Office of the Historian

740.00119 European War 1939/6–744

Memorandum by the Acting Secretary of State to the Secretary of State

[Washington,] June 7, 1944.

The President sent to us yesterday, asking for our comment, a proposal32 which had been made to him by a person unidentified to us,33 suggesting that as a propaganda move of psychological warfare, a fake Hitler voice should broadcast to the Germans to make only a token resistance to our invasion from the west and to cooperate with the Anglo-American forces on the basis that the first duty of the Germans is to defend Europe from Asiatic Bolshevism. For your information I enclose a copy of our reply.34

E[dward] S[tettinius]
  1. Not printed. Copies of two reports on the proposal referred to and other correspondence relating to it are at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y., filed under FR–224, PSF–Box 141 and FR–225, PSF–Box 141.↩
  2. The originator of the proposal was John Franklin Carter, American newspaper columnist.↩
  3. Infra.↩