Introduction
Scope of Coverage
This volume presents documentation on the international Conferences attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Cairo and Tehran in late November and early December 1943. The nomenclature for these Conferences requires a word of explanation. Although the gatherings are often known by the names of the two cities in which they met, or by the corresponding code words of “Sextant” for Cairo and “Eureka” for Tehran, it is necessary to note at the outset that Conferences were held at Cairo both before and after the Conference at Tehran. While no sharp distinction was made in the official terminology of the time between the two gatherings at Cairo, the editors of this volume found it desirable in organizing the material, to distinguish the Cairo meetings by designating them as, respectively, the “First” and the “Second” Cairo Conference.
With regard to subject matter and participants, the three Conferences (First Cairo, Tehran, and Second Cairo) were in part related and in part quite separate. The element of continuity running through all three meetings is to be found in the fact that President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and their top advisers, including the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff, attended all three Conferences. The other principal participants, however, were different at each gathering. At the First Cairo Conference (November 22–26) the Anglo-American delegations conferred, in varying combinations, with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of China and his top military leaders on problems of the war against Japan. Then they flew to Tehran for four days of consultation (November 28–December 1) with Marshal Stalin, Foreign Commissar Molotov, and Marshal Voroshilov on problems of the war in Europe. Back in Egypt for the Second Cairo Conference (December 2–7), they were joined by President Inonu of Turkey and other top Turkish officials for four days of talks (December 4–7) about Turkey’s possible entry into the war against Germany.
The delegations of the United States and the United Kingdom negotiated at Cairo and Tehran not only with the Chinese, the Russians, and the Turks, but also with each other. Indeed a substantial part of the motivation that brought Roosevelt and Churchill together at this time was the need for another top conference of the Combined [Page XII] Chiefs of Staff to reconsider problems of grand strategy in all theaters of war. Thus the “Sextant” Conference of the Combined Chiefs was a continuation of the series of C. C. S. meetings that had most recently included “Quadrant” (Quebec) and “Trident” (Washington). The Combined Chiefs of Staff brought to Cairo their own agenda and their own numbered series of preparatory papers. All but one of their meetings took place at Cairo, and in several of these meetings they were joined by Roosevelt and Churchill who participated in the formulation of the decisions embodied in the final report. In addition to these discussions within the framework of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, there were private discussions between Roosevelt and Churchill at Cairo (both before and after Tehran) on matters of common concern, political as well as military.
At both Cairo and Tehran President Roosevelt had conversations with a number of other high-ranking leaders, such as the King of Greece and the King of Yugoslavia at Cairo and the Shah of Iran at Tehran. Although such conversations were not considered as parts of the major Cairo and Tehran Conferences as described above, they have been considered as within the purview of the present volume.
In addition to the high-level activities described in the preceding paragraphs there were some negotiations and conversations at lower levels at both Cairo and Tehran, in which Americans participated with various foreign representatives. All such conversations and negotiations have been regarded as within the scope of coverage of this volume.
Organization of the Volume
In as much as the annual volumes of Foreign Relations for 1943 have not yet been published, the editors considered it essential to include in this volume a considerable quantity of pre-Conference material in order to indicate how these Conferences came to be arranged, what subjects were proposed for consideration, and where these subjects stood on the eve of the Conferences.
Part I of this volume contains pre-Conference papers of this type. The coverage in Part I on “Arrangements for the Conferences” is complete for all conferences up to the time of the President’s arrival in Cairo on November 22. Arrangements made subsequently concerning the Tehran and Second Cairo Conferences are included in Parts II and III as appropriate. (See the editorial note, post, page 3.) The coverage on “Substantive Preparatory Papers” is, of course, selective since a complete pre-Conference coverage of all subjects that came up for discussion at Cairo and Tehran would fill a number of volumes and, in fact, will constitute large portions of the regular Foreign Relations volumes for the year 1943. Compilation on these volumes is now well advanced and it is anticipated that they will be published [Page XIII] in the next several years. Also included in Part I is the Log of the President’s trip from Washington, D. C, to Cairo.
