Copy of Winston Churchill to Franklin D. Roosevelt (September 24, 1940)
COPY
SECRET
Telegram from London dated (Naval Person)
September 24, 1940
- I was encouraged by your reception of information conveyed by Lord Lothian about Dakar. It would be against our joint interests if strong German submarine and aircraft base were established there. It looks as if there might be a stiff fight. Perhaps not but anyhow orders have been given to ram it through. We should be delighted if you would send some American warships to Monrovia, Freetown, and I hope by that time to have Dakar ready for your call. But what really matters now is that you should put it across the French Government that a war declaration would be very bad indeed for them in all that concerns United States. If Vichy declare war that is sane thing as Germany, and Vichy possessions in Western Hemisphere must be considered potentially German Possessions. Many thanks also for your hint about invasion. We are all ready for them. I am very glad to hear about rifles.
REGARDED UNCLASSIFIED
For original of the message -
See Great Britain - Drawer 4 - 1940
This work is licensed under the United Kingdom Open Government Licence v1.0.
- You are free to:
- copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information;
- adapt the Information;
- exploit the Information commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.
- You must, where you do any of the above:
- acknowledge the source of the Information by including any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence;
- If the Information Provider does not provide a specific attribution statement, you must use the following:
- Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v1.0.
- ensure that you do not use the Information in a way that suggests any official status or that the Information Provider endorses you or your use of the Information;
- ensure that you do not mislead others or misrepresent the Information or its source;
- ensure that your use of the Information does not breach the Data Protection Act 1998 or the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.
- This license does NOT cover:
- personal data in the Information;
- Information that has not been accessed by way of publication or disclosure under information access legislation (including the Freedom of Information Acts for the UK and Scotland) by or with the consent of the Information Provider;
- departmental or public sector organisation logos, crests and the Royal Arms except where they form an integral part of a document or dataset;
- military insignia;
- third party rights the Information Provider is not authorised to license;
- Information subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents, trade marks, and design rights; and
- identity documents such as the British Passport.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse