760F.62/1147a: Telegram
President Roosevelt to the German Chancellor (Hitler)77
The fabric of peace on the continent of Europe, if not throughout the rest of the world, is in immediate danger. The consequences of its [Page 658] rupture are incalculable. Should hostilities break out the lives of millions of men, women and children in every country involved will most certainly be lost under circumstances of unspeakable horror.
The economic system of every country involved is certain to be shattered. The social structure of every country involved may well be completely wrecked.
The United States has no political entanglements. It is caught in no mesh of hatred. Elements of all Europe have formed its civilization.
The supreme desire of the American people is to live in peace. But in the event of a general war they face the fact that no nation can escape some measure of the consequences of such a world catastrophe.
The traditional policy of the United States has been the furtherance of the settlement of international disputes by pacific means. It is my conviction that all people under the threat of war today pray that peace may be made before, rather than after, war.
It is imperative that peoples everywhere recall that every civilized nation of the world voluntarily assumed the solemn obligations of the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928 to solve controversies only by pacific methods. In addition, most nations are parties to other binding treaties obligating them to preserve peace. Furthermore, all countries have today available for such peaceful solution of difficulties which may arise, treaties of arbitration and conciliation to which they are parties.
Whatever may be the differences in the controversies at issue and however difficult of pacific settlement they may be, I am persuaded that there is no problem so difficult or so pressing for solution that it cannot be justly solved by the resort to reason rather than by the resort to force.
During the present crisis the people of the United States and their Government have earnestly hoped that the negotiations for the adjustment of the controversy which has now arisen in Europe might reach a successful conclusion.
So long as these negotiations continue so long will there remain the hope that reason and the spirit of equity may prevail and that the world may thereby escape the madness of a new resort to war.
On behalf of the 130 millions of people of the United States of America and for the sake of humanity everywhere I most earnestly appeal to you not to break off negotiations looking to a peaceful, fair, and constructive settlement of the questions at issue.
I earnestly repeat that so long as negotiations continue differences may be reconciled. Once they are broken off reason is banished and force asserts itself.
And force produces no solution for the future good of humanity.
- Sent simultaneously to the President of Czechoslovakia. By direction of President Roosevelt, the Secretary of State transmitted the signed text to the British Prime Minister and to the President of the French Council of Ministers, who was then in London (760F.62/1147b and 1147d, respectively). The text of the President’s appeal was also sent to the Embassy in France as Department’s telegram No. 691, September 26, 2 p.m., to be transmitted to the Embassy in Germany as Department’s No. 164, and at the same time to the Embassies in Poland as No. 41, and Hungary as No. 60, for the information of the Polish and Hungarian Ministers for Foreign Affairs (760F.62/1147e, 1147g and 1147h, respectively).↩
- The file copies bear the Department date stamp of 1:13 a.m.↩