862.014/4–1845: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 18—10:40 p.m.]
1252. The following is the text of a letter received from Vyshinsky in reply to the letter addressed to him by Ambassador Harriman on April 8 concerning assignment to Poland of German territories in the Soviet military zone.57
“In acknowledging receipt of your letter of April 8 in which you refer to press and radio reports concerning the incorporation of Danzig and certain regions of lower and upper Silesia into Poland, I have the honor to communicate the following. It is well known that the German population of Silesia is leaving with the withdrawing German troops and that only the Polish population remains behind. The greater part of the German civilian population has also evacuated from Danzig to Germany. In these circumstances the urgent necessity arose for the creation of a civil administration from Poles who constitute the basic population of above mentioned areas. The direction of civil affairs in Silesia and Danzig has also been transformed to the competence of this Polish civil administration, all of which has no relation to the question of boundaries.”
- For text of Ambassador Harriman’s letter of April 8 to Foreign Commissar Molotov, see Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), vol. i, p. 743, footnote 4.↩