Foreign Relations of the United States, Conference at Quebec, 1944

Roosevelt Papers

Prime Minister Churchill’s Chief of Staff (Ismay) to President Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff (Leahy)

Admiral Leahy I send you herewith a draft which I suggest we might send to the President and Prime Minister on the idea that General Marshall put forward at the Combined Chiefs of Staff Meeting this morning.¹

2. Will you let me know if you approve and I will send a copy to the Prime Minister at once: but naturally I should be grateful for any amendments or improvements that you think necessary.²

H. L. Ismay

[Quebec,] 15th September, 1944.

[Enclosure]

Draft Minute to the President and Prime Minister

The Combined Chiefs of Staff desire to place on record that the main difficulty with which the Quebec Conference has been confronted has been to find room and opportunity for the deployment against Japan of the massive forces which each and all of the nations concerned are ardent to engage against the enemy. In colloquial language, it was a case of “standing room only”, even before the curtain rang up on the Conference.

2. The Combined Chiefs of Staff have not included any recommendation on this subject in their Final Report, but they submit that it would have an excellent effect on world opinion in general, and a correspondingly depressing effect on Japan, if the above ideas, clothed in your own language, were included in a communiqué about the Conference (if one is issued), and, also, at the Press Conference which will be held on its conclusion.

[Quebec,] 15.9.44.

1. See ante, p. 358.
2. No reply by Leahy has been found. Filed with this memorandum in the Roosevelt Papers, however, is a paper headed “Draft Communiqué to the Press” the body of which is identical to the Communiqué actually issued at the conclusion of the Second Quebec Conference. For text of the Communiqué, see post, p. 477.