‘Big Three’ to reveal decisions Monday
Speediest defeat of Nazis mapped by Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin
By the United Press
A special communiqué giving further details of what President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin decided at their conference in Tehran last week will be released officially at 1:00 p.m. ET Monday afternoon.
Meanwhile, reports given out by TASS, the official Russian news agency, together with diplomatic speculation in other Allied capitals, disclosed that the discussions included both military and political matters.
The general military objective of the three great powers, it was said, will be to bring about the speediest possible defeat of Germany and the taking of measures to see that she does not rebuild her war machine in the future.
The German radio reported that President İsmet İnönü of Turkey, accompanied by political and military advisors, had left Saturday for Cairo to confer with Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill.
Face shuttle bombing
The assertion of some Washington observers that Germany would soon be subjected to a shuttle bombing, with Anglo-American heavy bombers utilizing Russian airdromes, was believed to presage military collaboration on a scale not heretofore seen in this war between the Eastern and Western Allies.
Russian sources in London have given a hint of the Russian post-war plan in the scheme to drive millions of German men for the reconstruction of the Russian areas which the Germans have laid waste during their slow retreat westward.
To speed attack
Whatever else the Stalin-Roosevelt-Churchill conference may produce in the way of agreement, there seemed no question that the present campaign of the Anglo-American armies in Italy would soon gain momentum, possibly pushing the Germans north of Rome by the first of the new year; that the Russians would soon launch new efforts to thrust the Germans beyond the Dniester River (border of Romania) and to free the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia); and that the long-heralded Anglo-American invasion of Western Europe would not be long in coming.
The London Times said editorially Saturday that the conference is:
…the major event of the war and will doubtless put the copingstone upon a vast military effort for the overthrow of Germany to which the grand alliance stands committed.
The London Daily Telegraph’s diplomatic correspondent wrote that the Allied leaders had now rounded off their plans for all fronts, “coordinating strategy and timetables.”
Read with emphasis
The United Press listening post in London reported that the Russians showed every indication of taking the forthcoming announcement as of prime importance. The announcer of Radio Moscow read the brief news bulletin on the TASS dispatch with great emphasis. The broadcast was repeated several times to reach all elements in the country, a rare procedure reserved usually for announcements by Marshal Stalin.
The brief announcement by the Russian radio was expected to have a great impact upon Germany’s discouraged satellites – Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.
Nazis won’t crack quickly
Informed persons doubted that Monday’s announcement by the three leaders would mean an immediate crackup in the German war effort despite rumored peace feelers by so-called conservative Germans. However, the satellites are so shaky that an early crisis in Eastern Europe was seen as a distinct possibility.
The situation within Germany itself is obscured by a flood of propaganda which on the one side emphasizes the desperate situation confronting the Reich and on the other asserts that the “unbreakable determination of the German people will never yield.”
Can’t hide successes
But no propaganda can hide the success of the Russians in the east, which is soon to become even more of a German disaster when the Russians begin to roll forward on frozen soil. The attack in Italy is soon expected to become a general offensive for Rome and that too cannot be hidden from the German people.
The German people will receive any Allied proclamation with the realization that they have only two choices – to surrender or face having their cities devastated one by one.
Round-the-world reaction to the Moscow announcement:
WASHINGTON: Director of OWI Elmer Davis announced that he has asked the State Department to make inquiries in Moscow concerning the announcement by TASS, the official Soviet news agency, about the “Big Three” conference.
LONDON: Newspapers, commenting on the Moscow announcement, said the three leaders had been legislating for victory and that the conference would be a final and decisive blow to Hitler’s hopes of splitting the Allies.
MOSCOW: Pravda printed the TASS announcement on its main front page column, usually reserved for items of the utmost importance.
STOCKHOLM: Swedish quarters believed the conference would result in a statement regarding Allied plans for dealing with Germany similar to those announced after the Cairo Conference with regard to Japan.
TURKEY: Radio Ankara said the meeting was “warmly commented on in the Turkish press,” according to a CBS pickup.
Every Turkish newspaper is praising it and emphasizing the great importance that the three leaders met.
BERLIN: The Berlin radio said:
The premature announcement by Moscow of the conclusion of the Tehran meeting came for the American information service as a bolt from the blue. Thus, once again a bomb exploded too early. The barbed wire, which both in Cairo and Tehran, separated hermetically the conferees from the outer world, could not prevent premature explosions, thus depriving propaganda bombs aimed at Japan and Germany of their detonation power.