Office of the Historian

740.0011 EW (Peace)/6–945

No. 150
The President to the Acting Secretary of State

[Washington,] June 9, 1945.

Memorandum for Mr. Grew, Acting Secretary of State

With reference to your letter of May 301 and supplementary memorandum of June 52 giving me the list of subjects suggested by the British for discussion at the next meeting of the heads of government, I should appreciate it if you could give me a brief and informal statement of the Department’s position on these various points.

I wish you would also let me know what subjects, if any, the Department believes should be added to the agenda.

I should also like to know what procedures the Department has in mind or would recommend to facilitate the interchange of views [Page 163] between the great powers and possibly other powers on the terms of the European Peace settlements. Should these settlements be worked out over a period of time at different conferences at different places or is it desirable and practicable to attempt to arrange a conference somewhat similar to Dumbarton Oaks,3 where under the leadership of responsible representatives of the great powers, continuous negotiations can proceed until definite proposals for the European Peace settlements can be agreed upon?

I wish you would also let me have the Department’s views as to the wisdom of attempting to secure agreement at the forthcoming conference on a 25 year Treaty between the three or four principal powers to demilitarize Germany, to keep her demilitarized by force if necessary, somewhat along the lines suggested by Senator Vandenberg in his speech in the Senate last winter.4

H[arry] S T[ruman]
  1. Document No. 145.↩
  2. See document No. 148, footnote 3.↩
  3. Concerning the Dumbarton Oaks conversations with respect to the establishment of the United Nations, see Harley A. Notter, Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, 1989–1945 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1949; Department of State publication No. 3580), pp. 301–338.↩
  4. The reference is to Vandenberg’s speech in the Senate on January 10, 1945; see Congressional Record, vol. 91, pt. 1, pp. 164–167.↩