Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
President Roosevelt to Prime Minister Churchill1
operational priority
Personal and secret, Number 437. For the Former Naval Person from the President.
As I told you in my 422,2 Harriman requested information on the action we were taking to carry out our commitments to turn over Italian ships to the Soviet by 1 February so that he could discuss the matter with Molotov if he were queried. I told him it was my intention to allocate one-third of the captured Italian ships to the Soviet war effort beginning 1 February as rapidly as they could be made available.
Harriman then reminded me that Stalin’s request at Teheran was a reiteration of the Soviet request originally made at Moscow in October (namely for one battleship, one cruiser, eight destroyers and four submarines for North Russia and 40,000 tons displacement of merchant shipping for the Black Sea) and that no mention was made at Moscow or Teheran of the Russians’ getting additional ships up to one-third of those captured. Accordingly Harriman regarded my cable of December 21 as being for his information and he has not discussed the question of one-third with Molotov.
Harriman also emphasized the very great importance of fulfilling our pledge to yield these ships. For us to fail or to delay would in his opinion only arouse suspicion in Stalin and in his associates as to the firmness of other commitments made at Teheran.3
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- Sent to the United States Naval Attaché, London, via Navy channels.↩
- No. 422 was the repetition to Churchill of Roosevelt’s telegram of December 21, 1943, to Harriman, ante, p. 852.↩
- The remainder of this message dealt with the implementation of the Tehran agreement on the transfer of Italian ships to the Soviet Union.↩