740.00116 European War 1939/1045: Telegram
The Ambassador in Turkey (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 11—2:29 a.m.]
1393. In conversation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs on Saturday he invited me to express my personal views “as an international lawyer and not as the American Ambassador” as to the position which the Turkish Government should take with respect to the American, British and Soviet notes concerning asylum to war criminals.
[Page 465]I pointed out that extradition had long since established the principle of rendition between nations for offenses relevantly as unimportant as bankruptcy frauds; that asylum is not a prerogative of the individual but a privilege to be granted or withheld by a sovereign state; that international law undergoes frequent change in reflecting the conscience of the world and is not a fixed or immutable code; that a better world will never be achieved if nothing is to change; that war criminals should not be permitted to enjoy the Kaiser’s luxurious post war existence; that the small neutral states of Europe are the states menaced most by war criminals and in consequence have the strongest incentive not to shield them; that a neutral country which granted asylum to one or more important war criminals would assume the grave responsibility of a repetition of the 100 days after Napoleon’s escape from Elba; that the inevitable intrigues of war criminals operating from neutral soil in an endeavor to return to power would disturb the peace of the world; that there is a clear distinction between refugees who had sought to uphold political principles and common criminals masquerading as statesmen, military or police, and that this distinction is as clearly definable as that between malum prohibitum and malum per se; that those who have knowingly and flagrantly violated international law have forfeited the right to invoke its principles to shield themselves from the consequences of their acts; that the granting of asylum by a neutral state to war criminals masquerading as political refugees would deal a severe blow at the foundation of a new world order of decent international conduct; and that there can be no such new world order without the surrender of some degree of sovereignty as has already been recognized in innumerable multilateral international agreements from maritime codes to entry into the League of Nations.
Numan replied that he was “99%” in agreement with my arguments. He remarked that he personally favored an international law which did not recognize asylum for war criminals, but that he was confronted with the problem of having to act under existing international law. He said he had already rejected the suggestion of some of the other neutrals for joint action and had warned them to be “extremely careful” in their answers to the American, British and Soviet notes as the consequences in connection with the establishment of a new world order might be serious. He said it was his intention to wait another 10 days or 2 weeks before answering the notes in order that public discussion might come to an end and that he contemplated an answer to the effect that the Turkish Government was prepared to apply existing international law or any new international law that had sufficient authority behind it.