761.62/511: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Grummon) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 17—7:30 a.m.]
251. A member of the German Embassy who has just returned from Tehran has stated in the strictest confidence that the German Ambassador here, who was the official German representative at the recent marriage ceremonies in that city, had intended to return directly to Moscow but that just prior to his departure he had been urgently summoned to Berlin for consultation by Ribbentrop.69 It was added [Page 319] that the Ambassador is arriving in Moscow tomorrow bearing instructions from the German Government, the tenor of which is not known to the German Embassy here, and that at the request of Berlin appointments for the Ambassador to see Molotov70 and Potemkin71 have been made for Saturday72 morning. In this connection it was categorically stated that the rumors of a German approach to the Soviet Government which were current at the time of Litvinov’s replacement73 (see my telegram No. 218, May 4, 7 p.m.74) were completely without foundation.
The same source stated that the Assistant Military Attaché75 here was called to Berlin last week where he was asked by the German War Ministry whether there was any reason to believe that the Soviet Union was stronger in a military sense or in a better position to undertake offensive action than in September of last year and that the Attaché had replied in the negative.
- Joachim von Ribbentrop, German Foreign Minister.↩
- Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union from May 3, 1939.↩
- Vladimir Petrovich Potemkin, Assistant People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union.↩
- May 20.↩
- Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union until May 3, 1939.↩
- Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, p. 758.↩
- Capt. Vladimir Schubuth.↩