Changes

==The toast==

==The toast==

During an after dinner banquet Stalin toasted to "unity"" in ordering at least fifty thousand Germans before firing squads "as fast as we capture them." Churchill jumped from his seat, and vigorously protested against the outrage to the Western sense of justice. President Roosevelt offered a compromise. Not fifty thousand but a mere forty-nine thousand five hundred leading Nazis, he suggested, might be liquidated without [[due  process]] of law.  Elliott Roosevelt, son of the American President, expressed the hope that hundred of thousands of Germans would be killed in battle. While Churchill fumed and the British guests kept silence, Stalin was "hugely tickled" and "beaming with pleasure." <ref>Elliot Roosevelt, ''As He Saw It'', (NY:Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1946), p. 186-191.</ref>

Roosevelt told his son Elliott that "in between times Uncle Joe and I had a few words, too  just the two of us." As Stalin's guest in the Russian embassy, Roosevelt was accessible for secret talks without Churchill's knowledge. One of these dealt with the Chinese Communist issue. Roosevelt told Elliott we couldn't do much about that "while Winnie was around."  

 

Stalin raised his glass and said: "To the swiftest possible justice for all Germany's war criminals - justice before a firing squad. I drink to our unity in dispatching them as fast as we catch them, all of them, and there must be at least 50,000 of them."  

 

Churchill flushed, leaped to his feet. He declared that any such [[mass murder]] was contrary to the British sense of justice. He was opposed to anybody, Nazi or anyone else, going before a firing squad without a proper legal trial.

 

Roosevelt said : "Clearly there must be some compromise ... Perhaps we could say that instead of summarily executing 50,000 we should settle on a smaller number, say 49,500." The Americans and Russians laughed. The British remained silent "in the presence of Churchill's mounting fury." Stalin called on everyone present for an opinion. Elliott said "Our armies will settle the matter for most of those 50,000 and perhaps a hundred thousand more." Stalin, greatly pleased, walked around the table to Elliott, put his arm around his shoulder and drank to his health. Churchill, infuriated, rushed to Elliott, shaking his finger in his face and crying: "Are you interested in damaging relations between the allies? Do you know what you are saying? How can you dare to say such a thing?" Elliott says he had a good reason to believe Churchill never forgot the incident but that his father, Franklin Roosevelt, was greatly amused by it. <ref>Elliot Roosevelt, ''As He Saw It'', (NY:Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1946), p. 186-194, 202.</ref>

==Refences==

==Refences==