Office of the Historian

362.115/355: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Chargé in Germany (Gilbert)

Washington, December 10, 1938—1 p.m.

228. Please address the following note to the Minister for Foreign Affairs:

“I have been instructed by my Government to express its disappointment that Your Excellency’s Government has not as yet conveyed the assurances which my Government felt confident would be received concerning non-discriminatory treatment in Germany of American citizens without exception based on race or creed.

“The attention of Your Excellency’s Government was expressly invited to this matter in Mr. Wilson’s note of May 9, 1938,68 and my Government’s concern and its desire for the assurances sought therein have been reiterated on several occasions in communications to Your Excellency’s Government.

“My Government is concerned with the provisions of the decree laws which if made applicable to American citizens would have the effect of arbitrarily dividing them into special classes and subject them to differential treatment on the basis of such classification. It is one of the fundamental principles of my Government to make no distinction between American citizens on the basis of race or creed, and uniformly in its relations with foreign nations it has emphatically declined the right of those nations to apply on their part such discrimination as [Page 411] between American citizens. This principle, furthermore, is applied by my Government to nationals of foreign countries residing in the United States, including Germans. The application to American citizens of the measures referred to would be incompatible with this principle.

“My Government believes, therefore, that upon further consideration Your Excellency’s Government will decide that American citizens will not be discriminated against in Germany on account of race or creed and that they will not be subjected to provisions of the nature of those embodied in the decree laws in question.”

We approve the action thus far taken by you as occasion arose in requesting from the German Foreign Office assurances that the discriminatory decree laws do not apply to American citizens. However, we feel that the action thus far taken should now be supplemented by a general statement of our position. Cable when note has been delivered.69

Welles
  1. See telegram No. 63, May 7, 5 p.m., to the Ambassador in Germany, p. 369.↩
  2. The note, dated December 14, was delivered to the German Foreign Office on that date.↩