Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943

Roosevelt Papers: Telegram

President Roosevelt to Marshal Stalin¹

secret
priority

[Washington,] 8 November 1943.

Personal and secret from the President to Marshal Stalin.

Thank you for your message of November fifth² which Mr. Gromyko was good enough to deliver.

I hope to leave here in a few days and to arrive in Cairo by the twenty-second of November.

You will be glad to know that I have worked out a method so that if I get word that a bill requiring my veto has been passed by the Congress and forwarded to me, I will fly to Tunis to meet it and then return to the Conference.

Therefore, I have decided to go to Teheran and this makes me especially happy.

As I have told you, I regard it as of vital importance that you and Mr. Churchill and I should meet. The psychology of the present excellent feeling really demands it even if our meeting last only two days. Therefore, it is my thought that the Staffs begin their work in Cairo on November twenty-second, and I hope Mr. Molotov and your military representative, who I hope can speak English, will come there at that time.

Then we can all go to Teheran on the twenty-sixth and meet with you there on the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth or thirtieth, for as long as you feel you can be away. Then Churchill and I and the top Staff people can return to Cairo to complete the details.

³The whole world is watching for this meeting of the three of us. And even if we make no announcements as vital as those announced at the recent highly successful meeting in Moscow, the fact that you and Churchill and I have got to know each other personally will have farreaching effect on the good opinion within our three nations and will assist in the further disturbance of Nazi morale.

I am greatly looking forward to a good talk with you.

Roosevelt

1. Sent to the United States Naval Attaché Moscow, via Navy channels. A draft of this message, in the Roosevelt Papers, contains the following notation at the top: “Will notify Prime to-morrow W[ilson] B[rown]” For Roosevelt’s next, message to Churchill on this subject, dated November 11, 1943, see post, p. 79.
2. Ante, p. 67.
3. In the draft Roosevelt struck out the following sentence at this point: “I have asked Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to come to Cairo for a few days.”