760C.61/4–2443
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The Soviet Ambassador24 called to see me this afternoon at his request. The Ambassador said that he had just received an urgent and private message addressed by Mr. Stalin to the President and since he knew the President was away, he had come to give it to me with the request that it be transmitted to the President as rapidly as possible. The Ambassador then gave me the message addressed to the President, together with a copy thereof. The copy is attached herewith.25
After I had read the message, I said to the Ambassador that inasmuch as the message was addressed by Mr. Stalin to the President, I would not make any official comment upon the message at this time [Page 390] since any official comment should, of course, be made by the President himself. I said, however, that speaking quite unofficially and personally to the Ambassador, I desired to express my very deep regret that matters had come to this pass. I said that I did not need to explain to the Ambassador that the step which the Soviet Government had determined to take in breaking relations with the Polish Government would have very profound repercussions upon public opinion in this country and that implications would be drawn therefrom which, of course, were obvious to the Ambassador, but which I hoped and believed were not intended by the Soviet Government. The Ambassador said that he fully realized this and that he himself regretted that this should be the case.
The Ambassador then went on to say that the investigation of the alleged murder of Polish officers which the Polish Government had suggested should be undertaken by the International Red Cross would obviously be held in German territory and would obviously be completely controlled by the local German authorities. He said the suggestion made played directly into the hands of the Hitlerite government and was intolerable for that reason to the Soviet Government. The Ambassador said, however, that the Poles always behaved this way and that “there was no helping them”.
I went on to say that I was all the more surprised at this development in view of what I had always understood was a very satisfactory personal relationship which had been created between Mr. Stalin and General Sikorski. The Ambassador said that was in fact the case and that when General Sikorski was in Washington only a short time ago the latter had told the Ambassador of his great satisfaction with his conversations with Mr. Stalin. The Ambassador concluded by saying that, as I had already been informed, it was the policy of the Soviet Government at the conclusion of the war to see the reestablishment of a “strong Poland” and that the step now taken did not in any sense imply any change of policy on the part of the Soviet Union.