Memorandum in Russian from Joseph Stalin about opening a second front in Europe during World War II, with English translation of same, 13 August 1942

Reproduction number: A47 (color slide; pages 1 and 2)

In 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) appointed financier and businessman W. Averell Harriman (1891-1986) as his "special representative" to Great Britain to manage the massive Lend-Lease program of American military aid to that country. Two years later, the president named Harriman ambassador to the Soviet Union (USSR), a position he held until 1946. Relations between the United States and the USSR had been distant during the Nazi-Soviet Pact (August 1939-June 1941). Although the United States was officially neutral, Roosevelt had thrown American diplomatic and economic weight behind those countries fighting Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), principally Great Britain. The USSR was also officially neutral, but under the Nazi-Soviet Pact it annexed Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia as well as parts of Poland and Romania and became one of the chief suppliers of fuel, food, and raw material to the Nazi war machine. All of this ended with the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. Beleaguered Britain immediately welcomed the Soviet Union as a powerful military ally against Hitler. The United States quickly extended to the USSR the Lend-Lease aid it was supplying to Britain, and after the United States entered the war in December 1941, the three nations became formal military allies.

In August 1942 Roosevelt appointed Harriman to represent the United States at a conference with British prime minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). The Moscow Conference sought a common understanding of Soviet and Anglo-American military plans and was the highest level meeting to that time of the three allies. At the conference Churchill delivered some unwelcome news. He told Stalin that Western military planners had concluded that an Anglo-American invasion of Europe that year was military folly. The Soviets, however, desperately wanted a "second-front" to relieve Nazi pressure. (German forces occupied much of the western Soviet Union, held Leningrad under siege, and threatened Moscow.)

In response to Churchill's announcement, Stalin gave Harriman this memorandum, deploring the prime minister's decision and arguing that British and American forces were capable of invading Europe in 1942. In an attempt to break the joint British-American stance, Stalin also worded the memorandum to imply that the decision was a British one. (Churchill, however, spoke for the United States as well as his own country in this decision.)

This memorandum, one of the few documents with Stalin's handwritten signature extant in the West, illustrates the sometimes difficult nature of the American-Soviet alliance during World War II. Harriman's position as head of Lend-Lease in London and ambassador to Moscow placed him at the center of this demanding alliance. The copious memoranda, letters, cables, and personal notes in Harriman's papers make them an indispensable source of historical documentation of that relationship.

diplomacy churchill winston sir diplomats great britain harriman w averell hitler adolf lend lease operations moscow conference 1942 nazi soviet pact 1939 soviet union stalin joseph manuscripts w averell harriman papers words and deeds in american history selected documents celebrating the manuscript division first 100 years world war ii joseph stalin second front english translation ultra high resolution high resolution germany wwii national socialist german workers party national socialism franklin delano roosevelt world war two second world war world war 2 russia lithuania

01/01/1942

Library of Congress

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