Office of the Historian

741.61/732: Telegram

The Chargé in France (Wilson) to the Secretary of State

Paris, June 24, 1939—6 p.m.
[Received 6:10 p.m.]

1192. Charvériat9 said to me this afternoon that the negotiations with the Soviet Government continued to turn on the one point the [Page 275] protection of the Baltic States. The proposals which the British and French Ambassadors together with Strang presented to Molotov on June 21 contained in fact certain changes from earlier proposals. Molotov, however, on June 22 informed the Ambassadors that the new proposals failed to represent any progress. Molotov proposed that if the British and French were unwilling to mention the Baltic States by name in the agreement then there should be merely a three-power mutual assistance pact in general terms with no other country mentioned therein as receiving a guarantee.

Charvériat said that this would be unsatisfactory and they would eliminate what had been the chief objective of the British and French namely to associate the Soviet Union in the guaranty of Poland. Strang was awaiting further instructions from London and he, Charvériat, was confident that a formula would be worked out on which agreement could be reached.

I inquired what this formula might be. Charvériat said in strict confidence that it might take the following form: a three-power mutual assistance agreement in general terms accompanied by a secret letter in which each partner would set out the specific cases in which it would regard action by an outside power as constituting aggression against it; the other two partners would promise to give assistance in the cases of aggression specified.

Charvériat said that the Soviet representatives had shown themselves extraordinarily suspicious and hard to deal with.

But in fairness to the Soviet Government it should be borne in mind that at no time since the negotiations began had the Soviet Government sought to introduce a new element. It had stated its position on the Baltic States at the outset and had maintained this position consistently.

Charvériat said that there were many stories of extravagant offers being made by Hitler to induce Stalin to break off the Anglo-French negotiations but no confirmation of the report that an important German trade delegation would go shortly to Moscow.10

Wilson
  1. Émile Charvériat, Director of Political and Commercial Affairs at the French Foreign Office.↩
  2. For correspondence on the course of the negotiations between Germany and the Soviet Union, see pp. 312 ff.↩