840.4016/8–1745
The Czechoslovak Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Clementis) to the American Ambassador in Czechoslovakia (Steinhardt)76
Monsieur l’Ambassadeur: In your note of the 2nd inst.,77 on the instructions of your Government, you communicated to the Czechoslovak Minister for Foreign Affairs the text of an agreement reached by the Great Powers represented at the Berlin Conference regarding the transfer of Germans.
The Czechoslovak Government have accepted with gratitude the decision whereby the Great Powers represented at the Berlin Conference have agreed to the transfer of the German population from Czechoslovakia. By this decision the three Allied Great Powers have taken an important step towards the ensuring of peace in Central Europe. As they have stressed in their previous notes dealing with this matter, the Czechoslovak Government are convinced that peace in Central Europe could not be regarded as ensured and lasting if the minorities which participated to such an extent in the unleashing of this last war should be left within the state for the destruction of which they strove.
[Page 1270]The Czechoslovak Government equally welcome the fact that the Berlin Conference has already appointed an Allied organ to carry out this decision.
If the three Allied Great Powers agreed that the transfer should be carried out in an orderly and humane manner, they only thereby gave expression to the standpoint maintained by the Czechoslovak Government from the outset.
As the Czechoslovak Government took the liberty of informing you in their earlier communications, the whole administrative, economic, financial and social restoration and consolidation of the state are held back and partly even rendered impossible as long as the transfer is not effected. The Czechoslovak Government are, therefore, particularly interested that the Allied Council in Germany should accomplish the tasks with which it has been entrusted by the Berlin agreement on transfer in the shortest possible space of time so that, now that the harvest work is over, the transfer of the German population from Czechoslovakia might be started as soon as possible and carried out within a period of about one year. In order to make it easier for the Allied Control Council to execute its tasks in the matter of the transfer, the Czechoslovak Government are prepared to send to Berlin a delegation of experts with all the necessary material and appropriate proposals. The Czechoslovak Government would be grateful if the Government of the United States would kindly notify thereof their representative on the Control Council.
The Berlin agreement makes no mention of the exchange of the Hungarian population in Czechoslovakia for the Czechoslovak population in Hungary. If, however, the three Allied Great Powers, represented at the Berlin Conference, expressed their agreement with the transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia, it may be presumed that these Great Powers also agree with the exchange of the Hungarian population, for in favour of this exchange and its quick accomplishment speak the same reasons, dictated by considerations for the ensuring of peace and quiet in Central Europe as well as by the urgent need for quick restoration and consolidation of the state from the administrative, economic, financial, social and other aspects, as in the case of the transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak Government, therefore, request that the Control Council in Budapest should be charged, with regard to the exchange of Hungarian population for Slovakian population, with tasks analogous to those entrusted to the Control Council in Berlin in the matter of the transfer of German population. The Czechoslovak Government are prepared to send to Budapest a delegation of experts analogous to that which they contemplate sending to Berlin.
[Page 1271]A similar note is being addressed to the representatives of the Government of the United Kingdom and USSR.
Accept [etc.]