LONDON -- A British newspaper published a photograph of a notorious document said to show how World War II leaders Winston Churchill of Britain and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union planned to carve up Eastern Europe.
The Independent newspaper reported Saturday that the document surfaced during the making of a four-part series on Churchill to be broadcast beginning Wednesday by the British Broadcasting Corp.
The newspaper said that although only a photograph of the piece of paper that passed between the two leaders had been found, there appeared no doubt it was authentic.
In 'Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill 1941-1945,' British historian Martin Gilbert described how Churchill, then British prime minister, produced what he was said to have called a 'naughty document' at a meeting with Stalin.
The meeting took place Oct. 9, 1944, in Stalin's study at the Kremlin in Moscow.
Gilbert said Churchill produced what he called the 'naughty document,' setting down a list of countries, noting the percentages of Soviet and Allied interest.
The document was interpreted to mean that Romania would fall 90 percent to Russia and 10 percent to 'the others,' Greece would be divided at a ratio of 90 percent to Great Britain ('in accord with the U.S.A.') and 10 percent to Russia, Yugoslavia and Hungary would be divided 50 percent each, and Bulgaria would go 75 percent to Russia and 25 percent to the others.
Churchill was said to have written the names of the countries and the figures and then pushed the piece of paper across to Stalin, who made a large blue checkmark across the top with a thick pencil.
The Independent said Churchill wrote in his memoirs that the paper lay on the table for a while. Then he suggested it be burned.
'Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an offhand manner,' Churchill reported himself as saying. 'No,' Stalin is said to have responded. 'You keep it.'
The original paper disappeared but two photographs were found recently among Churchill's papers.
