Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1943, General, Volume I

740.00113 European War 1939/688a

Inter-Allied Declaration Against Acts of Dispossession Committed in Territories Under Enemy Occupation or Control ⁸

undated

The Union of South Africa, the United States of America, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, the Czechoslovak Republic, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Greece, India, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the French National Committee:

Hereby issue a formal warning to all concerned, and in particular to persons in neutral countries, that they intend to do their utmost to defeat the methods of dispossession practiced by the governments with which they are at war against the countries and peoples who have been so wantonly assaulted and despoiled.

Accordingly the governments making this declaration and the French National Committee reserve all their rights to declare invalid any transfers of, or dealings with, property, rights and interests of any description whatsoever which are, or have been, situated in the territories which have come under the occupation or control, direct or indirect, of the governments with which they are at war or which belong or have belonged, to persons, including juridical persons, resident in such territories. This warning applies whether such transfers or dealings have taken the form of open looting or plunder, or of transactions apparently legal in form, even when they purport to be voluntarily effected.

The governments making this declaration and the French National Committee solemnly record their solidarity in this matter.

8. Copy transmitted to the President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines (Quezon) by the Secretary of State in his letter of January 12, 1943 (not printed). The text of the declaration was released to the press by the Department on January 5, 1943; presented by the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Parliament and printed (with covering statement and explanatory memorandum) as British Cmd. 6418, Misc. No. 1 (1943).