740.0011 European War 1939/17563⅔
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The Polish Ambassador38 called to see me this morning.
The Ambassador said that he wished to talk to me about a conversation [Page 665] he had had yesterday with Ambassador Litvinoff. He said that Mr. Litvinoff had stated to him that the present Russian victory had come as a very welcome but complete surprise to the Soviet Government and that it was now believed in Moscow that the German retreat would degenerate very rapidly into very complete rout. Mr. Litvinoff further stated that the Soviet Government intended to continue its present winter offensive against the Germans in the hope and in the belief that it would cause a retreat by the German armies far beyond the defense lines which the Germans have prepared in Russian territory. The phrase used by Litvinoff was “drive the Germans back into their own territory and defeat them there”.
Mr. Ciechanowski said that he had brought up the question of what the Soviet intended to do concerning Japan. Mr. Litvinoff had replied, apparently very frankly, that the policy of the Russian Government was based upon the primary considerations that it had suffered in the present war on a far greater scale and had incurred far greater losses than any other country involved; that the great country of the United States had now entered the war still unprepared; and that the Russian Government had no intention of doing anything with regard to Japan for the time being until it saw whether the United States were actually able and determined to undertake a major and effective offensive against Japan, and that only in such an event would the Russians be inclined to come in against Japan. He said that the position of the Soviet Government was that there was no reason for them, in view of their weakened position in eastern Siberia, to incur what would be very serious losses in that area in addition to the tremendous losses that they had already suffered on the western front and thus relieve the United States of the need to incur losses itself.
As a significant detail Mr. Ciechanowski said that in discussing the outcome of the war Mr. Litvinoff had said that he and his Government were both completely confident of one fact, and that was that there was one Government that would not learn anything by its present experience and that was Great Britain. The Soviet Ambassador had gone on to say that the British had learned nothing whatever and that he was confident that when the post-war reconstruction period commenced the British would adopt exactly the same kind of selfish and short-sighted policy which they had adopted in 1920 and 1921, and which in his judgment had been so largely responsible for the new war conflagration.
- Jan Ciechanowski.↩