Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1943, The British Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, the Far East, Volume III

President Roosevelt to the Secretary of State ⁵³

Washington, March 23, 1943.

Dear Cordell: Apropos of our conversation the other afternoon,⁵⁴ I wish you would explore, with the British, the question of what our plan is to be in Germany and Italy during the first few months after Germany’s collapse.

I think you had better confer with Stimson about it too.

My thought is if we get a substantial meeting of the minds with the British that we should, then, take it up with the Russians.^54a

Cordially yours,

F[ranklin] D. R[oosevelt]

53. Copy obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.
54. See memorandum by Mr. Hopkins dated March 17, p. 25.
55. Secretary Hull in his Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 1285, states that during the following months the subject was discussed intensively at the State Department with the British and Secretary Stimson and that a project had been drawn up and presented to the Russians at the Moscow Conference in October 1943. For text of the proposal, see vol. i, pp. 720–723. For documents on the administration of Italy presented at the Moscow Conference, see ibid., pp. 715–719.