On Nov. 28, 1943, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin met in Tehran during World War II.
ROOSEVELT, STALIN, CHURCHILL AGREE ON PLANS FOR WAR ON GERMANY IN TALKS AT TEHERAN; 1,500 MORE TONS OF BOMBS DROPPED ON BERLIN
DECISIONS VARIED
Moscow Radio Asserts Political Problems Were Settled
PARLEY NOW IS OVER
Axis Reports Predict an Appeal to Germans to Quit Hitler
By JAMES B. RESTON
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
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"A few days ago," the Moscow radio said shortly after midnight, "a conference of the leaders of the three Allied nations--President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin--took place at Teheran.
"Military and diplomatic representatives also took part. The questions discussed at the conference related to the war against Germany and also to a range of political questions. Decisions were taken which will be published later."
[An Associated Press dispatch from London quoted the Soviet monitor as saying that full details of the conference might be announced between noon and 2 P.M. Eastern war time today, basing this prediction on the usual routine of the Moscow radio when announcing future broadcasts.]
The radio announcement, which came as a surprise to official quarters in London, said nothing about the present location of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill, who held a five- day meeting with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek last week and made plans for the defeat of the Japanese and the dismemberment of their empire.
Details Are Awaited
Early this morning the Moscow radio had not indicated the nature of political and military discussions that took place in the Iranian capital, but it was generally assumed they dealt with the coordination of military plans for the final assault on Hitlerite Germany and with the unification of political plans for making peace with Germany on the basis of "unconditional surrender."
Official information that has come back to London since the Prime Minister left the capital has been extremely limited and indeed until the Moscow radio made its announcement the German radio was the main source of reports on the movements of the three leaders. It was, however, generally expected in London that the three leaders would in the course of their discussions decide to appeal to the German people over the heads of their Government to surrender or take the consequences of the air war in the west and an invasion of Russian armies from the east.
Stalin Crosses Own Border
While Mr. Churchill and Mr. Roosevelt had had seven previous conferences on the war, this was the first among the three leaders, and so far as is known it marked the first time that Mr. Stalin had left the Soviet Union since the revolution in 1917. The meeting was foreshadowed after the Quebec conference when Mr. Churchill told the House of Commons he "hoped" to meet with Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Stalin before the first of the year.
The Prime Minister had met Premier Stalin once before in the autumn of 1942, when he journeyed to Moscow to explain to him why it was impossible for the United States and Britain to invade the continent of Europe from the west that year.
Previous to that conference the United States and Britain had undertaken to concern themselves with the "urgent tasks" of creating a second front in 1942, and it is now known that the first Stalin-Churchill meeting was unsatisfactory to Mr. Stalin for military reasons. There are reasons for believing, however, that in Teheran very little if anything remained to be settled on the question of the second front except perhaps that of coordination of attacks on Germany from the east and west.
In addition to the coordination of military plans for a decisive phase of the war in Europe, it is generally believed by observers in London that the Teheran agenda covered a variety of questions that were either discussed briefly or shelved entirely by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and Foreign Commissar Vyachesalaff M. Molotoff when they met in Moscow last month.
Among the first of these questions was the status of the Polish Government, with which Premier Stalin broke diplomatic relations early this year. Since Britain went to war with Germany under the terms of the treaty alliance with Poland and since the Russian armies in their great westward sweep are now approaching the former Russo-Polish frontier, the Governments of both the United States and Britain have been hopeful that the Russo- Polish breach might be repaired.
Premier Stalin has already stated in a letter to The New York Times that he wished to see a "strong, independent Poland," and efforts have been made by London to try to get Mr. Stalin not only to renew diplomatic relations with Poland but, it is believed, to make Poland a party to the Russo-Czech twenty-year treaty alliance that will be signed within a few days.
It is assumed that this long-range question of the future Germany also was on the Teheran agenda for discussion and the question naturally arises as to whether the principle of "punishing" the aggressor would be applied to Germany as severely as it was applied to Japan in the Cairo declaration.
Whatever else the Allies may have agreed to coordinate at Teheran they did not coordinate their announcements about the fact that meetings were being held. The fact that the meetings were imminent was reported first in American newspapers. The fact that the North African conference with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had ended was reported prematurely by a Reuter correspondent in Lisbon. Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, shared with the German radio the honor of "breaking" prematurely the fact that Mr. Stalin, Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill were in session and now this morning the Moscow radio, without pre- arrangement with London and Washington, announced that the conference had ended. Thus everybody "scooped" everybody else, which makes everybody even, although it makes nobody happy.
Axis Voices Concern
Before the Moscow broadcast today Axis sources continued to voice apprehension over the results of the parley.
Typical of their laborious attempts to anticipate the official announcements of the conference was the following comment in the Angriff:
"It seems that we are again to be asked to capitulate as a favor to the enemy. But we will again turn a deaf ear to this friendly invitation. The war criminals could have saved themselves a long trip."
The German telegraph service, picking up this same theme, which is general in the German press and radio, said "the [Allied] discussions are expected to result in a kind of ultimatum for the capitulation of the German people and its allies. The German people, however, know that their enemies try to hide their own weakness and difficulties behind every new propaganda bluff. This war of nerves is the enemy's last resort.
"The Russian drive has failed, the Allies have been unable to produce more than a slow- motion offensive in Italy, and the bombing in the west has failed to undermine either German morale or German production."
Elsewhere in the German press, however, correspondents do not support this official bravado. A remarkable article in Wednesday's Voelkisher Beobachter, for example, complains bitterly:
"Those people who spoke with deep sympathy about the people of bombed London have nothing else to say about bombed Berlin except, 'Well, you started it. Remember Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and Coventry? What you are now getting is only what you deserve.'"
Similarly Axis satellites are not either dismissing the "Big Three" conference lightly or attempting to speak like Germans of "the trumpets of Jericho which will leave the walls unmoved." They are admitting openly that the conference will have "great significance" no matter what it does.
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