DEPARTMENT OF STATE
WASHINGTON
 
 
 
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
representative 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, Goebbels 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 Minister 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 seemed to me to show plainly that I should not attend a
propaganda meeting in Nurmberg. 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 democracies compared with comunism 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
 
 
The President
The White House.