As soon as the surrender of Germany had been announced British forces executed "Operation Eclipse": the disarmament of the German armed forces and the occupation, rehabilitation and de-nazification of Germany. Britain was responsible for north-west Germany, the Ruhr, the Netherlands and Denmark. At the end of July 1945, Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery was made military governor of the British occupation zone, with
Brian Robertson as Chief of Staff and Montgomery's deputy. Both were also on the
Allied Control Council. The
British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) was formed on 25 August 1945 with the headquarters in
Bad Oeynhausen and Field Marshal Sir
Gerald Templer serving as Director of Military Government. BAOR was made responsible for the occupation and administration of the British Zone. They requisitioned German buildings for military administration and accommodation. Some 800,000 soldiers from BAOR were in Germany by the end of 1945, and new barracks had to be built due to the intense damage done to German cities during the war, particularly Hamburg. The Canadians had a temporary occupation force (CAOF) peaking at 853 officers and 16,983 other ranks. The Canadian government only made them available during the period of adjustment and disarmament following the occupation of Germany. By mid July 1946 most of the Canadians had left for home. A number of departments were set up for various purposes. The Property Control Department took over Nazi-controlled buildings and properties including looted works of art and other valuables. These objects were held for safekeeping until returned in due course to their rightful owners, most from outside of Germany. There was also the Public Safety Department, who seized all kinds of rifles and revolvers from German troops and civilians. A law was passed forbidding German civilians possessing arms of any kind. The RAF were also part of the occupation and were renamed British Air Forces of Occupation (BAFO) on 15 July 1945. The
Malcolm Clubs were set up for RAF personnel in towns and villages across the zone. Two years later however, the BAFO had shrunk to ten squadrons at three airfields, all directly under control of the Air Headquarters at
Bad Eilsen. The Control Commission for Germany (CCG/BE) was set up consisting of British
civil servants as well as military personnel. It took over aspects of local government, housing, transport and (through its new Special Police Corps, also known as the British Civil Police or the Public Safety Branch) policing. The CCG/BE re-established the city of Hamburg as a
German state but with borders that had been drawn by the Nazi government in 1937.
George Ayscough Armytage and
Governor Henry V. Berry identified with the city and worked through
indirect rule, asking prospective Hamburg inhabitants to resume office in the administration. The British also created three new German states in
Ordinance No. 46: •
Schleswig-Holstein – emerging in 1946 from the
Prussian Province of Schleswig-Holstein; •
Lower Saxony – the merger of Brunswick,
Oldenburg, and
Schaumburg-Lippe with the
state of Hanover in 1946; and •
North Rhine-Westphalia – the merger of
Lippe with the Prussian provinces of the
Rhineland (northern part) and
Westphalia – during 1946–47. In March 1946 the British zonal advisory board (Zonenbeirat) was established, with representatives of the states, the central offices, political parties, trade unions, and consumer organisations. As indicated by its name, the zonal advisory board had no legislative power, but was merely advisory. The Control Commission for Germany – British Element made all decisions with its legislative power. In 1947, the American Zone of Occupation, being landlocked, had no port facilities – thus the
Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and
Bremerhaven became exclaves within the British Zone. ;Military governors: • 22 May 1945 – 30 April 1946:
Bernard Montgomery • 1 May 1946 – 31 October 1947:
William Sholto Douglas • 1 November 1947 – 21 September 1949:
Brian Hubert Robertson Displaced persons, refugees and POWs By 22 June 1945, of the 7,614,914 prisoners (of all designations) held in British and American camps, 4,209,000 were soldiers captured before the German capitulation and who were therefore considered "POWs". The rest were classed as
Disarmed Enemy Forces by the Americans and
Surrendered Enemy Personnel by the British. According to Allied agreements, these were supposed to be split between Britain and the United States. The British in their zone were in possession of just over 2,000,000 German POWs, but were unable to handle this manyfeeding, housing and looking after them became a logistical nightmare. The British had no choice but to renegotiate with the Americans on their split. The British reported that they did not have places to keep them or men to guard them on the continent. In addition it was thought that moving them to England would arouse public resentment and adversely affect morale. Another problem the British faced was that they had the largest population of the four allied powers. This was exacerbated by the great number of German refugees who had come by sea fleeing the Soviets, as well as
forced expulsion from Eastern Europe. German POWs from abroad also arrived by sea in their thousands, thus making the accommodation shortage even worse and also caused a reduction in the food ration in early 1946. Over the next year, however, many refugees obtained accommodation and work as the economy recovered – the vast majority were granted German citizenship. In addition to this the British had to deal with tens of thousands of
displaced persons. Many of these were from
Eastern European nations occupied by the Soviets, and as such many refused to go back. The British initially used them as watchman and labour units, but set up the
Mixed Service Organisation, using these displaced persons as drivers, clerks, mechanics and guards. Another organisation was needed to control the flow of refugees and prevent smuggling. In 1946 the
Frontier Control Service was set up, which was a civilian frontier force administered by the British Control Commission. Many German POWs were formed into Civilian Labour unitsthey still had the status of Surrendered Enemy Personnel but they were used where help was needed such as unloading supplies. The German Civil Labour Organisation (GCLO) was set up on 1 August 1947, after the Labour Service units were broken up. The Germans were given the choice of either joining the GCLO or being sent to a prisoner-of-war camp until they were released into civilian life. By late 1947, over 50,000 Germans were employed and organized in units that were attached to parts of the British Army or the RAF as labourers, drivers, mechanics and in many other roles. They had a staff of between 220 and 475 men. Although the GCLO was considered a civil organisation, its members wore a kind of uniform and were incorporated into a structure that conformed to military principles. After numerous former members of the
