864.01/7–2944
The Department of State to the British Embassy
Aide-Mémoire
The Department of State is in substantial agreement with the position taken by His Majesty’s Government in respect of the dissident Hungarian diplomats, as set forth in the recent undated aide-mémoire85 on the subject transmitted to the Department by the British Embassy in Washington. The following paragraphs indicate briefly the policy which has guided American representatives in their contacts with the dissident diplomats since the German occupation of Hungary in March of this year.
The Department of State welcomed the decision of the Hungarian diplomats in neutral capitals to break with Budapest and to declare their support of the United Nations. The Department was hopeful that they might be allowed by the neutral governments to remain at their posts, and that they might be able in some way to contribute to the Hungarian resistance movement against the Germans. It did not, however, see fit to grant them any official recognition or public support either as individuals or as a group.
The basic reasons for the Department’s attitude were the following:
[Here follows paraphrase of the four points enumerated in second paragraph of circular telegram of August 5, 8 p.m., printed supra.]
In the months which have passed since March nothing has occurred to cause the Department to adopt a more positive policy in respect of the Hungarian diplomats. The activities and accomplishments of the “Committee of Ministers”; which was formed on the initiative of Barcza and Bakacs-Bessenyey in Switzerland and joined by most of their colleagues in other neutral countries, have not been such as to induce a change in this Government’s attitude. Meanwhile the positions of the individual diplomats have become more difficult owing to the acceptance by the neutral governments to which they were accredited of new diplomatic representatives named by the Sztojay regime. Certain of the dissidents, notably Ullein-Reviczky in Stockholm, [Page 882] have raised the question of their legal and personal status vis-à-vis the Allied governments, complaining that the lack of any support and recognition by the Allies has hampered their efforts to foster resistance to the Germans in Hungary. Although the Department is ready to receive and to acknowledge actual contributions which they may make to the Allied cause in the way of assistance in propaganda and in intelligence work, it still considers that the services which they probably will be able to render would hardly warrant, according to present indications, the extension to them of any formal recognition or special status.
- Not printed.↩