740.0011 European War 1939/367: Telegram
The Minister in Latvia (Wiley)96 to the Secretary of State
[Received September 17—12:38 p.m.]
153. Soviet Military Attaché informs Major Huthsteiner that Molotov has notified Baltic States that if they observed favorable neutrality their independence would be respected. He added that if Latvia mobilized and concentrated troops on Soviet frontier such action would be resented.
He spoke of German endeavors to incite Lithuania to raise claims to Vilna area. He said that he had been assured by Lithuanian Military Attaché that his country would remain neutral. He made it clear that he regarded this German initiative as unfriendly to the Soviet Union. (Please inform War Department.)
Counselor of Soviet Legation in talking to Packer justified Soviet [Page 939] action by bad treatment meted out to Ukrainian [and] White Russian minorities in Poland. He rather alarmingly went on in the same tenor about bad minority treatment in Latgale97 (Southern Province of Latvia) and Latvia’s mistake in not accepting Soviet guarantee.
In conversation with German Counselor latter volunteered statement to Packer that Baltic States were not mentioned in Ribbentrop-Molotov negotiations98 and intimated that he foresaw no immediate danger to this area. He added rather curiously that 80 percent of Letts would prefer a “Russian” to a German regime in Latvia.
- John C. Wiley was American Minister to Estonia and Latvia, with residence in Riga.↩
- Latgalia.↩
- For the texts of the Treaty of Nonaggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, and the Secret Additional Protocol, signed at Moscow on August 23, 1939, see Department of State, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1948), pp. 76–78.↩