Office of the Historian

740.00116 E.W./10–1044: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Minister in Ireland (Gray)

Washington, October 14, 1944—5 p.m.

199. Your 165, October 9, 8 p.m. and your 168, October 10, 6 p.m. The Department’s interpretation of the Irish reply concerning asylum to war criminals is that the Irish Government takes a legalistic view of the matter and has not given the assurance desired. You are accordingly requested to leave an aide-mémoire with Walshe in the following sense:

(1)
The American Government is completely at a loss to understand how the Irish Government can believe that “justice, charity, honor, or the interest of the nation” could require the admission of Axis war criminals into Ireland.
(2)
It was thought that the Irish Government would itself feel that such persons would be regarded in every sense as undesirable aliens whose admission into Irish territory would not be in the interest of Ireland even if such persons were not wanted for eventual trial by the United Nations.
(3)
If Ireland should, in connection with any one who might be considered a war criminal, exercise the accepted and lawful sovereign prerogatives of denying asylum, no unfortunate repercussions would arise with the United Nations.

It is for these reasons, among others, that we feel that Ireland should have no difficulty in giving us unequivocal assurances in the sense desired. You should also take occasion from time to time informally to express these ideas, particularly those in paragraphs 2 and 3 to members of the Irish Government.

Repeated to London.66 British Embassy in Washington informed that a telegram in the above sense was being forwarded.

Hull
  1. As telegram 8500, October 14.↩