862.4016/1831: Telegram
The Ambassador in Germany (Wilson) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 16—3:18 p.m.]
625. In view of this being a totalitarian state a surprising characteristic of the situation here is the intensity and scope among German citizens of a condemnation of the recent happenings against Jews. This sentiment is variously based upon two considerations. One of utter shame at the action of the Government and of their fellow Germans and the other on a conviction that the happenings constitute bad policy in the internal and more particularly in the external field. Such expressions are not confined to members of the intellectual classes but are encountered here throughout all classes—taxi drivers, servants, et cetera,—and it is understood among the peasantry in the country.
The Embassy has been reliably informed that a group of 10 general officers presented an oral “protest” to General von Brauchitsch62 over the happenings. This protest appears for tactical reasons to have been based on grounds of policy but it is nevertheless believed that condemnation of the entire situation is prevalent in the army and the navy.
[Page 401]Individual members of the British Embassy express themselves as feeling that these sentiments of the German people will have an effect on Government policy. That is a matter upon which it is extremely difficult to express an opinion inasmuch as it is so deeply involved with the personalities concerned. On the whole, however, I am inclined to be skeptical of at least any immediate effect of this German opinion on Government policy or action.
- Walter Heinrich von Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the German Army.↩