Monday, 6 December

At 5.30 in the afternoon, I received a telephone call from the American Ambassador Harriman, saying he has just returned from the capital of Iran, Tehran, and wanted to have a talk with me, but unfortunately he has a cold and can not go out, so he asked if I might see him for a chat. I immediately went to his place. We talked from 6.00 to 7.30. He told me as follows: 1) The Cairo and Tehran conferences were convened separately because they did not want to make things more difficult for Stalin regarding Japan. The result that all sides agreed upon was that they originally planned to have a conference with Stalin first before having a conference with Chiang. In the end the schedule was changed, and the conference with Chiang took place before Stalin. The arrangement seemed to be better because in order to cope with the problems of the Far East it was good to have the opinions of Stalin before announcements. 2) At the Cairo Conference, President Roosevelt got on extremely well with the Generalissimo. In the beginning, they talked about the problems of advancement into Burma the timing of which is quite late. China seemed to have a slight misunderstanding of the issue. But afterwards on knowing that the plan needed time to prepare so the schedule for it had been7 delayed, China was fine with it. 3) With regard to how to cope with Japanese political issues, Roosevelt advocated that the methods should be substantial. But Britain appeared to imply that this was not that easy, since Japan had to return all possessions taken from China, it was pointless that they didn’t mention how to manage the possessions Japan had scrambled from other countries like the Dutch Indies and others. The British parliament and also public opinion would enquire about these. Therefore when he (Ambassador Harriman), Mr. Wang Chonghui (on behalf of China) and Cadogan (on behalf of Britain) discussed the Declaration’s wordings, they had difficulty in solving such a problem. Luckily Churchill was so clever, saying that [unclear sentencing. Refer to original] thus avoiding all kinds of difficulties. 4) With regard to the results of the Cairo Conference, the Generalissimo also advocated that they should be sent to Stalin for review, and not published until Stalin agreed. Especially regarding the independence of Chosen, it was even more necessary to get Stalin’s agreement. If he had any amendment with regard to this point, they could discuss it. Ambassadors Harriman and Kerr representing the Cairo Conference sent the resolution declaration to the Iranian capital first, and handed the declaration to Molotov face to face. Molotov immediately took it to Stalin. After two hours he replied to Molotov that he completely agreed.

Ambassador Harriman also told me about what happened about the conference in the Iranian capital as follows: 1) The British Embassy was next to the Soviet one, and they were centrally-located, but the American Embassy was outside the city which was far away. So Roosevelt decided to move to the British Embassy or Soviet Embassy, but since the Soviet Embassy was much more spacious, he decided to stay there. The conference lasted four days. After the meeting every afternoon the three leaders dined together, and had lunch together only once. Apart from the conference of the three of them, Roosevelt and Stalin talked on their own several times, and Roosevelt would inform Churchill the results of these talks. 2) Because Stalin’s wording was very straightforward, Ambassador Harriman worried whether Roosevelt might take it badly. But in the end both Roosevelt and Stalin were frank and mutual respect increased. The results were so good that they were beyond his anticipation. The important main points of discussions were as follows: A) As to the military side, it was even more productive than the Moscow Conference. Britain and the United States absolutely told Stalin about the positions of their navy, army and air force, and had prepared several proposals for Stalin to choose how to employ them. So with regard to this arrangement Stalin was satisfied. B) Stalin paid great attention to the question of how Germany will be unable to embark on aggression again after its military power is weakened. He originally feared that Britain and the United States would have other plans. After he talked in great detail with Roosevelt and Churchill, he thought Roosevelt and Churchill thought the same as him, so he was extremely relieved. C) Stalin told Roosevelt that, 1) following the German collapse he also hoped that the war in the Far East war would end quickly, so Roosevelt believed the Soviet Union would use its whole force to enter the war against Japan. 2) Also, Stalin told him that the Soviet Union was willing to see a strong China and would try to do its utmost to help China become great. 3) He wanted to meet the Generalissimo in due course. 4) The Soviet Union would definitely not support Communist parties in other countries and would not interfere with other countries’ internal affairs. 5) The Soviet’s only hope was that after the war all countries would have stable governments which people supported, so the world would be able to concentrate upon reconstruction. 5) When Stalin talked about the Chosen independence, he said that Annam shouldn’t be returned to France. It was better to permit it to be independent. (With regard to this point, Roosevelt talked to Churchill later on. Churchill seemed to be suspicious, but he agreed finally.) 7) With regard to how to handle the bases in order to maintain post-war peace, Stalin advocated that the four powers of Britain, the United States, China and the Soviet Union would decide it. D) With regard to other issues in Europe: 1) The Polish issue; the Soviet Union said that they couldn’t negotiate with the Polish Government in London because of its persistent anti-Soviet stance. But it would like to have a strong Poland which was not anti-Soviet. It also implied that Poland should develop to the West instead of the East. 2) The Finland issue; the Soviet Union said if Finland was willing to withdraw from the Axis, it would maintain the 1940 border. But Ambassador Harriman said Finland had not given any indication of withdrawing from the Axis. It is a great pity. 3) With regard to the French Committee, now De Gaulle is still regarded as leader. But the Lebanon Incident was unfortunate. It was really unwise of the French to want to incite bad feelings amongst Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union to take advantage because the Soviet Union would certainly not use France to counter Britain and wouldn’t offend Britain and the United States.

Harriman thanked me for what I told him about the Far East situation, so he could express his opinion to President Roosevelt, for example the decision with regard to Vietnam. (Afterwards I talked to Jingchen and Shaozhou. They all laughed and said that in the future when Vietnam is independent, it should make a statue of me. Because when the Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Lozovsky asked me about Vietnam’s situation I had emphasised that Vietnam originally had its own culture which was sufficient to be independent. But French colonial rule was extremely bad. Lozovsky is an expert on Far Eastern history and is deeply trusted by Stalin and Moscow, so his opinion must have a big influence. ) Harriman also said he and I could be in Moscow at the same time to take part in the most important moment of change, and we should feel honoured. He asked me when I thought the Soviet Union had started to change its policy. I said it was not the Soviets who had recently changed their policy, actually it was Britain and the United States who had changed their policies because had the United States maintained its isolationist attitude, and Britain maintained its balance-of-power policy, the Soviet Union would find that there was no hope of building world peace, therefore it had to adopt other ways to cope with the situation. It thought it wouldn’t dare abandon its weapons like the Comintern. Viewing as an onlooker I felt that in the last six or seven months American public opinion had begun to give up isolationism, and was completely advocating international cooperation. As for Britain it seemed that in the past year it had expressed via public opinion that the majority of British thought it could no longer maintain the balance-of-power policy. Therefore while we assumed that the Soviet side had changed its policy it was, as a matter of fact, the Soviet Union knowing that the British and American policies had changed in the last six months now realised that it could cooperate with them. As a result the Soviet Union had gradually abandoned its weapon and expressed its willingness to cooperate with Britain and the United States. Ambassador Harriman said my opinion was quite reasonable. On returning to the Embassy I prepared reports to the Generalissimo and Minister Song with Counsellors Chen and Liu until 2.10 a.m.