Roosevelt Papers: Telegram

President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to Marshal Stalin1

secret
priority

Secret and personal to Marshal Stalin from Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt.

We have both arrived here with our staffs and will probably remain in conference for about ten days.2 We fully understand the strong reasons which led you to remain on the battlefronts, where your presence has been so fruitful of victory. Nevertheless, we wish to emphasize once more the importance of a meeting between all three of us. We do not feel that either Archangel or Astrakhan are suitable but we are prepared ourselves, accompanied by suitable officers, to proceed [Page 21] to Fairbanks in order to survey the whole scene in common with you. The present seems to be a unique opportunity for a rendezvous and also a crucial point in the war. We earnestly hope that you will give this matter once more your consideration. Prime Minister will remain on this side of the Atlantic for as long as may be necessary.

Should it prove impossible to arrange the much needed meeting of the three heads of governments, we agree with you that a meeting of the foreign office level should take place in the near future. This meeting would be exploratory in character as, of course, final decisions must be reserved to our respective governments.3

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ChurchillRoosevelt
  1. Sent to the United States Naval Attaché Moscow, via Navy channels. The entire document is printed in Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 83.
  2. The records of the First Quebec Conference are scheduled to be published subsequently in another volume of the Foreign Relations series.
  3. The joint statement issued by Roosevelt and Churchill on August 24, 1943, regarding the First Quebec Conference read, in part, as follows: “It was resolved to hold another conference before the end of the year between the British and American authorities, in addition to any tri-partite meeting which it may be possible to arrange with Soviet Russia.” Decade, p. 8.