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Memorandum of Telephone Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Long)
General Strong35 spoke to me today on the telephone on the subject of the communication which had been made by the President to the Secretary of War about the exchange of German persons in this country for American personnel in Germany. The letter from the President enclosed to the Secretary of War a copy of the letter addressed by the Secretary of State to the President.
General Strong stated that the matter had been referred in the War Department to a group consisting of the chiefs of a number of agencies [Page 106] which he mentioned and had not been submitted to him. He thought that the position taken by the group to which it had been submitted and which was now before the Secretary in the form of a draft letter in reply to the President was too drastic and unmalleable. He did say, however, he was very much concerned about the exchange of certain members of the Armistice Commission whom they had actually treated as prisoners of war and had processed. He said that there were only 17 or 18 in that category but he could not view their exchange without having serious doubts as to the repercussions upon the best interests both from the military point of view and from the intelligence point of view. He felt that their return to Germany would cause a loss of thousands of lives.
I explained to General Strong the reasons for the original letter from the Secretary of State to the President and for our concern about the fate of our officers in German hands, alluding to a conversation had between Mr. Brandt36 and the Minister of Switzerland. He said that he fully understood and that he would be willing to go to great length to cooperate with us.
As a formula I suggested to him that we simply wanted a free hand. We did not want and were not now obligated to exchange any members of the Armistice Commission except the civilian members. We hoped not to have to exchange any. We also had a desire to exchange the persons brought here from South America whom we held really as trustees for those governments for the purpose of exchanging them for the South American citizens held by Germany. We had not committed ourselves to anybody. We did want to feel that we had a free hand and that we would not agree to exchange anybody from the Armistice Commission category without the entire consent and approval of the military authorities; that what we really wanted was an open-minded approach and a generous attitude on the part of the military authorities in cooperation with us in getting back our own people whose fate would be serious unless they were rescued, and to collaborate to the end that we would give just as little to Germany as we had to give to get our people back, but that the War Department and the protective agencies would not assume an adamant position and say that because a man was in a certain category he should not be exchanged.
General Strong said that he was in thorough sympathy and expected to talk with the Secretary of War on the basis of the letter now in front of him with the hope that he would be able to modify that letter and to have it read along the lines of our conversation.