Office of the Historian

860F.4016/6–2845

The British Embassy to the Department of State

June 22, 1945

Ref: 512/15/45

Paraphrase of Telegram From Foreign Office to Washington Dated June 22nd, 1945

My immediately following telegram44 contains text of instructions I proposed sending to Mr. Nichols. But before despatching these I am anxious to know the views of the State Department. Please discuss these draft instructions with State Department and let us have any comments they have to make as soon as possible. You should point out that we recognise that the matter in its immediate aspect concerns the Americans more closely than ourselves since they occupy at present a large part of Czechoslovakia and also their zone of occupation in Germany marches for many miles with the Czech frontier.

2.
It is in our view important that we should make clear to the Czechs that it will be for the Allied Control Commission in Germany, when the main questions of principle have been decided between the Governments, to decide when and by what stages German minorities outside the frontiers of Germany can be admitted into that country. This question will affect the general administration of Germany far more closely than that of the repatriation to Germany of Reich Germans now in Czechoslovakia, which according to His Majesty’s Ambassador in Prague is in the Russian view a matter for the Control Commission to decide.
3.
It seems to us that a full exchange of views with the Americans on the whole question of transfers of ethnic minority groups in Europe is desirable, with special reference to United States proposals45 as reported in Prague telegram No. 44.46 Such an exchange of views might lead up to tripartite discussion on the subject at the forthcoming meeting of the “Big Three”.47 Will you sound the State Department on the latter proposal and let us know their reactions to it?
4.
We have now been approached by the United States Embassy on the lines anticipated in Prague telegram No. 44. They are being informed of the instructions sent to you in this and my immediately following telegram.

Washington, June 28, 1945.

  1. Although the text of the message referred to was apparently made available to the Department of State (see memorandum to the British Embassy, July 11, p. 1262), it has not been found in Department files.↩
  2. Apparently reference is to the American proposal that the Governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union make a common approach to the Czechoslovak and Yugoslav Governments on the question of the expulsion of Hungarians from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania into Hungary. See telegram 4462, June 4, 7 p.m., to London, repeated to Moscow as No. 1216, vol. iv, p. 929. For documentation regarding the interest of the United States in the transfer of Hungarian populations from Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, see ibid., pp. 928 ff.↩
  3. i.e., from the British Embassy in Praha to the Foreign Office. No copy found in Department files.↩
  4. Reference is to the conference in Berlin between President Truman, British Prime Minister Churchill, and Generalissimo Stalin.↩