Office of the Historian

500.CC/3–2345: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant)12

Washington, March 23, 1945—noon.

2234. Gromyko recently called on Mr. Dunn13 and informed him that the Soviets were planning, in addition to their general delegation, to send delegations to San Francisco representing White Russia and the Ukraine. Mr. Dunn expressed surprise at this telling the Ambassador that it did not follow the decisions reached at Yalta as he understood them but as he had not been there he would refer the whole matter to the Secretary.

The Secretary felt strongly that this was not in accordance with the decisions reached at the Crimea and after talking this matter over with the President,14 who also concurred, called Gromyko in15 and told him very definitely that this went beyond the Yalta decision and [Page 151] was entirely inconsistent with our understanding of it. The Secretary told the Ambassador that he was basing his remarks on our records of that Conference and that he was speaking for the President as well as himself. The Secretary asked Gromyko to inform his Government of our feeling in this matter which the Ambassador promised to do at once. The Secretary gained the impression in his discussion with the Ambassador that he may not have been requested by his Government to take this up officially with us but that point is not certain.

For your own secret information what we did agree to at Yalta was that if the Soviets should raise at San Francisco the question of these two republics Becoming initial members of the organization that we would support such a proposal. The British agreed to do likewise. The question of the two republics being represented at San Francisco was actually discussed at the Conference and a negative decision reached.16

The following is for your confidential information.

We have informed the British Embassy here of the action we have taken as Mr. Eden had a similiar message from Molotoff,17

Grew
  1. The same message, with the exception of the final two paragraphs, was transmitted by the Acting Secretary to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union, for his information, in telegram 678, March 22, 11 p.m. The Secretary, in a telephone call of March 21 from “The Horseshoe”, had asked Mr. Lynch to have someone send a telegram to Moscow and London with reference to his conversation with Mr. Gromyko the day before.↩
  2. See memorandum by Assistant Secretary of State Dunn, March 17, p. 132.↩
  3. No record of conversation found in Department files.↩
  4. No record found of conversation with Mr. Gromyko, which Mr. Stettinius indicated took place on March 20. For memorandum of points to be made by the Secretary in talking to Ambassador Gromyko, see Conferences at Malta and Yalta, p. 991.↩
  5. See Conferences at Malta and Yalta, p. 992.↩
  6. See telegram from the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the British Ambassador in the United States, March 21, p. 142.↩