863.51 Relief Credits/468: Telegram (part air)
The Ambassador in Germany (Wilson) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 16—7:44 a.m.]
348. Your telegram No. 113, July 12. Ribbentrop67 is absent on leave, I therefore took up the matter of the Austrian loans with Weizsäcker68 in the first instance. I am endeavoring to arrange to discuss the matter with the Minister of Economics and possibly with others subsequently.
I presented the claims vigorously and fully in accordance with your conversation with Dieckhoff69 including the pressure on you for retaliatory measures. Weizsäcker took careful notes. I closed by urging him not to allow this matter to poison further the relations between our two countries and to that end to occupy himself with seeing that we got a prompt and favorable reply to our note of April 6.
Weizsäcker said that on a matter of this kind I would not expect him to make an immediate answer, that he would of course study the matter. In the meantime he mentioned precedents for German action and political complexion of loans. Both of these arguments I believe I destroyed as far as any application to the United States was concerned. He closed the subject by stating that he understood my argument that he naturally now could not give his agreement to it but that the whole matter would be examined in the light of our mutual desire to eliminate those matters which jeopardize the relationships of the two countries.