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  4. Document 173

President Roosevelt to the British Prime Minister (Churchill)12

[Warm Springs, Georgia,] April 11, 1945.

742. Your 944. I would minimize the general Soviet problem as much as possible because these problems, in one form or another, seem to arise every day and most of them straighten out as in the case of the Bern meeting.13

We must be firm, however, and our course thus far is correct.

Roosevelt
  1. Copy of telegram obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.↩
  2. During February and March 1945, Allied military and intelligence officials met clandestinely in Switzerland with German military authorities from Italy to consider the possibility of arranging the surrender of German armies in Northern Italy. The meetings, which had no immediate issue and were broken off, gave rise to a diplomatic exchange with the Soviet Government regarding alleged efforts to negotiate a separate peace with Germany. For documentation regarding this incident and other aspects of the surrender of Germany, see vol. iii, pp. 717 ff.↩