Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
President Roosevelt to Marshal Stalin 2
priority
Number 27. Top Secret and Personal. From the President for Marshal Stalin.
Things are moving so fast and so successfully that I feel there should be a meeting between you and Mr. Churchill and me in the reasonably near future. The Prime Minister is in hearty accord with this thought. I am now on a trip in the far West and must be in Washington for several weeks on my return. It would, therefore, be best for me to have a meeting between the tenth and fifteenth of September. The most central point for you and me would be the north of Scotland. I could go by ship and you could come either by ship or by plane. Your Army is doing so magnificently that the hop would be much shorter to Scotland than the one taken by Molotov two years ago.4 I hope you can let me have your thoughts. Secrecy and security can be maintained either aboard ship or on shore.
- Sent to the United States Naval Attaché, Moscow, via Navy channels.↩
- Roosevelt was away from Washington for more than a month at this time. He left the Capital aboard the Presidential Special on July 13, 1944; arrived at San Diego on July 19; sailed for Hawaii on July 21; arrived at Pearl Harbor on July 26; sailed for Alaska on July 29; arrived at the Aleutian base of Adak on August 3; visited Kodiak and other points in Alaska; delivered a radio address from Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington, on August 12; and arrived back in Washington on August 17. (New York Times, August 13, 1944, pp. 1, 20; August 18, 1944, p. 1; F. D. R.: His Personal Letters [New York, 1947–1950], vol. [iv], pp. 1522, 1524, 1525, 1529.)↩
- A footnote on the original indicates that the underscored sentence was deleted before delivery to Stalin. See the two following documents.↩