865.01/2178: Telegram
The Chargé at Algiers (Chapin) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 11—6:20 a.m.]
792. From Reinhardt. On the assumption that the statement made to Reber by Prunas reported in my 774, March 9, 4 p.m., is accurate I venture to make the following observations:
[Page 1040]1. As seen from here the Soviet offer to exchange diplomatic representatives with the Badoglio government may possibly be a logical sequence of the fact previously reported to the Department that Vyshinsky was measurably impressed by Badoglio and apparently considered him the best available man to administer liberated Italy. At the same time it would seem to reflect Soviet impatience at the not inconsiderable barrier to unhampered Soviet activities in Italy presented by the machinery of the Allied Control Commission and the Advisory Council.
If the Soviet Government proceeds to send an ambassador to Badoglio it will mean that the Advisory Council is pretty well finished as a body advisory to the Commander in Chief and must inevitably become a kind of conference of the Allied Ambassadors accredited to the Italian Government.
This would be of course contrary to the intent of the terms of reference established for the Council at the Moscow Conference.75 And in fact it should be pointed out that the Soviet proposal implies not only a breach of the understanding reached at Moscow but its acceptance on the Italian side is an infraction of the principle that the Control Commission should be the only body to deal directly with the Italian Government.
In short this new development if permitted to take place would appear to signify that the Allied machinery set up to deal with Italy had in large measure failed to realize its purpose while at the same time the Soviet Government had succeeded in seizing the political initiative in an Anglo-American theatre of operations.
2. When considered however in the light of their recent request for air facilities in Italy for the purpose of developing communications with Tito as well as other developments of the last few days this Soviet initiative seems possibly to have been motivated primarily by considerations of Balkan policy and its bearing on Italian matters only incidental.
While Bogomolov was asking for his air facilities Partisan representatives have been presenting to Allied military authorities a series of requests that are not without considerable implications. They have demanded the release of a group of Partisans allegedly being in prison in Taranto; they have requested the exchange of certain German prisoners in Allied hands with a view to effecting the release from German custody of some dozen “highly important” associates of their own; finally they have made representations concerning the alleged maltreatment of Italian soldiers of Slav origin, especially in Sardinia [Page 1041] and have requested that the matter be submitted to the Advisory Council and a mixed commission be sent to investigate. (In point of fact the greater part of these people who were in Sardinia are actively-engaged elsewhere in labor battalions under Allied supervision.) In the meanwhile in Naples Solodovnik as well as Bogomolov were approaching MacFarlane with the request that the thousands of Italian soldiers of Slav origin be made available for Tito’s army (this request has been reported to AFHQ and is being referred to the Combined Chiefs of Staff).
This general emergency [emergence?] of Soviet and Partisan activity follows shortly upon the safe arrival in Partisania of a Soviet lieutenant general supported by a major general and a staff of more than a dozen other persons. When coupled with the request for air facilities and troops (the latter obviously of political rather than military import) it would in the aggregate appear to evidence a new move to secure with the least possible delay Soviet descendancy [ascendancy?] and a base of operations in the Adriatic just to bring to bear in Yugoslavia the maximum degree of Soviet influence either for the purpose of accelerating the war effort or looking to all Slav postwar relationships or both.
When viewed in this light the sudden and otherwise paradoxical Soviet decision to end [lend?] all-out support to Badoglio takes on a comprehensible if somewhat cynical significance.
Sent to the Department as 792, repeated to Moscow as 13.
Chapin
- Annex 3 to the Secret Protocol of the Moscow Conference, entitled “Advisory Council for Italy”, Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. i, p. 758.↩