Leahy Papers: Telegram

No. 90
Prime Minister Churchill to President Truman 1

top secret

Prime Minister to President Truman. Personal and top secret. Number 98.

Reference my 94.2

a.
Stalin has replied as follows:

“I have received your message of the 17th June.3

1.
The delegations will be housed as you propose in your message and as was arranged in the Crimea. Each delegation will have its own closed territory under a regime regulated at the discretion of the head of the delegation. The area in which the three delegations will be housed is Babelsberg, southeast of Potsdam. There will be a fourth building for the joint sessions—the Palace of the German Crown Prince in Potsdam.
2.
Marshal Zhukov will be in Berlin on June 28th. The advance parties of Montgomery and Eisenhower should be sent in about this time to reconnoitre and take over the buildings in Babelsberg. Montgomery’s and Eisenhower’s advance parties will be able to obtain on the spot all the necessary information and further details about the buildings from General Kruglov, who is known to your people from Yalta.
3.
Not far from the area where the delegations will be housed there is a good airfield in the small village Kladov, which could also be used as a landing ground.”4
b.
I have instructed Montgomery to send an advance party to Babelsberg as soon as possible to reconnoitre and take over the buildings allotted to the British Delegation.
  1. Sent by the United States Military Attaché, London, via Army channels.
  2. document No. 74.
  3. See document No. 74.
  4. Cf. Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. i, p. 368. Stalin’s reply to Churchill was dated June 18.