Office of the Historian

The British Prime Minister (Churchill) to President Roosevelt 45

London, 31 July 1943.

394. Your 334.46 My position is that once Mussolini and the Fascists are gone, I will deal with any Italian authority which can deliver the goods. I am not in the least afraid for this purpose of seeming to recognize the House of Savoy or Badoglio, provided they are the ones who can make the Italians do what we need for our war purposes. Those purposes would certainly be hindered by chaos, bolshevisation or civil war. We have no right to lay undue burdens on our troops. It may well be that after the armistice terms have been accepted, both the King and Badoglio will sink under the odium of surrender and that the Crown Prince and a new Prime Minister may be chosen.

I should deprecate any pronouncement about self determination at the present time, beyond what is implicit in the Atlantic Charter.47 I agree with you that we must be very careful not to throw everything into the melting pot.

  1. Copy of telegram obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.↩
  2. Not found in Department files, but see message dated July 30, printed in Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Closing the Ring (Boston, 1951), p. 64.↩
  3. Joint statement by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, August 14, 1941. For text, see Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. i, p. 367.↩