Memorandum from Secretary of State Edward Stettinius to President Harry S. Truman

DEPARTMENT OF STATE WASHINGTON April 20, 1945 MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT Subject: U.S. Relations With Poland When after six weeks of negotiation it was apparent that the Commission in Moscow set up by the Yalta Confer- ence to work out the Polish solution was deadlocked, the President and the Prime Minister on April 1 sent messages to Stalin in an endeavor to straighten out the difficul- ties. These difficulties from the British and American point of view grew out of the unacceptable interpretation which the Soviet Government was placing on the Yalta agreement. In fact the Soviet Government was maintaining that the Soviet agreement meant nothing more than a thinly disguised continuance of the Lublin Government and that any reorganization should be approved of and decided by the Lublin Government itself. In their messages of April 1 both the President and the Prime Minister made it plain that such an interpreta- tion could not be accepted. After giving a full, careful and fair interpretation of the Yalta agreement on Poland as it appeared to him, President Roosevelt suggested that as a means of getting the negotiations moving, the right of the Commission to select, independent of the Lublin Government, the list of Poles to be invited to Moscow for consultation, should be clearly recognized and established. Without going into further detail of the messages, the messages from President Roosevelt and the Prime Minister constituted a powerful and reasonable appeal to Stalin to carry forward fairly and speedily the Yalta decision. On NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND REVENUE April 7 RECORDS SERVICE*