President Roosevelt to the British Prime Minister (Churchill)44
[Washington,] July 30, 1943.
331. My thoughts of today on prospects and methods of handling the Italian situation with which we are now confronted are expressed generally in your message No. 383 dated July 26, 1943.
I have suggested for consideration in the following draft certain minor changes. If the reasons for these changes are not obvious, we can discuss them at our next meeting.
- Para 1. There seems to be a high probability that Mussolini’s fall will involve the overthrow of the Fascist regime and that the new government of the King and Badoglio will attempt to negotiate with the Allies a separate arrangement for an armistice. If this should develop, it will become necessary for us to make up our minds first of all as to what we want and secondly as to the conditions and measures necessary to achieve it for us.
- Para 2. Our thoughts at this moment above all others must be directed at the supreme goal namely the destruction of Hitlerism and Hitler. Should the surrender of Italy occur, every military advantage arising out of it must be sought for this objective.
- Para 3. Of these, the first is the control of all Italian territory and transportation against the Germans in the north and against the entire Balkan peninsula in addition to the use of air bases of all types. Included in this must be the surrender to our garrisons of the Dodecanese and Corfu and Sardinia as well as all the air and naval bases on the mainland of Italy as soon as they can be acquired.
- Para 4. The second of these and of equal importance is the immediate capitulation of the Italian fleet to the Allies, or at least its effective demobilization and the disarmament, to whatever extent we find needful and useful, of Italian ground and air forces. The surrender of the fleet will be most agreeable to the United States and will liberate powerful British naval forces for service in the Indian Ocean against Japan.
- Para 5. The immediate surrender or withdrawal to Italy of all Italian forces wherever they may be outside of Italy proper will also be of equal consequence.
- Para 6. Still another goal of the greatest importance regarding which there will be passionate feeling in Britain and in this country is the immediate release of all prisoners of war from the United Nations in the hands of the Italians, and the prevention of their being transported northwards towards Germany, which can in the first instance be made only by the Italians. I look upon it as a matter of humanity and honor to obtain the return of our own flesh and blood as soon as possible and to spare them the incalculable horrors of incarceration during the last stages of the war in Germany.
- Para 7. Fighting between the Germans and the Italian Army and population will probably be a result of the fate of the German troops in Italy and particularly of those south of Rome.
- Para 8. We can take a further view about action to be taken north of Rome when we see how this process goes. However, we should attempt at the earliest moment to get possession of points on both the west coast and east coast railways of Italy as far north as we dare and of a safe and friendly area on which we can base the whole forward air attack upon south and central Germany. And dare we must at this time.
- Para 9. We cannot afford in our struggle with the German Army and with Hitler to deny ourselves any means that will kill Germans. The Italian population’s fury may now be turned against the German intruders who, as the Italians will feel, have thrust these miseries upon Italy and then come to her aid so grudgingly and so scantily. In order that the new liberated Anti-Fascist Italy shall afford us at the earliest moment a safe and friendly area on which we can base the whole forward air attack upon south and central Germany, we should stimulate this process.
- Para 10. A new advantage of the first order is obtained by this air attack as it brings the whole of the Mediterranean Air Forces into action from a direction which exposes all those centers of war production which have been increasingly developed to escape air blows from Great Britain and which furthermore turns the whole line of air defenses in the west. The highest degree of urgency will apply to getting supplies, agents and commandos across the Adriatic into Greece, Albania, and Yugoslavia by sea. It must be borne in mind that there are 15 German divisions, of which 10 are mobile, in the Balkan Peninsula. However, it is by no means unlikely that the Hun will be forced to withdraw northwards to the line of the Save and Danube, thus liberating Greece and other oppressed countries, once we have control of the Italian Peninsula and of the Adriatic and the Italian armies in the Balkans withdraw or surrender.
- Para 11. The effects of Italian capitulation and of Mussolini’s fall upon Bulgaria, Roumania and Hungary cannot yet be calculated. It may be that they will be profound. The collapse of Italy, in regard to this situation, should establish the time for applying to Turkey the strongest pressure to act according to the spirit of the alliance. Britain and the United States should, if possible, be joined or at least supported by Russia in this move. If practicable, I believe the agreement of Russia should be obtained in any important negotiations affecting the Balkans.
- Para 12. Our primary goal of getting Italy out of the war would, I believe, be prejudiced by an effort to seize the “head devil” in the early future. In due time we can try to secure the person of the “head devil” and his assistants, and then their individual degrees of guilt for which “the punishment should fit the crime” may be determined.
Roosevelt
- Copy of telegram obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.↩