Office of the Historian

Roosevelt Papers: Telegram

Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt1

secret
London, 2 November 1943.

Prime Minister to President personal and most secret nr 484.

1.
Eden and, I presume, Hull are held up at Moscow by weather and cannot reach Cairo till fourth or fifth. If you wait for Hull to join you at Washington, our meeting at Cairo would be still further delayed beyond twenty-second. Would it not, therefore, be better for you to sail as arranged on ninth, arriving at “O” say sixteenth, and let Hull rest in Egyptian sunshine for a few days and meet you there? In that case, I will ask Anthony2 to meet me in Africa instead of coming home.
2.
Parliament here rises, eleventh, and I can lie alongside you at “O” or Gib, which last is much the better on fifteenth or sixteenth. We could, then, discuss the general situation and results of Moscow conference on the highest level.
3.
Admiral Andrew Cunningham, who knows the Mediterranean back and forth, says that our two staffs might meet in Malta on, say, seventeenth and that in his opinion, voyage thru the Mediterranean could be safely arranged. I shall have an extra cruiser to send staff forward on if convenient. Staffs will want at least four days together, and Malta is by far the best place for the generals to come from the armies. We could join them on the third or fourth day, say, twenty-first, and then proceed to Cairo for the main conference on twenty-third or twenty-fourth. Weather is said to be bad for flying west of Malta at this season but better to eastward.
4.
Conference at Cairo will open on twenty-fourth, and here I suggest, notwithstanding what I have previously written, we ask for a triple conference with a proper Russian military delegation beginning, say, twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth. We shall, then, have settled up our own business of the Anglo-American campaign and will open the whole war situation frankly and fully to the Russians. Chiang could arrive twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, and we could turn homeward about, say thirtieth. There is no need, unless you wish, for you to touch at Malta.
5.
Uncle Joe will not come beyond Teheran. I see no advantage in going to Basra, though I would gladly do so if a triple meeting could be arranged. I suggest that, when we are at Cairo, we try to wheedle him to Habbaniya,3 or if the weather is really good, make [Page 61] a six hours’ hop ourselves to meeting [meet?] him in Teheran. Failing this, we should ask for Molotov.
6.
The above plan seems to me to meet all the essential needs, namely,
(A)
Our preliminary meeting,
(B)
The preliminary discussions of the Anglo-American staffs in contact with our generals, and
(C)
The triple, and presently, quadruple meeting at Cairo, where final decisions can be taken.
In proposing this programme, I am influenced by the prodigious results of the Moscow conference as exemplified in the paragraphs of the agreed communiqué beginning, “Second only to the importance” and “This conviction is expressed” and especially the sentence “This declaration provides for even closer collaboration in the prosecution of the war and in all matters pertaining to the surrender and disarmament of the enemies with which the four countries are respectively at war”.4 This seems to me to contemplate an eventual, and possibly near, breach between Russia and Japan with all its consequential reactions.
7.
I beg you to let me know how this programme strikes you and what changes in it you propose. Matters are so urgent that we must settle our plans soon.
8.
I am sending a copy of this message to Eden who will still be in Moscow tomorrow.
Prime
  1. Apparently sent to Washington via military channels, and forwarded by the White House Map Room to Roosevelt at Hyde Park. The text is printed here as corrected by Churchill’s telegram 485, November 2, 1943, to Roosevelt; not printed herein.↩
  2. Eden.↩
  3. See Churchill’s telegram 456, October 14, 1943, to Roosevelt, ante, p. 30.↩
  4. Decade, p. 10.↩