362.1121 Hirsch, Helmut/17: Telegram
The Ambassador in Germany ( Dodd ) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 26—11:55 a.m.]
85. Our 84, April 24, 3 p.m.5 We have just sent the following note to the Foreign Office:
“The Embassy of the United States of America has the honor to inform the Ministry for Foreign Affairs that an American citizen, Mr. Helmut Hirsch, has been condemned to death by the Peoples Court for preparation [perpetration?] of an act of high treason.
The crime for which the Embassy is informed this young man has been convicted is of a most reprehensible nature and there can be no sympathy for acts of this character. Quite apart from the foregoing the Embassy acting as representative of the Government of which Mr. Hirsch is a citizen considers it proper to invite the Ministry’s attention to the fact that Mr. Hirsch was only in his 20th year and may well have been misled by older and more experienced minds whose influence may have been primarily responsible.
In all these circumstances the Embassy ventures to hope that the Ministry may feel that this constitutes a basis for the exercise of Chancellor’s gracious clemency.”
We have taken this action after as careful consideration of the circumstances and as complete an inquiry into the situation as time permits. We were told this morning that any effort towards clemency should be made at once.
We are of course not giving out to the press the text of this note and in reply to any questions they may put we expect to confine ourselves to the statement that we have brought certain humanitarian aspects to the attention of the Foreign Office with a view to consideration of clemency.
- Not printed.↩