Wehrmacht had left the GCLO over time, new members were hired by the British and it used its right to forcibly recruit staff if necessary. Most German captives were released by the end of 1948. The GCLO was transferred to the German Service Organisation (GSO) on 21 October 1950. In January 1945, the basic German ration was 1,625 calories/day, and that was further reduced to 1,100 calories by the end of the war in the British zone. This remained at that level into the summer, with levels varying from 840 calories/day in the Ruhr to 1,340 calories/day in Hamburg. The German population was existing on rations that would not sustain life in the long term. In order to avert starvation in Germany, the
Lord President of the Council,
Herbert Morrison, negotiated a deal with the Americans whereby of grain was shipped to Germany in return for a reduction of in shipments to Britain. The British also had to deal with active resistance groups known as
Werwolfs. Violence however failed to mobilize a spirit of popular national resistance, largely due to war-weariness of the populace, and as a result
Werwolf attacks were low and relatively few reprisals took place in the British zone. At the end of October 1946, the British Zone had a population of:
Denazification enter the cinema to watch a film showing scenes from the concentration camps at Belsen and
Buchenwald Shortly after the German surrender, the Allied armies were on the hunt for notorious German war criminals, generals and high-ranking members of the Nazi Party. The British had already prepared a plan from 1942 onwards, assigning a number of civil servants to head the administration of liberated territory with extensive powers to remove from their post, in both public and private domains, anyone suspected, usually on behavioural grounds, of harbouring Nazi sympathies. During the early months of occupation, the British were at the forefront of bringing to justice anyone, both soldiers and civilians, who had committed war crimes against POWs or captured Allied aircrew. One of the most infamous was
Heinrich Himmlerhe was arrested at a British checkpoint in disguise and was taken to the headquarters of the Second British Army in
Lüneburg on 23 May 1945 for interrogation. Whilst being examined by a doctor, Himmler committed suicide with a concealed
cyanide pill. The British established their own
War Crimes Investigation Teams also known as WCIT. Trials took place within the British occupation zone, the most notorious being the
Belsen trial following the liberation of
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945. Taken to trial were 45 former
SS men, women and
kapos. Eleven were sentenced to death and hanged, including Commandant
Josef Kramer and
Irma Grese on 13 December 1945. There was also the
Hamburg Ravensbrück Trialsseveral in all that were held at the Curio house in the
Rotherbaum quarter of Hamburg, lasting two years. Executions relating to these trials were carried out on the
gallows at Hamelin prison by renowned hangman
Albert Pierrepoint. Between December 1948 and October 1949 he executed 226 people, often over ten over a day, and on several occasions groups of up to seventeen over two days. Between November 1945 and October 1946, the
Nuremberg trials also took place, this being an 'International Military Tribunal' in the American zone of occupation but with all four allied powers being involved. Judge
Geoffrey Lawrence was President of the Judicial group. An
interrogation was set up at Bad Nenndorf by the
Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC)it was notorious for its alleged mistreatment of detainees, allegedly involving torture using buckets of cold water, beatings, and burns with lit cigarettes. A public scandal ensued, with the centre eventually being closed down. Other smaller trials continued, but by 1948 these became few and far between as the political situation with the Soviet Union deteriorated. By this time also, the British government wanted the rebuilding of the German economy to take precedence over the imprisonment of Nazi criminals. By 1948 WCIT had brought around 350 cases to trial involving over 1,000 accused Nazis. Of these, 667 were imprisoned and 230 sentenced to death. The Royal Navy seized the majority of the harboured German naval fleet: mainly in
Kiel. The
U-Boats were disposed of during
Operation Deadlight: the Royal Navy towed the submarines to three areas about north-west of Ireland to sink them. A number of Germany's capital ships were seized: on 27 May 1945, the German cruiser
Prinz Eugen and the light cruiser —the only major German naval vessels to survive the war in serviceable condition—were escorted by the British cruisers and to
Wilhelmshaven. In July
German cruiser Admiral Hipper which had been severely damaged by
RAF Bomber Command and then scuttled in port was raised and towed to
Heikendorfer Bay and subsequently broken up for scrap between 1948 and 1952. Other severely damaged cruisers
Leipzig and
Emden met the same fate, while the capsized
German cruiser Admiral Scheer was partially broken up for scrap. The German island of
Heligoland in the
North Sea fell within the British zone and had contained a large U-Boat base. On 18 April 1947, in an attempt to destroy the base and remove it as a fleet base location for Germany, the Royal Navy detonated 6,700 tonnes of explosives. Known as "
Operation Big Bang" or "British Bang", this resulted in
one of the biggest single non-nuclear detonations in history. The blow shook the main island several miles down to its base, changing its shape; and as a result an area known as the '' was created. As well as disarmament there was much to find in the way of war booty and intelligence. With the completion of the
T-Force and the
Alsos missions which had gathered intelligence and booty in the fighting, all these were turned over to the US
Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT). FIAT was authorized to "coordinate, integrate, and direct the activities of the various missions and agencies" interested in scientific and technical intelligence but prohibited from collecting and exploiting such information on its own responsibility. As a result, the British set up a number of new post-war operations within their zone: the
Fedden Mission was set up to exploit German aeronautics and deny German technical skills to the Soviet Union. The mission was sent by the
Ministry of Aircraft Production to gather technical
intelligence about German aircraft and
aero-engines.
