to know of any Spanish prisoners taken after that date. Stalin chuckled and said he would be glad to look into this. The Hungarians, he said, also claimed to have no divisions in Russia whereas in point of fact they had ten. […] 14. To a question from M. Stalin, as to whether there were any news from Italy, I said that the Allied armies were advancing slowly but that German demolitions had been very thorough. M. Stalin nodded assent and observed that the Germans were past masters of demolitions. After some further exchanges of little importance the interview ended. 15. To sum up: the whole talk went off surprisingly well. Mr. Stalin seemed in excellent humour and at no point in the evening was there any recrimination of the past or any disposition to ignore real difficulties that face us. This may only have been a first reaction and second thoughts may not be so good. But it is significant that he should have gone out of his way to acknowledge the contribution that we were making by merely pinning 40 German divisions in the West and his sympathetic references to the difficulties of naval operations and to the necessity for landing craft etc. seemed to show that he no longer regards an overseas operation as a simple matter. It is clear however that M. Stalin expects us to make every effort to stage OVERLORD at the earliest possible moment and confidence he is placing in our word is to me most striking. [Churchill Archive Centre, Chartwell Papers (hereafter CHAR) 20/122] – Keywords: Italy, Second front
to know of any Spanish prisoners taken after that date. Stalin chuckled and said he would be glad to look into this. The Hungarians, he said, also claimed to have no divisions in Russia whereas in point of fact they had ten. […] 14. To a question from M. Stalin, as to whether there were any news from Italy, I said that the Allied armies were advancing slowly but that German demolitions had been very thorough. M. Stalin nodded assent and observed that the Germans were past masters of demolitions. After some further exchanges of little importance the interview ended. 15. To sum up: the whole talk went off surprisingly well. Mr. Stalin seemed in excellent humour and at no point in the evening was there any recrimination of the past or any disposition to ignore real difficulties that face us. This may only have been a first reaction and second thoughts may not be so good. But it is significant that he should have gone out of his way to acknowledge the contribution that we were making by merely pinning 40 German divisions in the West and his sympathetic references to the difficulties of naval operations and to the necessity for landing craft etc. seemed to show that he no longer regards an overseas operation as a simple matter. It is clear however that M. Stalin expects us to make every effort to stage OVERLORD at the earliest possible moment and confidence he is placing in our word is to me most striking. [Churchill Archive Centre, Chartwell Papers (hereafter – CHAR) 20/122] Keywords: Italy, Second front
1943-01-29-1-Eden-telegram-to-Churchill.docx