Monday, 15 March

Tenth day of the second lunar month

At 11.00 in the morning Minister Garreau, the representative of Fighting France, came to see me. He was very unhappy with the United States’ Foreign Office. He said the United States wanted to manipulate the anti-De Gaulle faction and even the pro-Germany faction in North Africa to set up another government. This kind of policy is very wrong. There was a group of Americans who feared Communism very much. They feared a victory by the Soviets more than Germany because they didn’t want the Soviet Union to have great power to dominate the European situation in the future. This type of attitude harboured a bad influence towards the Soviet Union. Also the Americans feared Soviet power would develop too much in France, and what they did now would push France to be closer to the Soviet Union, and the possibility of moving towards Communism was bigger. Britain also disagreed with this American policy, but did not dare to criticise it openly. Britain was doing its best to try and change this American policy, hoping it would change for the better. Roosevelt and Churchill’s conference in North Africa talked about this issue but to no avail, and De Gaulle was difficult working with General Henri Giraud, because Giraud’s mind was hard to gauge. He escaped from Germany, when he was in the Vichy Government and had lots of talks with German representatives. These made him not without suspicion. Furthermore, the people he used now were all pro-Germany, and he not only oppressed those patriots from Fighting France, but also imprisoned them. After the American army arrived in North Africa, the army of Fighting France could help conquer Tunis, but since the American side was not willing this led to the current situation in North Africa. The Soviet side was not very happy about this.

At noon the Head of the British military delegation Admiral Miles visited me. He said the convoy had been quite successful in the past, but since the spring the ice had melted along Norway, and the strait was very narrow, German submarines were now free to move. Moreover, the summer days were very long, and made it difficult for  the convoy. He also said between Finland and the Soviet Union there was no hope of unilateral peace now because Germany was still very strong in Finland.