Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt1
Prime Minister to President Roosevelt. Personal and top secret. Number 780.
Following is text of telegram sent to Moscow this evening mentioned in my immediately preceding telegram:—
- “1. The War Cabinet at their meeting today considered the latest reports of the situation in Warsaw which show that the Poles fighting against the Germans there are in desperate straits.
- 2. The War Cabinet wish the Soviet Government to know that public opinion in this country is deeply moved by the events in War saw and by the terrible sufferings of the Poles there. Whatever the rights and wrongs about the beginnings of the Warsaw rising, the people of Warsaw themselves cannot be held responsible for the decision taken. Our people cannot understand why no material help has been sent from outside to the Poles in Warsaw. The fact that such help could not be sent on account of your Government’s refusal to allow United States aircraft to land on aerodromes in Russian hands is now becoming publicly known. If on top of all this the Poles in Warsaw should now be overwhelmed by the Germans, as we are told they must be within two or three days, the shock to public opinion here will be incalculable. The War Cabinet themselves find it hard to understand your Government’s refusal to take account of the obligations of the British and American Governments to help the Poles in Warsaw. Your Government’s action in preventing this help being sent seems [Page 190] to us at variance with the spirit of Allied cooperation to which you and we attach so much importance both for the present and the future.”2
- Sent to Washington by the United States Military Attaché, London, via Army channels; forwarded by the White House Map Room to Roosevelt, who was then at Hyde Park, as telegram No. Red 370.↩
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The text of this message as printed in Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 142–143, has the following additional paragraph:
↩“Out of regard for Marshal Stalin and for the Soviet peoples, with whom it is our earnest desire to work in future years, the War Cabinet have asked me to make this further appeal to the Soviet Government to give whatever help may be in their power, and above all to provide facilities for United States aircraft to land on your airfields for this purpose.”