BS
This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being
communicated to anyone. (SC)
 
London
 
Dated December 19, 1941
 
Rec'd. 8:45 p.m.
 
Secretary of State Washington.
 
TRIPLE PRIORITY
 
     6147, December 19, 11 p.m. (SECTION TW0) 
     Stalin agreed to this and also to the proposals being
comumnicated to the United States Government. His desire was to
establish that our war aims were identical as then our alliance
would be stronger. If our war aims were different then he said,
there was no true alliance.
     The war situation was then discussed. Stalin said his
military advisors believed Germany had given Japan about 1500
aircraft. Eden urged the difficulties of transit but Stalin said
he had come to believe that this was not a Japanese war in the
Far East. He thought that some of the Japanese pilots had been
trained in Germany and that others were Germans.
     Eden gave Stalin some account of the British Government's
military objectives in Africa and he fully endorsed these.
Hitherto the war policy of the Soviet Union had been to fight
rear guard actions with the object of gradually wearing down the
German forces.
                                                       Now