Office of the Historian

840.414/12–1245

The Department of State to the British Embassy

Aide-Mémoire

With reference to the British Embassy’s aide-mémoire of October 26, 1945 and December 12, 1945 and the Department’s aide-memoire to the British Embassy of January 15, 1946,15 the State Department wishes to transmit herewith its tentative views regarding the principles and procedures to be followed in connection with making the German Foreign Office archives available to representatives of other powers:

1.
The State Department accepts the general principle stated in the British Embassy’s aide-mémoire of October 26, 1945 that access to [Page 1136] the German Foreign Office archives should be granted to the other Allies and that such access should not be restricted to documents related to war crimes.
2.
The State Department further agrees that applications for access to these archives from other governments or requests for the release of copies of documents should be decided jointly by the United States Government and the British Government.
3.
The Department believes that joint British-American exploitation of these documents should be continued at Berlin and screening procedures employed before eventual release of document material to representatives of other powers. The Department recognizes that the British Government may wish to withhold for the time being a small selected number of these documents. The Department is prepared to review with the British Government at some future time the proper ultimate disposition of documents thus withheld.
4.
The release of German Foreign Office documents to representatives of other powers should take place on the basis of a genuine reciprocity in sharing of German document material, particularly with regard to German documents of special interest in the custody of the French and Russians.
5.
The Department sees no objection, if the British Government desires to grant representatives of other powers access in London to microfilm copies of German Foreign Office documents. The Department is not at present aware of any particular documents which it would wish to withhold from representatives of other powers.

Washington , February 25, 1946.
  1. Aide-mémoire of January 15, 1946, not printed.↩