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    "localId": "213875117",
    "label": "Memorandum from George Elsey to Commander Tyree, with Attachment",
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    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "Memorandum from George Elsey to Commander Tyree, with Attachment",
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    "productionDates": [
        {
            "day": 3,
            "logicalDate": "1945-06-03",
            "month": 6,
            "year": 1945
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    "ocrText": "TRANSFER OF ITALIAN SHIPS TO THE SOVIET UNION\nIn October 1943, Soviet Foreign \"inister Molotov proposed to Secre-\ntary Cordell Hull and Anthony Eden at their conference in Moscow that the\nSoviet Union be given a battleship, a cruiser, eight destroyers, four sub-\nmarines, and 40,000 tons of merchant shipping from the Italian Navy and\nmerchant marine which had been turned over to the Allies when Italy sur-\nrendered the month before. Molotov justified his request by stating that\nItalian participation in the war had done incalculable harm to the Soviet\nNavy. Ambassador Harriman and his staff, in commenting to President Roose-\nvelt on Molotov's request, said they believed it had been made primarily\nfor reasons of prestige rather than any military need for the Italian ships.\nThey ascribed it to the Soviet desire to boost the morale of their people,\nto shew tangible evidence of Three-Power cooperation, and to get recogni-\ntion from the United States and Great Britain that Red Army successes had\ncontributed to the Italian surrender.\nPresident Roosevelt informed Mr. Hull that he was in favor of the\nrequest with one proviso - the ultimate title to the ships should be deter-\nmined at the peace conference, regardless of which navy used them for the\nrest of the war. Hull thereupon told Molotov that his request was receiving\n\"sympathetic consideration.\nThere was no further action by the U.S. government until the Joint\nChiefs of Staff advised the President on the eve of his meeting with Marshal\nStalin in Teheran in December 1943 that, in their opinion, the allocation\nof captured Italian ships to Russia would have a \"serious adverse effect on\nthe prosecution of the war.\" The Chiefs of Staff felt that Italian crews\nwould scuttle their ships once they learned of the transfer and they doubtted\n-1-"
}