Office of the Historian

Roosevelt Papers: Telegram

Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt 1

most secret
London,2 11 August 1943.

Former Naval Person to President. Personal and most secret. Number 409.

Eden suggests that our Tangier representative replies to Badoglio’s Emissary Berio as follows. Begins:

“Badoglio must understand that we cannot negotiate but require unconditional surrender which means that the Italian Government should place themselves in hands of Allied Governments who will then state their terms. These will provide for an honourable capitulation.”

The instructions would continue: begins:

“Badoglio’s Emissary should be reminded at the same time that Prime Minister and President have already stated that we desire that in due course Italy should occupy a respected place in New Europe when peace has been reestablished and that General Eisenhower has announced that Italian prisoners taken in Tunisia and Sicily will be released providing all British and Allied prisoners now in Italian hands are released.”

This is simply made up of our existing declarations. If you approve it in principle, please cable at once direct Eden at Foreign Office as I shall be on the move. If text does not meet your view, we can discuss it on arrival. I think Italians ought to have an answer as soon as possible. It will, at any rate, make it easier for them to decide who to double cross.

I have also received what follows in my next from U.J. You will see [Page 579] I am restored, if not to favour, at any rate to the court. I have sent reply which also follows.3

  1. Channel of transmission not indicated.↩
  2. The message originated at Quebec but was apparently transmitted via London.↩

  3. For Churchill’s telegrams Nos. 410 and 411 to Roosevelt, see Foreign Relations, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943, pp. 19–20. Cf. Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 142–143.

    For the final paragraph of Churchill’s telegram No. 409, omitted here, see ante, p. 411.

    ↩