Part II contains the President’s Log during the First Cairo Conference, the proceedings of that Conference, and the related Conference documents and supplementary papers. The same general arrangement is followed in Part III on the Tehran Conference and in Part IV on the Second Cairo Conference.
Part V contains what are termed “Post-Conference Papers”. These are defined as hitherto unpublished papers (or portions thereof) containing factual statements by participants in the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran on what took place at those Conferences. The papers in this chapter, therefore, do not describe the aftermath of the Conferences (which will be in subsequent volumes of Foreign Relations), but merely represent a supplement to the contemporary record of the Conferences themselves. Needless to say, the collection of such papers or statements presented in Part V cannot be regarded as exhaustive, since materials of this sort may be filed under any one of scores of subjects for all the years since 1943. There are included in Part V all such papers, or the pertinent portions thereof, that could be located in the most promising files for a few years after the Conferences.
Categories of Material
There were no agreed agenda for the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, except for the Anglo-American military conference of the Combined Chiefs of Staff. The international discussions engaged in by President Roosevelt and his political advisers at these Conferences ranged widely over a great variety of topics with a large number of foreign representatives. In view of this situation the editors have interpreted the terms “Conference proceedings” and “Conference documents and supplementary papers” in a very broad manner.
“Conference proceedings” have been taken to include all types of records of international discussions in which American representatives participated at Cairo and Tehran from November 22 to December 7, 1943. This includes not only formal minutes but also memoranda and notes on international conversations in which the President or other members of his party participated.
The record of Conference proceedings is far from complete, even for some high-level discussions. There are formal minutes for all meetings of the Combined Chiefs of Staff and for those other international discussions in which the Chiefs of Staff participated. There are minutes for all substantive discussions with the Russians at Tehran and with the Turks at Cairo. There are no American minutes, however, of several important discussions between Roosevelt and Chiang at Cairo, for which Madame Chiang acted as interpreter. There are no American minutes for any of the private conversations held by [Page XIV] Roosevelt and Churchill during the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. There were no American minutes of a conversation between Churchill and Inönü at Cairo on December 7, after Roosevelt’s departure. There are references to a considerable number of international discussions at lower levels at all three Conferences, in which Americans participated but for which there are no official American minutes or notes whatever.
In view of the seriousness of these gaps in the American record of these Conferences, the editors felt it necessary to take unusual measures in order to make the record, as presented in this volume, as complete and coherent as possible. Through the friendly interest of Dr. Hollington K. Tong (who had been on the Chinese delegation to the Cairo Conference) there was obtained a copy in English translation of the Chinese summary of one of the Roosevelt–Chiang discussions at Cairo. It is printed post, page 323, with the permission of the National Government of China. With regard to the Churchill–Inönü conversation on December 7, it was decided, in view of the unusual circumstances, to print the British minutes that had been sent to the Department in December 1943. These minutes are published post, page 751, with the permission of the British Government. For many of the remaining gaps in the record of these Conferences there will be found editorial notes setting forth what is known about the meeting from available sources, unofficial as well as official.
There were no formal or general meetings of the American delegation at the Cairo or Tehran Conferences. There were, however, conversations on Conference subjects between President Roosevelt and various members of his party during the Conferences, and in so far as official records of these conversations could be found, they have been included as part of the proceedings. Also included are those portions of the minutes of meetings held by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff at Cairo and Tehran that reflect discussions in which the President or other political leaders participated.
