740.0011 European War 1939/32291: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 11—6:07 p.m.]
2174. The Moscow newspapers for December 10th devote 13 column inches to continued reactions of the American press to the Tehran Conference.38 An “observer” of the New York Herald Tribune is quoted as stating that the Conference gives the peoples of these United Nations a clearer conception of the Allies’ war aims consisting not only in crushing the enemy but also in establishing a just and firm peace. Sulzberger is quoted in the New York Times as writing from Cairo that the Iranian problem, which recently had been “subject to censorship”, was liquidated by the declaration on Iran39 which testifies to the honorable fulfillment of the great powers’ promises to respect the integrity of small countries. Sulzberger also reportedly noted that the Soviet Union considers it essential to prevent the establishment of a cordon sanitaire under the mask of an Eastern European Federation dominated by the Poles. The Cairo correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune is reported as believing that the cordial relations established among Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill regarding political problems answers the cynics who stated that Americans cannot cooperate with the Russians. His remarks about the sensational improvement in Russian-American relations brought about by settling the second front question and his statement that in the political [Page 608] sphere it is presumed that no bloc will be established in Eastern and Central Europe which could threaten the security of the USSR are summarized.
In a brief despatch dated December 8th from New York the Washington Post is quoted as stating that the Tehran Conference still further strengthens the Anglo-Soviet-American coalition by coordination Allied strategy with the planning of peace. The Baltimore Sim reportedly believes that the Conference strengthens Allied unity and assures German defeat.
- Ambassador Harriman had sent an earlier indication concerning the avid interest of the Soviet press in the reaction and comments of American newspapers and prominent persons upon the Tehran Conference. He also sent a full summary of the leading article in War and the Working Class of December 14, 1943, which appraised the Conference as “the greatest diplomatic event of the war, which will have an enormous influence not only on the progress of the war itself but also on the peace settlement.” (740.0011 E.W.1939/32281, 32443)↩
- Signed at Tehran, December 1, 1943; for text, see Foreign Relations, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943, p. 646, or Senate Document No. 123, 81st Cong., 1st sess., or A Decade of American Foreign Policy, Basic Documents, 1941–1949 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1950), p. 23.↩