Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1938, The British Commonwealth, Europe, Near East, and Africa, Volume II

702.6211/929

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)

[Washington,] November 1, 1938.

The German Ambassador called to see me today and referred to the conversation which the Secretary of State had had on the telephone the previous day with Dr. Resenberg, First Secretary of his Embassy. The Ambassador expressed his regret that he had been ill and unable to talk himself and said that he had wished to come to the Department of State at the first opportunity and speak about the recent address of the German Consul General in New York. The Ambassador said that he fully shared the point of view of the Secretary of State that the address was unfortunate and that it was entirely unsuitable for foreign consular officials in this country to make public addresses on political questions which might be regarded as impinging upon our own institutions or our domestic affairs. He said that he had already reprimanded the Consul General, but that he nevertheless wished to make it clear that the newspaper report of the Consul General’s speech had been grossly unfair and that there was no precise or specific point in the speech which he thought warranted any more severe action on his part. He said that what to him had been objectionable had been the fact that the Consul General had made any speech of that character even though it had been made to an audience of German nationals celebrating the annexation of the Sudeten area to Germany and had not been intended for American citizens nor any others but German nationals themselves.

The Ambassador, who seemed to be in a distinctly emotional and nervous condition, went on to say that it was of course very difficult for any German diplomatic or consular representative to carry out his duties within the United States without suffering a very serious nervous strain. He said that for example he had received this morning a communication from the German Consul General in San Francisco indicating that in the streets of San Francisco a document was being circulated asking for the Consul General’s withdrawal by the United States Government. The Ambassador then handed me a copy of the communication which it was alleged was being circulated in San Francisco. I asked the Ambassador if he knew what had motivated this letter since the letter clearly didn’t recommend the serverance of diplomatic relations with Germany but merely the replacement of the present Consul General by some other German consular officer. The Ambassador said that he did not know but that he was aware that Herr von Killinger had been bitterly attacked by certain sections of the press in California because of his alleged antecedents and his membership in the Nazi Party.

The Ambassador then went on for the better part of an hour and covered almost the same ground as that which he had covered in a conversation with me some eight months ago. Since the conversation is covered in a memorandum of that date⁹ I need merely state here that the theme of the conversation was that the German Government through its recent policy had merely carried out some of the points of the 14 Points¹⁰ of Woodrow Wilson. The Ambassador emphasized and reemphasized the statement that the German Government had now incorporated within its own territory all individuals of German nationality in Central Europe and that the present German Reich had not the slightest intention of extending its sovereignty any further within Europe either through force or through any other method. He insisted that the present drive of Germany for economic and commercial domination in Southeastern Europe was not only natural but legitimate inasmuch as commercial and economic domination in the years prior to the Great War had been possessed in that area by Austria-Hungary and that all that Germany was now doing was to replace the French influence which had succeeded Austria-Hungary’s influence after the war. He said that with regard to colonies the question had not even been discussed with England and France and that Germany had not the slightest intention of asking for the Portuguese or Belgian or any other colonies, but merely the restitution to her in accordance with Point 5 of the Wilson 14 Points of the colonies to which she was legally and legitimately entitled. He said that Germany had not only announced but had repeatedly reiterated her desire to live at peace with her neighbors, especially with France and Great Britain, and that the Munich agreement¹¹ had made such peace possible. He said that now that the Versailles Treaty¹² which had lain like an incubus on all of Europe during the past twenty years had been ipso facto demolished, Europe had come back to a realistic basis and that with the readjustments which had now taken place a logical and a real peace could be ensured. He said that so far as the United States was concerned, Germany had no interest and no ambition in combatting United States influence either in the Western Hemisphere or in any other part of the earth but that it would seem from the general trend of public opinion in the United States, and especially from the American press, that Germany and the United States were inevitably headed toward a major contention. He said there was no rime nor reason for such a situation and that he was thoroughly disheartened and considered that he had been a complete failure in his own task of trying to bring about a better relationship between the two countries. He concluded by saying that he realized the antagonism which had been aroused in the United States on account of certain features of Germany’s “domestic policy” but that he did not feel that this country or any other country was entitled to criticize the internal policy of another nation.