Following the proceedings of each of the three Conferences, there appears a chapter entitled “Conference Documents and Supplementary Papers”. These chapters include not merely those documents that were under international negotiation (i. e., Conference documents in the usual sense of the word) but also other papers on international political subjects in the form of letters, memoranda, telegrams, despatches, etc., sent to and from the President or his top staff during their sojourn in Cairo and Tehran from November 22 to December 7, 1943. Each of these chapters contains an initial section entitled “Correspondence, Drafts, and Proposals”. The documents in these sections are arranged chronologically, since there are very few on any one subject. Other sections in these chapters present the agreed [Page XV] documents produced by each Conference (i. e., the communiqués, the Declaration on Iran, and the Military Agreement), together with related papers.
Unpublished Sources
Since the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran were primarily concerned with the prosecution of the war, and since they were not attended by Secretary of State Hull, it is not surprising that the files of the Department of State were found to be an inadequate source of material for this volume. The editors, therefore, sought and obtained the assistance of several other Government Departments and Agencies in locating necessary source material. In this connection the need was particularly great for Presidential papers from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park and for military papers from the Department of Defense, principally from the files of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Roosevelt Library provided photocopies of all Presidential papers (including Hopkins papers) that could be found relating to any of the Conferences and discussions at Cairo and Tehran and the preparations therefor. The Department of Defense agreed to provide all papers that could be found, documenting the official position or advice of the War and Navy Departments on politico-military subjects discussed at the international level, as presented by the civilian leaders of those departments and by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined Chiefs of Staff.
The papers printed in this volume which came from the indexed Central Files of the Department of State are indicated by means of a file number in the headnote, in the usual style of Foreign Relations. A few documents (such as the paper of Chinese origin on page 323) were not originally in the Central Files of the Department but have now been indexed as Central File papers. Other sources from which papers were derived for this volume are as follows:
a. inside the department of state
- 1.
- Bohlen Collection—The collection of minutes and documents on the Tehran Conference made by Charles E. Bohlen, who served as President Roosevelt’s interpreter with the Russians at Tehran.
- 2.
- L/T Files–The office files of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs.
- 3.
- FE Files—The files of the Bureau (Office) of Far Eastern Affairs.
- 4.
- Moscow Embassy Files—The records of the American Embassy at Moscow, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.
- 5.
- Cairo Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Cairo, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.
- 6.
- Tehran Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Tehran, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.
b. outside the department of state
- 1.
- Roosevelt Papers–The papers of President Roosevelt in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York. This large collection was found to be particularly valuable for Heads of Government correspondence.
- 2.
- Hopkins Papers—The papers of Harry L. Hopkins, located in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Although many of the Hopkins files duplicate material in the Roosevelt papers, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume.
- 3.
- J. C. S. Files—The files of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These files provided documentation of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff. The approval of the British Chiefs of Staff, along with that of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, was obtained for the declassification of the Combined Chiefs of Staff documentation published in this volume.
- 4.
- Defense Files—The files of the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries of War and Navy and other relevant top-level files of the military departments for 1943.
- 5.
- Leahy Papers—A collection of official papers, now in the custody of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from the office of the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, the late Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. Although much of this material duplicates the J. C. S. Files, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume.
- 6.
- White House Files—Although the White House does not maintain files of the papers of former Presidents, some portions of the White House files were found to be pertinent. Thus, from the files of the office of the Naval Aide there was obtained a copy of the booklet containing the Log of the President’s trip to Cairo and Tehran in 1943.
- 7.
- Censorship Files—The files of the Office of Censorship, now in the National Archives. These files contained a few papers regarding the release of information to the press from Cairo and Tehran.
- 8.
- Treasury Files—The files of the Department of the Treasury provided several post-Conference documents.
- 9.
- Hurley Papers—The private papers of Patrick J. Hurley. General Hurley kindly made his papers available to the editors for the period of the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. From these papers came the first draft of the Declaration on Iran (post, page 623) and considerable data incorporated in footnotes in this volume.
