Office of the Historian

611.6431/8–3145: Telegram

The Representative in Hungary (Schoenfeld) to the Secretary of State

Budapest, August 31, 1945—5 p.m.
[Received September 1—11:37 p.m.]

512. Foreign Office aide-mémoire52 submitted today contains list of commodities desired by Hungary and list of items offered in exchange. My 389, August 7.53 Items requested include trucks, tires, fats, pharmaceutical materials, sugar, glass, livestock and tractors. Items offered largely agricultural but also include furniture, porcelain ware, handicraft items and pharmaceuticals. Detailed despatch follows.54 Recommend [Page 861] Department’s urgent consideration in view of desirability of encouraging local resistance to complete monopolization of Hungarian trade by USSR.

Schoenfeld
  1. Aide-Mémoire from the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, August 29, transmitted to the Department as an enclosure to despatch 239, September 1, from Budapest; neither printed.↩
  2. Not printed; it reported that Hungarian officials had been informed of the possibility of barter transactions between the United States and Hungary (611.6431/8–745).↩

  3. Despatch 239, September 1, 1945, from Budapest, not printed, read in part as follows:

    “In view of the desirability of encouraging local resistance to the complete monopolization of Hungarian trade by the USSR, urgent consideration of the proposal is respectfully requested. It is suggested, in the Department’s discretion, that certain of the supplies desired by Hungary might be met from surplus property stocks and that others might be furnished by others of the United Nations and that to this end, circulation of the present despatch among the American missions in Europe might be desirable. Despite the desirability of wide circulation, I cannot emphasize too much my opinion that this matter deserves immediate consideration and urgent action.” (611.6431/9–145)

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