Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt 1
406. Former Naval Person to President personal and most secret.
Your number 331 and my numbers 391 and 395.3
[Page 557]I have now consulted my colleagues who entirely agree with your suggested amendments on the paper which I called “The Fall of Mussolini”,4 subject to the 2 following points:
- (a)
- We feel that paragraph 11 as now drafted might seem to imply that we had not kept in touch with the Russian Government on our policy in regard to Italy. The Foreign Secretary has however informed the Russian Government of our general intentions in regard to the draft armistice terms5 and they have expressed themselves as satisfied. To cover this point we suggest the omission of the words “affecting the Balkans” in our paragraph 11, which have a narrowing effect.
- (b)
- The point about paragraph 2 which I put to you in my number 395, suggesting “namely the destruction of Hitler and the total defeat of Germany”.
If you will let me know that you agree to these 2 further amendments, let us regard the document as amended as constituting a joint directive to the United Kingdom and United States Governments on the broad policy to be pursued.6
- Channel of transmission to Washington not indicated. Forwarded by the White House Map Room to Roosevelt, who was then at Birch Island. The text printed here contains a correction telegraphed from London on August 6, 1943. An information copy was sent to Hull by Halifax on August 6 (740.0011 EW/8–643).↩
- Churchill had left London en route for Quebec on the evening of August 4, 1943, but the message was sent via London.↩
- Ante, pp. 517, 521, and 523, respectively.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. ii, pp. 332–335.↩
- See ibid., pp. 341–343.↩
- No reply by Roosevelt to this message has been found.↩