740.00116 EW/9–2844
Press Release Issued by the Department of State, September 28, 1944
At his press and radio news conference today, the Secretary of State said:
“Considerable attention has been attracted by a statement that a list of war criminals compiled by the War Crimes Commission in London does not include the names of Hitler and other top Nazi officials. The answer to any suggestion that they have been or are likely to be overlooked by the United Nations is found in the Moscow Declaration of 1943 on German atrocities which, after stating that the perpetrators of atrocities in occupied territories will be brought back to the scene of their crimes and judged on the spot by the peoples whom they have outraged, specifically declares that the ‘major criminals, whose offenses have no particular geographical localization …98 will be punished by the joint decision of the Governments of the Allies.’
“The omission of the names of these people from any particular list compiled by the War Crimes Commission is without any significance whatsoever from the point of view of what the Allied Powers have in mind in regard to them.”
- Omission indicated in the original press release.↩