In addition to the collections listed above, the editors also consulted the papers of Cordell Hull and the diary of Fleet Admiral Leahy in the Library of Congress, the files of the Office of War Mobilization in the National Archives, the papers of Harry Dexter White at Princeton University, the diary of Henry L. Stimson at Yale University the personal notes made by John P. Davies, Jr., on the Conferences at Cairo, and a number of special “lots” or unindexed files within the Department of State. From several of these sources there were derived items of information that have been incorporated in editorial notes where appropriate.
Published Sources
a. official
In addition to the Department of State Bulletin, the official publications listed below were found to be of particular value in the preparation of this volume:
American
Gordon A. Harrison, Gross-Channel Attack (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1951) in the series United States Army in World War II Hereafter cited as “Harrison”.
Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1959) in the series United States Army in World War II. Hereafter cited as “Matloff”.
Harley A. Notter, Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, 1939–1945, Department of State Publication 3580 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1949). Hereafter cited as “Notter”.
Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, Stilwell’s Command Problems (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1956) in the series United States Army in World War II. Hereafter cited as “Stilwell’s Command Problems”.
United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents 1941–49, Senate Document 123, 81st Congress, 1st Session (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1950). Hereafter cited as “Decade”.
British
John Ehrman, Grand Strategy (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1956), volume 5. Hereafter cited as “Ehrman”.
Iranian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Tehran Conference (Tehran, 1945).
Russian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Commission for the Publication of Diplomatic Documents, Stalin’s Correspondence With Churchill, Attlee, Roosevelt and Truman, 1941–45 (New York: E. P. Dutton, Inc., 1958). This is a reprint in one volume of the two volumes published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1957, under the title Correspondence Between the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the U. S. S. R. and the Presidents of the U. S. A. and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. Hereafter cited as “Stalin’s Correspondence”.
[Page XVIII]b. unofficial
Much authoritative information is to be found in unofficial publications written by those who participated in the Conferences (or in the preparations therefor) or by authors who used the papers of Conference participants. In view of the incompleteness of the official record on some aspects of the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, the editors have made extensive use of such unofficial publications and have cited them for factual information which was noted as being specifically supplementary to, or at variance with, the official record. The Department of State assumes no responsibility for the accuracy of fact or interpretation in these unofficial publications. The publications of this type which have been consulted in the preparation of this volume are as follows:
H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940). Hereafter cited as “Arnold”.
Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West: A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1959). Hereafter cited as “Alanbrooke”.
Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959), volume V of the series The Second World War. Hereafter cited as “Churchill”.
Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor’s Odyssey (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1951).
John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance: The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Cooperation With Russia (New York: The Viking Press, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Deane”.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Eisenhower”.
Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). Hereafter cited as “Feis”.
General Sir Leslie Hollis, One Marine’s Tale (London: Andre Deutsch, 1956).
Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948; 2 volumes). Hereafter cited as “Hull”.
Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General the Lord Ismay (London: Heinemann, 1960).
Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1952). Hereafter cited as “King”.
Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War (London: John Murray, 1949).
William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1950). Hereafter cited as “Leahy”.
James Leasor, The Clock With Four Hands (New York: Reynal and Company, 1959).
Don Lohbeck, Patrick J. Hurley (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1956). Hereafter cited as “Lohbeck”.
Arthur C. Millspaugh, Americans in Persia (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1946).
[Page XIX]King Peter of Yugoslavia, A King’s Heritage (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954).
Michael F. Reilly, Reilly of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Reilly”.
Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946). Hereafter cited as “Elliott Roosevelt”.
Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Sherwood”.
J. C. Smuts, Jan Christian Smuts (London: Cassell and Co., 1952).
Joseph W. Stilwell, The Stilwell Papers (New York: William Sloane Associates, Inc., 1948).
Hollington K. Tong, Chiang Kai-Shek (Taipei: China Publishing Company, 1953).
General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1958).
Field-Marshal Lord Wilson of Libya, Eight Years Overseas, 1939–1947 (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1950).
A list of post-Conference published statements by participants on the proceedings at the Cairo-Tehran Conferences will be found post, page 835.