Thursday, 2 September

Minister Assarson of Sweden asked Military Attaché Guo to tell me as follows.1) Yesterday, his secretary invited the Japanese Counsellor and found out that Katō did not come to the Soviet Union. 2) He went to see Satō today. Satō said as follows. According to the Japanese Ambassador to Germany, the German army would retreat to the Dnieper River before November and remain stationed there. Though the Soviet Union’s strength is much stronger than Japan and Germany’s estimates, the recent Soviet casualties have been very high and in the future they might not have enough strength to push the German army from Soviet territory. If the British and American second war zone is not opened this winter, then Germany could retreat from Soviet territory, and use part of Poland as a bargaining point to open peace talks with the Soviet Union unilaterally.  Satō also said that at the Quebec meeting, Churchill and Roosevelt met. Roosevelt tried to force Britain to fight in the Far East, but Britain was still concentrating on Europe, therefore with regard to the war with Japan, Britain just tried to pay lip service to appease the United States. The Japanese army didn’t worry too much about that. I then immediately replied to the Generalissimo’s telegram.

Tang Shenghao came back and brought two honeydews.