740.00113 EW 1939/1429: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant)
4659. As you know, a Committee76 within the Department has been working on the subject of restitution and reparation for some months. Reference your 4320, May 29.77 The Committee has practically completed the preparation of a report,78 and it is expected that it will be submitted to the Post-War Programs Committee within the next 2 weeks.
It is the conclusion of those who have worked on the report that restitution must be dealt with as a part of the reparation program. Whatever is done on the subject, for example, would be very closely related to the requisitioning of German stocks and the removal of capital equipment from Germany during the early period following surrender. While we agree with the observation reported in your reference telegram that it will be some time before a comprehensive agreement can be reached on all phases of reparation, some interim decisions will have to be made not only on restitution but on principles and procedures to govern the early phases of the reparation program. Moreover, we doubt whether, as a practical matter, the subject of reparation could be excluded in discussions of restitution when the subject is taken up with the governments of the occupied countries.
As soon as we are in a position to send you the Committee’s report we will do so for your information. There have been no inter-departmental discussions on the subject as yet and a decision as to the procedure for obtaining inter-departmental clearance will have to await action by the Post-War Programs Committee. It has occurred to us that it might be desirable to have informal exploratory conversations with the British and Soviets at a technical level in the near future before views in Washington have crystallized. These discussions would be confined to the subjects requiring decisions in the early post-surrender period, namely, restitution, the initiation of deliveries in kind (together with the related question of how to finance German [Page 235] trade during that period) and the procedure which should be adopted in reaching decisions on these matters and for integrating this procedure with the military administration of Germany. The desirability of initiating discussion in this manner is suggested by the fact that British considerations of restitution and reparation is apparently still at a technical rather than a policy level. Your 2794, April 6.79 If the matter is approached in this fashion we may wish to send someone to London to participate in the conversations and to return here for report. This method of proceeding would not however prejudice subsequent discussion in the European Advisory Commission.
Your comments on the foregoing would be welcomed.
As was mentioned to the Ambassador, we are planning to keep Spiegel80 here.
- Committee on Reparation, Restitution, and Property Rights.↩
- Not printed; it reported that a British Foreign Office official suggested that an agreement on restitution by Germany would be desirable (740.00113 European War 1939/1429).↩
- For the final text of this report as reviewed and revised by the Executive Committee on Foreign Economic Policy, see p. 278.↩
- Not printed; it stated that British civil servants felt little could be done on reparations and restitution problems at the technical level until American views on these subjects were formulated (740.00113 European War 1939/1366).↩
- Harold R. Spiegel, senior economic analyst at the Embassy in London.↩