File No. 763.72114/4065a
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in France ( Sharp)
5801. For your information. The French Ambassador has advised the Department that from information received by his Government the military commander at Innsbruck has decided that the death penalty will be inflicted upon Allied aviators who should drop manifestoes or even should be found bearing such documents, and that the French Government considers that in order to prevent such action the Austrian authorities should be informed by radiogram that if measures so contrary to international law and to humanity were carried into effect, retaliation would have unavoidably to be praticed on Austrian officers in Allied hands, the number to be double and the punishment the same.
To this note I have today replied to the effect that the President holds the opinion that, however abhorrent and indefensible the announced practice may be, he cannot consent that this Government should unite in a threat to retaliate by executing twice as many captured Austrian officers as aviators put to death under the reported military order.
The Government of the United States would, nevertheless, unite in announcing to the Austrian authorities, by such means as are available, that it denounces the proposed treatment of captured aviators, who are found bearing or to have dropped documents within the lines of the enemy, as utterly indefensible and violative of every principle of humanity and every rule of civilized warfare, and that, if the proposed practice is put into actual operation, the Austrian Government must realize that such barbarous and inhuman treatment of prisoners of war will invite extreme measures to prevent its continuance, deeply as this Government would deplore the consequences which would result.