Foreign Relations of the United States, Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943

PR 10 “Foreign Relations of U.S.”/9–1069

The British Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Cadogan) to Prime Minister Churchill ¹

[Washington, September 8, 1943.²]

Interchange of Information on Weapons With the U.S.S.R.

In September, 1942, an Anglo-Soviet agreement was signed by which each Government undertook to furnish the other, spontaneously or on request, with all information on weapons or processes employed by them against the common enemy unless it was not in the common interest when reasons would be given.³

The proper implementation of our part of this agreement has been, and is, most difficult because much of the information we should disclose is partly American and the U.S. Chiefs of Staff are reluctant to agree to its disclosure.

We have therefore to choose between breaking our agreement, disclosing information without U.S. approval on weapons and processes we employ, and giving the Russians (who are pressing us hard for certain information) the reasons for non-disclosure which would embarrass the U.S.

None of these choices is attractive. A tripartite agreement (U.K., U.S. and U.S.S.R.) to replace our existing agreement would solve our difficulties.

If this solution is agreeable to you and the President, the Combined Chiefs of Staff should be instructed that for political reasons it is essential to have a Tripartite agreement and be asked to consider the form it should take and to recommend how it should be implemented, i.e. outline the factors which should govern disclosure or non-disclosure of information.

It is recognised that we will not obtain much useful information from the Russians but nonetheless such an agreement should have military as well as political value to the extent that the information we give enables the Russians to kill more Germans.

1. Printed from a copy obtained by the editors from the British Foreign Office. The original (which has not been found) was apparently given to Roosevelt by Churchill and was forwarded to Leahy by Roosevelt on September 15, 1948, under cover of a memorandum asking Leahy to speak to the President about “this” (Roosevelt Papers).
2. The source text is undated and unsigned, but a typed endorsement on Roosevelt’s memorandum to Leahy mentioned in fn. 1, above, states that the paper sent to Leahy was dated September 8, 1943, and was initialed A.C. (Roosevelt Papers).
3. The agreement referred to (not printed) was effected by an exchange of notes of September 29, 1942. Cf. Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. iii, pp. 738–739.