Office of the Historian

Hopkins Papers: Telegram

Prime Minister Churchill to the President’s Special Assistant (Hopkins)1

London, May 2, 1943.

Prime Minister to Mr. Harry Hopkins. Personal and most especially secret.

I should be very glad to receive an answer to my No. 291 to the President. The doctors do not want me to fly at the very great [Page 17] heights required in a bomber and the northern route clippers cannot take off on account of late ice till after May 20. On the other hand, I cannot keep the Indian Commanders-in-Chief2 here indefinitely and would not be willing to send them without their superiors the Chiefs-of-Staff.3 We are therefore coming together by sea., All preparations are being made to start Tuesday4 night and a good many naval and air movements are involved and actually going on.

Following is absolutely private for you alone. If, as I can well believe, the President is absorbed in the coal crisis and generally with domestic affairs, it might be more convenient for me to stay at the Embassy and come to see him every day from there. I should understand this perfectly and anyhow would like to spend part of the time at the Embassy. What is essential is that our plans should be made and thrashed out and decisions taken as at Casablanca.5 I am conscious of serious divergences beneath the surface which, if not adjusted, will lead to grave difficulties and feeble action in the summer and autumn. These difficulties we must forestall.

  1. Channel of transmission not indicated, but presumably military. Received May 2, 1943, 7:57 a.m.↩
  2. i.e., Field Marshal Wavell, Air Chief Marshal Peirse, and Admiral Somerville.↩
  3. i.e., General Brooke, Admiral of the Fleet Pound, and Air Chief Marshal Portal.↩
  4. May 4.↩
  5. For documentation regarding the Casablanca Conference, January 14–24, 1943, see Foreign Relations, The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943.↩