760F.62/1082: Telegram
The Minister in Czechoslovakia (Carr) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 25—10:20 a.m.]
234. Twelve noon. The President sent for me half an hour ago and told me that in order to maintain peace and save as much as possible of his country he had agreed to the Anglo-French proposals (see my telegrams numbers 208, 11 [211], 12 [212] and 16 [216]71 he did so only under intense pressure by the British and French and because drastic as those proposals were he nevertheless saw a possibility of such readjustments of population as might make possible the preservation of the state in circumscribed form. The new demands now made by Hitler in the Godesberg memorandum (my telegram [Page 650] No. 232, September 24, 5 p.m.) means in their application the “assassination of the state”. He and his people prefer to die fighting rather than accept those terms and hence he believes war inevitable unless the British and French are willing to support this country in opposition to these demands. He says he has 1½ million soldiers now on the frontier. In this situation he asked me to transmit to President Roosevelt his personal appeal to urge the British and French Governments whose Cabinets are discussing this subject this afternoon not to desert this country and permit it to be destroyed and thus bring nearer a greater conflict vital to them as well as to the peace of the world. He said he could not ask the President to do more. The Hitler memorandum, summary of which follows, envisages large cessions of territory in the Sudeten areas containing principal industrial sections and most of the fortifications and also the holding of plebiscites in centers like Olomouc, Brno, Moravska, Ostrava and elsewhere which under Nazi methods would eventually go to Germany thus making the maintenance of the state politically and economically impossible. The memorandum includes no provision for guarantees of frontiers.
I told the President I would transmit the message but naturally could not foresee what action President Roosevelt would take upon it.
There are definite indications at the Palace of impending departure of the Government at an early date.
- Telegrams No. 211, September 21, 11 a.m., No. 212, September 21, noon, and No. 216, September 21, 9 p.m., not printed.↩