Office of the Historian

851.5018/85: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in France (Leahy)

Washington, March 27, 1941—6 p.m.

270. The American press yesterday published a report from Vichy to the effect that M. Achard45 had made public the terms of a barter arrangement for the exchange of supplies between the occupied and unoccupied zones of France, by the terms of which the occupied zone would send to the unoccupied zone 800,000 tons wheat, 200,000 tons sugar, 100,000 tons bran and 300,000 tons potatoes. In return the free zone will send 1,390,000 head of live stock, 36,000 tons table oil, 100,000 tons salt, 60,000 tons vegetables and 8,000 tons cheese.

It is presumed that this barter arrangement is the same as outlined in your telegram 169, February 7, 3 p.m. and despatch No. 67, March 3, 1941.46

Please confirm and comment whether you think its present announcement has any particular military or political significance, and whether [Page 134] it should cause any reconsideration by us of the sending of the gift cargoes by the Red Cross.47

Welles
  1. French Secretary of State for Supplies.↩
  2. Neither printed.↩
  3. In telegram No. 407, April 7, 7 p.m., Ambassador Leahy stated that the French Foreign Office denied emphatically that any new food barter deal between occupied and unoccupied France had been signed (851.5018/100).↩