Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943

Roosevelt Papers: Telegram

Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt¹

top secret

London, 18 October 1944.

Prime Minister to President Roosevelt. Personal and top secret. Number 799.

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

3. … I have already informed Parliament in open session of our support of Curzon Line as a basis for frontier settlement in the east,² and our twenty year treaty with Russia³ makes it desirable for us to define our position to a degree not called for from the United States at the present time.

4. I should however mention, though no doubt Averell⁴ will have reported,⁵ that Molotov stated at our opening meeting with the London Poles⁶ that you had expressed agreement with the Curzon Line at Tehran. I informed Stalin afterwards that neither I nor Eden could confirm this statement. Stalin thereupon said that he had had a private conversation with you, not at the table, when you had concurred in the policy of the Curzon Line, though you had expressed a hope about Lwow being retained by the Poles.⁷ I could not, of course, deal with this assertion. Several times in the course of my long talks with him, he emphasized his earnest desire for your return at the election and of the advantage to Russia and to the world which that would be. Therefore, you may be sure that no indiscretion will occur from the Russian side.

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

1. Sent by the United States Military Attaché, London, via Army channels.
2. The Curzon Line was mentioned at the tripartite political meeting held at Tehran on December 1, 1943; see ante, p. 599. The proposal to move the Soviet–Polish boundary westward was also discussed, without specific reference to its being moved to the Curzon Line, on other occasions at the Tehran Conference; see ante, pp. 512, 594.
3. Anglo-Soviet Treaty of Alliance, signed at London May 26, 1942; League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. cciv, p. 353.
4. W. Averell Harriman.
5. See Foreign Relations, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945, pp. 202–205.
6. For the Polish minutes of the meeting, see the Appendix to Special Report No. 1, Communist Takeover and Occupation of Poland, of the Select Committee of the House of Representatives on Communist Aggression (House Report No. 2684, 82d Congress, 2d session, part 4; 1955), pp. 115 ff., especially p. 122.
7. For the Bohlen minutes of the Roosevelt–Stalin meeting of December 1, 1943, at which Poland was discussed, see ante, p. 594. For Roosevelt’s reference at the Yalta Conference to his views on the Curzon Line as expressed at the Tehran Conference, see Foreign Relations, The Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945, p. 667. For other post-Conference references to the discussion of Polish boundaries at Tehran, see Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 119, 133.