862.00 P.R./140
The Ambassador in Germany (Dodd) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received August 8.]
Sir:
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4. Political Prisoners. A foreign news agency reported about two weeks ago that there are about 100,000 political prisoners in German concentration camps. This was promptly denied in an official Prussian statement which gave the total number of political prisoners in Germany at 18,000, and in Prussia alone, 12,000.
The wholesale arrests of political opponents since the burning of the Reichstag and the daily announcements of new arrests in conjunction with the “second revolutionary wave,” which set in about the middle of June and which is now supposed to be at an end, would seem to indicate that the actual number of political prisoners is far in excess of the official figures.
The Nazi Minister of the Interior in Saxony boasted recently that in that State alone there were twice as many political prisoners as in Prussia, which comprises about two-thirds of the Reich in area and population, while a member of the Württemberg Government is reported to have said that there were more political prisoners in Württemberg than in any other German State. Moreover, during the past few weeks alone, many hundreds of persons have been arrested in Bavaria.
Most of the Social-Democratic leaders who remained in Germany have been put in concentration camps. The arrest of Herr Löbe, who was for many years President of the Reichstag, was soon followed by the arrest of Fritz Ebert, the son of the first President of the German Republic.
The frequent reports that political prisoners, especially Communists, have been shot in flight give ground for the suspicion that political prisoners are encouraged by their Nazi guards to flee in order to be shot in ambush.
About a week ago it was reported in the press that the body of Dr. Schaeffer, a former Nazi, who was responsible for the disclosure of the notorious Boxheim documents which revealed the ruthless measures which the Nazis were planning against Jews and political opponents upon their accession to power (see despatch No. 1312 of December 1, 193151), was found on a railroad track near Frankfort. Dr. Schaeffer [Page 252] was apparently shot by former party colleagues who then threw his body from a bridge to the railroad tracks, about fifty feet below.
As a rule, renegades from the Nazi Party have been put out of the way without attracting public notice. Such instances appear now and then in the foreign press, but seldom in the German press. In permitting the publication of the report of Dr. Schaeffer’s death, the authorities apparently had in mind its effect as a warning to recalcitrant members of the Nazi Party who are dissatisfied with the turn “the national revolution” is now taking.
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Respectfully yours,
- Not printed.↩