As soon as the Ambassador gave me an opportunity of speaking, which was not for a very considerable period since he seemed to feel it necessary to unburden his soul—although I must emphasize the fact that he did so in an extremely courteous manner—I told the Ambassador that it was absolutely impossible for American public opinion to think that the policy which Germany had been pursuing during these recent years with regard to the Jews within their own borders, with regard to the Catholic Church in Germany and recently in particular in Austria, and with regard, it would seem, to all free exercise of religion in Germany could be regarded as a purely domestic question. I said that any country that forced the emigration from its borders of hundreds of thousands of individuals whom other countries for humanitarian reasons felt it necessary to shelter and to whom they felt obligated to give a refuge, would hardly expect the rest of the world to regard such a policy as this as a domestic policy, particularly when the brutal and inhuman treatment of these individuals horrified all civilized nations. More than that I said the people of the United States taken as a whole were a deeply religious people and a highly idealistic people and the torture of human beings which had been taking place in Germany revolted the best instincts in all of them. The Ambassador attempted to argue about the separation of Church and State and the need for such a separation in Germany but I reminded him that that step had been taken in the days of Prince Bismarck and that it could not in our judgment be thought that the situation with regard to the Jews and Catholics in Germany today was in the slightest degree related to a question which had been settled forty years ago. I then went on to discuss the injustices done to our nationals, whether of Jewish origin or not, in Germany by refusing to permit them to take out from Germany the moneys which they possessed and I said I thought it necessary to say in all frankness that public opinion in the United States on this point had reached such a stage that there would inevitably be a general demand in the immediate future for the taking by the United States Government of retaliatory measures against German nationals residing within the United States. Finally, I said the trial of alleged German spies now going on in New York and the recent apprehension of alleged German spies in other territory under American jurisdiction had deeply incensed public opinion in the United States and would continue to arouse the deepest indignation. I concluded by saying that while I personally deplored the nature of the attacks which were being made in certain sections of the American press against the German Government and against German policy, I had had this summer while in Switzerland the opportunity of reading certain German newspapers and I had not seen in the American press anything more insulting or more obscene than the attacks against the American Government in these German papers, with the added difference that in the case of the American press, as the Ambassador knew, the United States Government had no control whatever over it whereas in the case of the German press it was a matter of notorious knowledge that the German authorities to all intents and purposes dictated what was published in it. I said that it was surely not unknown to the Ambassador that occasionally translations of such articles in the German press were reprinted in the American press and this decidedly did not add to good relations.

I said to the Ambassador that what I had cited were facts of which he surely was fully aware. The state of public opinion in this country with regard to Germany was in my judgment primarily due to these facts, and it seemed to me that it would be more useful to try to rectify the situation than merely to keep on deploring it. I said that I knew of no one thing that would do more to ameliorate public indignation in this country than the agreement on the part of the German Government to receive Mr. Rublee¹³ and negotiate with him some satisfactory arrangement as a result of which refugees from Germany might take out with them a sufficient amount of their property to ensure their being able to go to some other country which would receive them and to keep them for a time long enough to permit them to make a new life and to earn their living in new surroundings, and to permit them to receive the rest of their properties in full within a reasonable period. I said also that the treatment of our own nationals in Germany was a matter which in our judgment must be rectified promptly or we would in reality face the certainty of retaliatory measures here.

At this point the Ambassador became very much impressed and said that he had the same feeling with regard to the latter question as I myself and that he thought steps must be taken promptly by his Government. With regard to the first point he said he had not known that the question of Mr. Rublee’s visit to Berlin was pending but that he would do everything within his power to facilitate it.

The Ambassador then went into a very elaborate exposition of his own alleged connection with one of the individuals named as a German spy in the present New York trial. The sum and substance of it was that Schuetz, alias Wiegand as his name is given in the New York trial, was the head of the Nazi party on the steamer New York who had come to Washington at his own request as the head of a group of some fifty men from the steamer to be received at the Embassy in the autumn of 1937. At that time Captain Wiedemann, Hitler’s confidential aide, had been staying at the Embassy and some of the seamen from the New York had at their own request taken photographs of the entire group in front of the Embassy. It was one of these photographs which had apparently been seen by one of the witnesses at the trial. The Ambassador said that was the only time he had ever seen the man and the only connection he had had with him. He said that his own Foreign Office, the German War Department and the head of the German Intelligence Service had all been completely ignorant of any activities of this kind. They were all very indignant that such activities had been undertaken and could only disclaim any responsibility on their own part. The Ambassador said that while the trial was not concluded and he did not know whether the individuals concerned were guilty or not, he took it for granted that they were and that the orders under which they were operating had emanated from persons of lesser authority in Germany who were acting on their own initiative without orders from the top. I said to the Ambassador that while this sort of activities might not have been ordered by the highest authorities in Germany, they were activities which would not be tolerated one moment in the United States and that I could assure him that the Federal authorities were taking the fullest precautions to see that there would be no further activities of this kind within this country.

S[umner] W[elles]

9. Not definitely identified; possibly memorandum of March 14, 1938, by the Under Secretary of State, vol. i, p. 442.
10. Foreign Relations, 1918, supp. 1, vol. i, p. 15.
11. Signed September 29, 1938, between Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy; for text, see Department of State, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, ser. D. vol. ii, doc. No. 675, p. 1014.
12. Foreign Relations, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vol. xiii, p. 55.
13. George Rublee, Director of the Intergovernmental Committee on Political Refugees.