740.0011 European War 1939/32692
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State
The Norwegian Ambassador29 called at his request and handed me a copy of an aide-mémoire30 that his Government had delivered to the British relating to bombing in Norway by the Allied forces. He said that his Government and people complained grievously about two instances of bombing which did great damage to certain non-military establishments, and that this indiscriminate bombing was due more or less to the lack of cooperation between the Norwegians and our military forces, although the failure to cooperate was not the fault of the Norwegians. The plea of his Government, he said, was to improve these methods of cooperation between the military forces so as to avoid serious damage to non-military interests in Norway. I thanked him and said that of course these bombings could be minimized by developing closer cooperation and thereby avoiding much useless destruction. I said that I would see that this matter was brought to the attention of the appropriate officials in the War Department.