January 22, 1938. Dear Mr. President: Just a note: It will cost you less time than a visit. One thing our country ought never to do: send its representatives in Berlin to those Nurnberg shows. First these meetings are the greatest propaganda performances Europe has ever pulled off. Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers and Hitler youth are paraded a week with all kinds of army performances. They try to scare Europe. The speeches by Hitler, Goebbles and Rosenberg denounce and ridicule democracies. This has been done in most offensive manner the last two years. Never before has any country tried to compel diplomats to attend such performances. In August 1933 I looked into the matter and studied our own performances. We invite diplomats to attend conventions but never compel them to do so. Washington sent the French Minlster home when he began his career by partisan and propaganda work in Charleston. Madison asked English minister's recall when he attended a purely partisan meeting in Boston (taking part himself) and Cleveland asked the resignation of the British Ambassador in 1888 because he had written a letter to a California friend asking him to vote for Cleveland. The letter was published. These facts seem to me to show plainly that I should not attend a propaganda meeting in Nurnberg. I explained to von Neurath and he agreed entirely. Representatives of all other democratic countries took the same view and declined invitations. In 1936 coercive pressure was put on smaller governments to send their representatives; and several attended to hear denocracies compared with communism in worst sense. The Minister from Holland refused to go and Hitler indirectly caused his recall -- a very able Hollander now Minister in London. In 1937 pressure was applied directly by Hitler to the representatives of England, France and the United States. The President The White House The The President |