711.62114/7–2944
The Chief of the Special War Problems Division ( Keeley ) to the Assistant Provost Marshal General ( Bryan )
My Dear General Bryan: I have received your letter of July 29, 1944,46 with regard to Soviet personnel captured with German paramilitary units.
After consultation with other sections of the Department of State concerned with this matter, I am able to inform you that they join me in concurring with the recommendations of the subcommittee of the Combined Administrative Committee,47 a copy of which was enclosed with your letter under reference.
I have received from the British Embassy under cover of a letter from Mr. Gore-Booth,48 paraphrases of the telegrams from the British Foreign Office to the British Embassy in Washington, copies of which were also enclosed with your letter. Mr. Gore-Booth stated in his letter that the British Foreign Office was going ahead with arrangements forthwith but that the Embassy had been asked to inform the Department of this action. He added that the British Government would be grateful to know, in this connection, if the practice followed by the United States Government in dealing with this problem diverges substantially from that outlined in the Foreign Office’s telegrams.
For your further information, in this connection, I enclose a copy of the reply49 to Mr. Gore-Booth’s letter under reference.
Sincerely yours,
- Not printed.↩
- These recommendations were: (1) Soviet personnel captured with German para-military units should be categorized as prisoners of war; (2) their treatment should be governed by the requirements of the Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, signed at Geneva, July 27, 1929; (3) Soviet authorities should be offered an opportunity to take over such personnel as they find acceptable for incorporation into the Soviet forces; and (4) dealings with the Soviet authorities on this subject should be through military channels and any screening should be done in the United States or Great Britain and not in Normandy.↩
- Not printed; the letter was written July 27, 1944, by Mr. Paul H. Gore-Booth, First Secretary of the British Embassy in Washington, to Mr. E. Tomlin Bailey of the Special War Problems Division.↩
- The reply of August 7, 1944, written by Bernard Gufler, the Assistant Chief of the Special War Problems Division, is not printed.↩