Office of the Historian

Roosevelt Papers: Telegram

President Roosevelt to Marshal Stalin1

secret
priority
[Washington,] 4 October 1943.

Personal and secret to Premier Stalin from the President.

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

I am sure that we are going to find a meeting of minds for the important decisions which must finally be made by us. This preliminary conference2 will clear the ground and if difficulties develop at the meeting of our foreign ministers, I would still have every confidence that they can be reconciled when you and Churchill and I meet.

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

Roosevelt
  1. Sent to the United States Naval Attaché, Moscow, via Navy channels. A draft of this message, in the Roosevelt Papers, contains the words “Prepared by H. Hopkins” in the lower left corner, in an unidentified handwriting, and some changes in the text, in Roosevelt’s handwriting. Roosevelt’s changes in the passage printed here were (1) the substitution of “difficulties” for “points of difference”, and (2) the substitution of “you and Churchill and I” for “the three of us”. The entire document is printed in Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 96.↩
  2. Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers.↩