Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1933, Volume II, “The Secretary of State to the Consul General at Berlin (Messersmith)”
“Representative of the Watch Tower Bible Tract Society informs Department that an order has been issued by the German authorities requiring the vacating of the Home at Magdeburg owned by the Society and now occupied by Harbeck, an American citizen and the Society’s resident manager, and that a portion of the Society’s property including books is being burned today by soldiers or police acting as custodians of the Society’s factory. You are requested to lend appropriate assistance and report by cable.”
A telegram from the Secretary of State in Washington to the American Consul General in Berlin, passing on what the Society had reported to the Department. It is the Department repeating the Society’s account, not an observation by any American official. Two days later a further instruction to the Ambassador (document 290 in the same volume) states that “the Department is also informed that recently the German authorities burned some of the Society’s publications”.
Official source (opens in new tab)
Provenance and verification note for Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1933, Volume II, The Secretary of State to the Consul General at Berlin (Messersmith)
Confidence note. Opened on the United States Department of State Office of the Historian site on 19 September 2026 and read in full. The telegram falls between the printed page breaks for pp. 412 and 413 of the volume.
Corroborated by. src-de33-yb74-aftermath
Notes. The burning this telegram reports was reported to Washington on 7 September 1933. The organisation’s own 1974 Year Book dates the large burning of literature at Magdeburg to 21, 23 and 24 August 1933. Whether the two accounts describe the same destruction is not established by either document.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-frus-burning-telegram