Office of the Historian

President Roosevelt to the Chairman of the Council of Peopled Commissars of the Soviet Union (Stalin)6

[Washington,] April 12, 1945.

229. Thank you for your frank explanation of the Soviet point of view of the Bern incident which now appears to have faded into the past without having accomplished any useful purpose.

There must not, in any event, be mutual distrust and minor misunderstandings of this character should not arise in the future. I feel sure that when our armies make contact in Germany and join in a fully coordinated offensive the Nazi Armies will disintegrate.

Roosevelt
  1. Copy of telegram obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. President Roosevelt was in Warm Springs, Georgia, at this time, where his death occurred on April 12. A marginal notation indicates that this telegram was dispatched from the White House Map Room at 2:21 a.m., Greenwich Mean Time, April 12.↩