The Purloined Letter

My dear Friend Stalin:

This letter will be delivered to you by my friend Harriman. . . . I cannot say how deeply we are all impressed by the performance of the brave Soviet armies.

We will find a suitable base to produce the material and equipment which is necessary to fight Hitler on all fronts, including the Soviet front. I would like . . . to express my great confidence that your armies will be victorious in the end over Hitler and to assure you of the greatest determination to afford the necessary material assistance.

Yours in cordial friendship,

Franklin D. Roosevelt.

So ran the letter, as released last week, not by the State Department, not by the Russian Foreign Office--but by Germany's official news agency, DNB. It did not wholly sound like Franklin Roosevelt. The U.S. thought it was a forgery, put together by Joseph Goebbels' stooges.

But that night, from the White House, came a wry admission. The President had indeed written such a letter, had sent it in the diplomatic pouch to U.S. Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt in Moscow. Ambassador Steinhardt gave it to Averell Harriman, who gave it to Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin.

The text of the letter was somewhat different from the version broadcast by DNB. Instead of "My dear Friend Stalin," President Roosevelt had written: "My dear Mr. Stalin." Instead of "Yours in cordial friendship," the President had signed himself: "Yours very sincerely." But the German version, except for a few propaganda touches, such as "Friend Stalin," was as close to the original as could be expected if a Nazi translator had put it into English from some other language.

How had the Nazis laid hands on the letter? Was there a leak at the Kremlin--or a leak at the White House? In Washington, a plausible explanation was that the Russian High Command had broadcast a translation to the Red Army to bolster the troops' morale. The Nazi radio had picked it up, translated it into German.

But in Moscow, S. A. Lozovsky, spokesman for the Kremlin, denied that the letter had been broadcast to the Red Army. The Russian General Staff backed him up. The President's stolen letter remained a mystery.

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