740.00/173: Telegram
The Ambassador in Germany (Dodd) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 14—11:20 a.m.]
104. I talked half an hour with von Neurath yesterday about three subjects and his statements were as follows:
The economic situation in Germany is still critical and we see no prospect of an international, financial or economic agreement necessary as that is. Professor Sprague’s21 idea of a gold regulation is good [Page 93] but we can do nothing. We are trying to decrease our rate of armaments but must find other employment for workers since we can make no financial change in a considerable time.
When I asked the Foreign Minister about his talk with Mussolini he revealed the same distrust that Lord Lothian22 told me Hitler had revealed to him on May 3 [4?]. When I asked about the Spanish situation he very earnestly said that Mussolini had promised he would send no more troops there and that he was ready to agree with England and Germany to have the Non-intervention Commission settle matters; and Neurath added that he had opposed the German-Italian Spanish move from the beginning.
Since the German press reported the day before that the English press was advising a general Balkan conference when the coronation ceremonies were over, I asked the Foreign Minister what Germany would say to that. He at once advised strongly against it but added that Germany was getting into closer relations with England and hope later to have a western power pact under which boundaries would be guaranteed. He blamed Italy for its press quarrel with England but indicated that those countries could not come into close relationship for a long time.
It was plain from the talk that Germany is at present cultivating England but not abandoning its relations with Italy as to the control of the coveted Balkan areas.
- Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague, professor of banking and finance, Harvard University; former financial and executive assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury.↩
- Philip Henry Kerr, Marquess of Lothian, in the course of an unofficial visit to Berlin conversed on international affairs with Herr Hitler and Field Marshal Goering.↩