Henry Stimson to Franklin D. Roosevelt (July 8, 1941)

by Henry L. Stimson

WAR DEPARTMENT

WASHINGTON

July 8, 1941.

Personal and Confidential

Dear Mr. President:

⁠I received yesterday your personal and confidential letter in regard to cooperation with the British on tank design and the production of new tanks.

⁠We already have a Join Anglo-American Board set up for the purpose of controlling and coordinating such designs and production; and its success last summer and autumn in coordinating British and American designs, including the establishment of the turret in our tanks, was hailed by everybody as the outstanding success in British-American cooperation. I think that this already existing Board should be made the basis of the organization for imbibing the new lessons of recent combat.

⁠If the British have any new suggestions which they wish to bring before it through personal witnesses, this can easily be accomplished by bringing such witnesses over here and bringing them into conference or substituting them for existing British members. It seems to me that the creation of an entirely new Board would add greatly to the complexitiy of the general set-up which has been working extremely well.

Faithfully yours,

Henry L. Stimson

⁠Secretary of War.

The President,
The White House.