on the whole good, I seriously doubt advisability of using it at all. After all, the terms of surrender already approved and sent to Eisenhower2 ought to be all that is necessary. Why tie his hands by an instrument that may be oversufficient or insufficient? Why not let him act to meet situations as they arise? Signed Roosevelt.”
Add the following sentence just before signature in the message to the Prime Minister only:
“You and I can discuss this matter at Quadrant .”3
- Although the British Joint Staff Mission at Washington had circulated a new draft of “long” or “comprehensive” surrender terms on August 2, 1943 (see post, p. 537, fn. 1), the British draft available to Roosevelt at Birch Island on that date was that annexed to C.C.S. 258, cited ante, p. 525, fn. 2.↩
- Ante, pp. 519, 522.↩
- Roosevelt’s message to Churchill, based on this instruction, was dispatched by the White House Map Room at Washington as Roosevelt’s telegram No. 339.↩