862.00/10–2345: Telegram
The United States Political Adviser for Germany (Murphy) to the Secretary of State
[Received 4:40 p.m.]
830. The Department will be interested in USFET’s S–28399 of October 1855 reporting indications of a critical situation developing in Silesia and eastern Germany resulting from the mass exodus westward of German inhabitants. According to this report the death and disease rate in camps extremely high, unprecedented lack of food, medical supplies, and doctors. Estimated 2½ to 3 million victims of malnutrition and disease between the Oder and Elbe by next spring. Breslau death rate reported increased ten-fold and death rate reported to be 75% of all births. Spreading typhoid, typhus, dysentery, and diphtheria.
According to this report which was prepared by G–2,56 total number potentially involved in westward movement to Russian zone of occupation in Germany from Poland and Czechoslovakia about 10 million, with an estimated 65 to 75% already departed or on the road westward. No coordinated measures yet taken to direct stream of refugees into specific regions or to provide food and shelter. Report invites attention in this connection to serious danger of epidemic of such proportion as to menace all of Europe, including our troops, and to probability of mass starvation on unprecedented scale.