Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt1
secret
London, 12 November 1943.
Nr. 502. Prime Minister to President. Personal and most secret. Most immediate. Your number 418.2
- Para. 1. I am very pleased that you have managed to arrange the Constitutional matter and that our meeting is now definitely arranged. That is a great step forward.
- Para. 2. The Chiefs of the Staff [Chiefs of Staff] are however very apprehensive about the arrangements which you have settled for military conversations and I share their misgivings. I thought from your number 4103 that the British and American Staffs would have [Page 82] “Many meetings” before being joined by the Russians or Chinese. I still regard this as absolutely essential in view of the serious questions which have to be settled. There is no objection to you and me seeing Molotov before our meeting with UJ, but the presence of a Soviet military observer so early in the conference may cause grave embarrassment. HMG cannot abandon their rights to full and frank discussions with you and your officers about the vital business of our intermingled armies. A Soviet observer cannot possibly be admitted to the intimate conversations which our own Chiefs of Staff must have and his exclusion may easily cause offense. None of these objections would have applied to the formal triple staff conference which I suggested4 should take place in due course.
- Sent by the American Embassy, London, apparently via military channels. A notation on the source text reads: “Sent via pouch 11/15/43”. The message was delivered to Roosevelt upon his arrival at Oran on November 20, 1943; see post, p. 104.↩
- Ante, p. 79.↩
- Ante, p. 66.↩
- See Churchill’s telegram 493, November 6, 1943, to Roosevelt, ante, p. 68.↩