The Argonauts

On July 17, 1944 President Roosevelt wired Joseph Stalin: "Things are moving so fast and so successfully that I feel there should be a meeting between you and Mr. Churchill and me." This set off a six-month tizzy of top-secret cables, as the Big Three squabbled over a meeting place like a family bickering about where to spend the summer.

Roosevelt first suggested to Stalin that the "most central point for you and me would be the north of Scotland." Stalin scotched that idea with the reply, through Ambassador Averell Harriman, that he had suffered ear trouble after his 1943 trip to Teheran, and this his "doctors considered any change of climate would have a bad effect." In the face of this rebuff, the eager Roosevelt sent word that the Black Sea area might be suitable. Stalin said he "would be delighted."

For months thereafter, Roosevelt and Churchill tried to wriggle out of the Black Sea site.

F.D.R. to Churchill: "Do you think it is possible to get U.J. ['Uncle Joe'] to come to Athens or Cyprus?"

Churchill to F.D.R.: "I suppose there would be ... difficulty in Russian warships coming out of the Black Sea . . . One way would be for Turkey to declare war, which I expect she would be very willing to do. But I am not at all sure that the Russians would welcome this at the present juncture."

F.D.R. to Churchill: "What do you think of the possibility of our inducing U.J. to meet with us in Piraeus, Salonica or Constantinople?"

Churchill to F.D.R.: "I am somewhat attracted by the suggestion of Jerusalem. Here, there are first-class hotels . . . We ought to put the proposition to U.J. and throw on him the onus of refusing. After all, we are respectable people, too."

F.D.R. to Churchill: "I had hoped that Uncle Joe could come to Rome or Malta or Taormina or Egypt, but if he will not --and insists on the Black Sea--I could do it even at great difficulty . . ."

F.D.R. to Ambassador Harriman: "I am prepared to go to the Crimea and have the meeting at Yalta . . ."

Churchill to F.D.R.: "Have you a name for this operation? If not, I suggest 'Argonaut,* which has a local but not deducible association.'"

Even as the delegations were on the way to Yalta, Harry Hopkins reported to F.D.R. that Churchill "says that if we had spent ten years on research, we could not have found a worse place in the world than Yalta . . .He claims it is good for typhus and deadly lice, which thrive in those parts."

Knowing how important it would be to coordinate U.S.-British views beforehand, Churchill insisted on a meeting at Malta preceding the Yalta Conference. The Prime Minister pointed out that there was much work to be done.

Churchill to F.D.R.: "I do not see any other way of realizing our hopes about world organization in five or six days. Even the Almighty took seven."

When the new Argonauts had their travel plans nearly completed, Churchill cabled Roosevelt: "No more let us falter. From Malta to Yalta. Let nobody alter."

*Argonaut Leader Jason sailed the Black Sea in quest of the fleece of the golden ram.

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