Office of the Historian

740.00119 E.W./4–2845

The Chairman of the Council of Peopled Commissars of the Soviet Union (Stalin) to President Truman 48

[Moscow,] April 28, 1945.

Your message,49 containing the communication concerning the instructions you gave to Mr. Johnson, was received April 27. Thank you for this message.

The decisions taken by you and Mr. Churchill, to obtain the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces, is, in my opinion, the only correct reply to the German proposals.

  1. This message was delivered to the Department by the Soviet Chargé, Novikov, on April 29. A translation for the President was sent to the White House Map Room at 3:50 p.m. It was repeated to the Secretary of State in telegram 5, April 29, 7:36 p.m., to San Francisco.↩
  2. See telegram 7, April 26, p. 768, which quotes the instructions to Minister Johnson in Stockholm. A copy of the instructions was transmitted by President Truman to Premier Stalin on April 27.↩