President Roosevelt to the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union (Stalin)4
42. I am most grateful for your telegram of August 95 in which you were good enough to give me a résumé of Prime Minister Mikolajczyk’s conversations in Moscow both with you and with the Polish Committee.
As you know it is my earnest hope that some solution satisfactory to all concerned will emerge out of these conversations and which will permit the formation of an interim legal and truly representative Polish Government.
In regard to Lange, I am sure you will recognize the difficulty of this Government taking official action at this stage. Of course he as a private citizen has every right under our law to do what he sees fit, including the renunciation of his American citizenship. You will, I am sure, understand why, under the circumstances and particularly pending the outcome of the conversations between Premier Mikolajczyk, whose Government we still recognize officially, and the Polish Committee, the Government of the United States does not want to become involved in nor express any opinion concerning the request of the Polish Committee that Professor Lange join it as head of the section on Foreign Affairs.
- Copy of telegram obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N. Y. In a memorandum of August 11 with recommendations to the President for his reply, the Department expressed the following viewpoint: “The desire to have Professor Lange is obviously a tactical move designed to strengthen the claims of the Polish Committee to be recognized as the legal government of Poland, since until Poland is liberated and some government set up, questions of foreign affairs do not arise.” (860C.01/8–944)↩
- Ante, p. 1307.↩