For your consideration is an original and historically significant U.S. Seventh Army Western Military District directive dated 3 December 1945, issued from Headquarters, Seventh Army, Western Military District, APO 758, U.S. Army, under file designation AG 383.7 CA and titled Repatriation of Soviet Citizens. The memorandum refers to a Headquarters, U.S. Forces, European Theater directive of 17 November 1945 concerning persons subject to repatriation under the Yalta Agreement and establishes an important review procedure for disputed cases. The underlying U.S.Soviet agreement, signed at Yalta on 11 February 1945, provided for the care and return of Soviet citizens liberated by American forces and American citizens liberated by Soviet forces.
The substance of the present directive is particularly significant. It orders that persons claimed by Soviet repatriation representatives as Soviet citizens, where there was a reasonable basis for doubt concerning their nationality or uncertainty as to whether the Yalta Agreement applied to them, were to be informed of their right to have their cases reviewed by a board of three United States officers. Those officers were empowered to make the final factual determination, and headquarters further directed that appropriate publicity be used to ensure affected persons knew of this right. The document therefore records a procedural safeguard within one of the most difficult displaced-person and nationality questions confronting occupation authorities in late 1945.
The timing is especially important. During 1945, U.S. authorities were actively debating the scope of the Yalta repatriation obligations and, in particular, how disputed nationality and unwilling return were to be handled. State Department records show that American policy distinguished between recognized Soviet citizens and persons from territories whose incorporation into the Soviet Union the United States had not recognized; by September 1945, officials were also debating whether the Yalta Agreement itself required the use of force in repatriation. The present 3 December 1945 directive falls directly within that unsettled policy period and is therefore a revealing primary-source document of U.S. administrative efforts to introduce case-by-case review before final disposition.
Issued By Command of Lieutenant General Keyes, the memorandum bears the contemporary authentication of Elsie J. Chaman, Captain, WAC, Acting Assistant Adjutant General, together with a distribution list to Military Government offices in Baden-Wrttemberg, Greater Hesse, Bremen, and other Seventh Army administrative sections. Produced as an original period stencil-mimeographed certified headquarters communication, the sheet retains the monospaced type, uneven ink impression, upper-left filing perforations, light toning, and handling wear characteristic of genuine 1945 U.S. Army administrative material. Preserved in fine original condition, it is an unusually substantive artifact of American military government, displaced-person administration, nationality review, and the implementation of the Yalta repatriation agreement in postwar Germany.
