362.115/162: Telegram
The Chargé in Germany (Gilbert) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 16—2 p.m.]
247. Department’s telegram No. 63, May 7, 5 p.m. As yet the Embassy has received no reply to its note of May 9 regarding the registration of Jewish owned property.
On Saturday noon however the semi official Deutsches Nachrichten Büro in its special service intended for local foreign journalists and for publication abroad issued the following report with regard to the American note.
“The United States of America through their Embassy in Berlin on May 9th presented a note to the Foreign Office in which a protest lodged against the application of the decree concerning the registration of the fortunes of Jews to American citizens. It is asserted therein that Germany by issuing this decree violated the regulations of the German-American treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Consular Rights of December 8, 1923. This reproach is completely unfounded. In the article of the German-American treaty in question [Page 374] Germany and America mutually assured each other inter alia that they would put the citizens of the other country with respect to the exercising of commerce and trade fundamentally on the same footing as ‘inlanders’. By the regulations of the decree, however, foreign Jews are not placed in a worse position than American Jews. The view expressed in the American note that the German-American treaty does not permit of differential treatment of individual groups of citizens of the other contracting party on the basis of race is not supported by the text of the treaty. The American view would in the last analysis lead to the strange result that it would not be permissible in the treatment of citizens of the other contracting party to make any difference with regard to sex, age, or professional training or suitability”.
Local American correspondents state the Foreign Office has refrained from comment on the Deutsches Nachrichten Büro statement. Pending the receipt of a reply to our note I am naturally taking no official notice of this statement.