Office of the Historian

740.00119 Potsdam/7–3145: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Czechoslovakia (Steinhardt)59

Washington, July 31, 1945—10 p.m.

93. “The three governments participating in the Berlin conference have reached the following agreement regarding the transfer of German populations to Germany:

‘July 31, 1945. [Here follows the text of Section XIII, “Orderly Transfers of German Populations”, of the Report on the Tripartite Conference of Berlin, August 2, 1945, Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), volume II, page 1511.]’

Please concert with your Soviet and British colleagues60 for communicating the foregoing to the Czechoslovak Government.

You should ask that the communication be treated as strictly secret until an official statement is issued by the conference. Sent to Warsaw, Prague and Budapest. Signed Byrnes.”61

Grew
  1. Repeated as telegram 235 to Budapest, and as telegram 4 to Warsaw, with appropriate modifications in the penultimate paragraph. The message had originally been sent by the Secretary of State at the Berlin Conference to the Acting Secretary of State, Washington, for relay to Praha, Warsaw, and Budapest.↩
  2. Telegram 369, August 2, 8 p.m., from Budapest, reported that the American Mission in Hungary would not concert with the Soviet and British political advisers to the Allied Control Commission for Hungary but would arrange for the communication to the Hungarian Government to be dealt with by the Commission (740.00119 Potsdam/8–245).↩
  3. James F. Byrnes, Secretary of State from July 3, 1945.↩