Memorandum from President Harry S. Truman to Prime Minister Winston Churchill

MEMORANDUM FROM THE PRESIDENT TO THE PRIME MINISTER DATED 23RD JULY, 1945. 1. In 1942 when the munitions resources of the United States and the United Kingdom were insufficient to meet the require- ments of the United Nations forces you and President Roosevelt agreed to pool our munitions resources and to create Munitions Assignments Boards in London and Washington to assign finished war material to the several United Nations in accordance with strategic need. 2. Since the munitions resources of the United States and the United Kingdom are now generally more than sufficient to ensure the success of combined strategy, I consider that the Munitions Assignments Board, Washington, no longer serves a useful purpose. I therefore propose to abolish this Board and would appreciate your concurrence in this action. (Signed) HARRY S. TRUMAN TRUMAR S. *NATIONAL RECORDS SERVICE" ARCHIVES AND MEMORANDUM FROM THE PRIME MINISTER TO THE so PRESIDENT DATED ABOUT 31ST JULY, 1945. I have received your memorandum of 23rd July, 1945, in which you propose to abolish the Munitions Assignment Board, Washington. 2. As you say, the Munitions Assignment Boards in Washington and London were established to operate the common pool of production for war purposes of the United States and Great Britain. Their duty was to study the combined resources and to assign the output under directives from the Combined Chiefs of Staff in accordance with strategic needs. It was the wholehearted pooling of resources which governed the production programmes of the two countries and led to the concentration of production of certain items in one country or the other. Under the Boards was established a considerable machine for the collection and presentation of information, and for carrying out the detailed work of assignment. 3. I am in full agreement that the end of the German war and the consequent reduction in the scope of combined business in the munitions assignment field requires a scaling down of the machinery. I am not sure whether your proposal is merely to abolish the Boards while leaving the subordinate committee structure more or less intact, or whether you had in mind the abolition of the whole of the combined munitions assignment machinery. There are a number of considerations which require to be taken into account before any drastic reduction is decided upon. The following are some of these considerations: