740.62114/2–1447: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Embassy in France
743. French Embassy has delivered note dated February 141 containing elaborate proposals for disposal German POWs. Department has requested French Embassy have Foreign Office make available copy to you.
Our comments follow. U.S. has recognized the serious position of the French economy in respect to its urgent need for manpower and considers that we have cooperated fullest extent with the French Government in the matter of repatriation of these POWs. In advising the French you should remind them that Secretary Byrnes, at Bidault’s urgent request, postponed for 6 months presenting the French with our decision to ask repatriation these POWs. We have, in addition, [Page 627] offered to help recruit DPs and Germans (including liberated POWs) in our zone of Germany and this offer still stands. You should also remind them that both Bidault and Blum personally, and as heads of governments, have agreed in principle with our objectives and have expressed appreciation for our understanding cooperation.
We are obliged to insist upon the immediate initiation in actual operation of a phased and orderly program of repatriation of POWs. To that end we request that immediate discussion begin on a technical level with the American authorities which will result in putting plan into actual operation on a regularly scheduled basis. The question of which groups should move first can be taken up in those discussions. We see no point in discussing question of postponement of date of completion beyond October 1, 1947, when at present no planned repatriation is in actual operation and its numerical aspects can not be judged on basis of performance. We believe that the essential thing to accomplish now is the inauguration of the program leaving the problems of the future to be settled as they arise.
Note unclear in two basic respects: (1) by referring throughout to “liberation on the spot or repatriation”. Our position is that unless InterCross reconsiders its reported refusal to supervise free choice by prisoners between repatriation and liberation on the spot (your tel 683, Feb 142) we must insist on full repatriation; (2) note apparently combined French captured POWs with those turned over by U.S. Our position has to do only with those POWs captured by U.S. forces and we can not consider counter proposal amalgamating the two categories.
Note also states that of the 740,000 prisoners of war transferred to France in July 1945, 290,000 have already been “stricken off the rolls” (“rayés des controles”). While this may not be entirely relevant to present and future problem Department desires breakdown information as to what happened to these 290,000.
Please inform USFET fully.