740.0011 European War 1939/29338
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (Long) to the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
Mr. Welles: The status of our diplomatic officers in Germany and the exchange negotiations in regard to them is:
We offered to send Germany 299 persons in exchange for 265. Of the 265, 151 are American personnel and 114 are South American personnel. An offer was made to Germany April 3.
There has been no response as yet. Other than the official personnel there are according to our records technical American citizens in Axis hands throughout the entire occupied area to the number of 4,913. Of these, 3,054 are in Germany or France. A great majority of them are in France. Almost all of this last group have [Page 94] lived in France for many years and practically all of them refused repatriation.
The telegram attached27 is disturbing. There is an intimation of the same in Woods’ no. 111 of May 11 from Zurich,28 where it is stated that the Nazi officials will not hesitate in taking steps which would result in destruction on a very large scale. He is not specifically referring to persons but the program attributed from Stockholm might be part of the general destruction.
It is constantly on our minds to obtain the return of the American officials in Germany. We are able to increase the offer we made to Germany to the number of 221 persons in addition to those we proposed to them. They ask specifically for 757 persons, many of whom we could not offer because of the objections of the security agencies.
More than a month has elapsed since we sent our reply to their last communication. While no word has been received it is not considered the better [part] of wisdom at this time to manifest anxiety. While the telegram from Stockholm is disturbing I can hardly believe that even those people would resort to the practices indicated.
We hold in our hands approximately 300,000 German civilians as opposed to the 4,913 Americans in areas under German control.