851.48/136: Telegram

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

58. Department’s 32, January 13, 3 p.m. The Foreign Office frankly states that there have been recent small meat shipments not only from the southern occupied zone around Bordeaux but from unoccupied France to the Paris area. This is due in part to the fact that Paris has been without meat for some time. (In addition to German requisitions for their armed forces, owing to heavier taxation in the Paris area livestock owners prefer to sell in smaller districts than to ship there.) It is, however, normal that Paris should at this time of the year receive meat supplies from the Correze, Cantal, etc. The French Government insists (first) that only “normal” quantities have been shipped and (second) that it cannot renounce its obligation to feed the people of the occupied territory.

The situation at Paris it is stated was quite serious. A telegram in this sense, a copy of which was shown the Embassy, was transmitted to Ambassador Henry-Haye. (Apparently he had received inquiries from our Red Cross.) It is the Embassy’s understanding that discussions are now going on with the Germans which would involve the shipment of 13,500 tons of wheat per year from the free zone to the occupied zone, and a shipment of 12,500 tons of meat from the occupied zone to the free zone. So far this has not been definitely concluded and the figure should be considered confidential. The French authorities point out that it is impossible to cut the country completely by an artificial demarcation line and extremely difficult even to ascertain the country’s needs by different areas; railway statistics are the only means available to cover even approximately such an artificial division.

In general, the northern occupied area supplies the unoccupied zone with potatoes, sugar, wheat, wine, milk and beef whereas the unoccupied [Page 101] zone furnishes the other with fruits, spring vegetables, macaroni, et cetera, mutton, oils, fats and other African products largely processed at Marseille. While the French will give full guarantees that no foodstuffs imported from abroad will be shipped to the occupied territory and that foodstuffs produced in the unoccupied area will be shipped to the occupied territory only in fixed quantities and only in return for equivalent products, they do not feel that they can completely shut off all food shipments from unoccupied to occupied France.

Leahy