Operation Surgeon was also created: a list of 1,500 German scientists and technicians was drawn up, with the goal of forcibly removing them from Germany to lessen the risk of their falling into Soviet hands. The German scientists and technicians were, in general, very co-operative with the British interviewers, with some wishing to emigrate to the U.S. or Canada. Of the scientists relocated from 1946-1947, 100 chose to work for the UK. The British had enough material to conduct launches of
V-2 rockets and set up
Operation Backfire. The operation was carried out
during October 1945 from a launch pad near
Arensch in order to demonstrate the weapon. The handling and launch procedures were operated by German personnel (many of whom were "lent" by the Americans), as they were the only ones who knew the procedures. The British treatment of the German soldiers, who included enlisted men, technicians, and officers, was generous. Four rockets were launched including one on 17 October 1945 that reached an altitude of about . On 23 December 1946, a study group of the
British Interplanetary Society submitted a redesign of the V-2 rocket to the
British Ministry of Supply but the proposal was never adopted. File:Germany Under Allied Occupation CL3304.jpg|Two members of a Royal Air Force Disarmament Wing check an aircraft wreckage dump at
Flensburg airfield File:The Destruction of Heligoland Defenses. April 1947, Still Taken From An Admiralty Documentary Film Processed For Scientific Purposes. the Camera Was Set Up on the Island of Dune, Half a Mile Away From Heligolan A31319.jpg|A still taken from the 'Destruction of Heligoland Defenses' on 18 April 1947 - an Admiralty documentary film processed for scientific purposes. This was one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions File:V-2 lift-off.jpg|A German V-2 rocket fired by the British from a launch pad near Cuxhaven, during Operation
Backfire in 1945. There was also the
Target Intelligence Committee (TICOM) which was a secret project to find and seize German
intelligence assets, particularly in the field of
cryptology and
signals intelligence. This was an Anglo-American project with the aim to seek out and capture the cryptologic secrets of Germany. The concept was for six teams of cryptologic experts, mainly drawn from the code-breaking center at
Bletchley Park. They went to Germany just after the war had ended to capture the documents, technology and personnel of the various German signal intelligence organizations before these precious secrets could be destroyed, looted, or captured by the Soviets. The biggest discovery was the "Russian FISH", a set of German wide-band receivers used to intercept Soviet high-level radio
Teletype signals. These were sent back to England, reconstructed, and tested at
Steeple Claydon in
Buckinghamshire; they soon encountered Russian radio traffic.
Agriculture and Industry Over 300,000 Germans (non-Nazi officers and men) were released from captivity by the British between June and September 1945 to work on the land and bring in the harvest, in a project named Operation
Barleycorn. The project, masterminded by Major General
Gerald Templer was successful, and as a result more prisoners were released for transport and mining. Much of Germany's industrial plant fell within the British zone, especially the industrial power house, the
Ruhr. There was a concern that rebuilding a former enemy's industrial powerhouse would eventually prove a danger to British security and compete with the weakened British economy. In January 1946 the Allied Control Council set the foundation of the future German economy by putting a cap on German steel production capacity. The British had argued for a less-limited reduction of twelve million tons of steel per year, but had to submit to the will of the US, France, and the Soviet Union (which had argued for a 3 million ton limit). Steel plants thus made redundant were to be dismantled by the allies - the resources being sent back to the respective country. Coal production in the Ruhr accounted for 93% for all zones combined. The French in particular wanted to place the area under international control. The British however refused and had begun to pursue an anti-Soviet foreign policy which strongly influenced its occupational policy. The British thus feared Soviet influence in the Ruhr and were prepared to snub the French. Once this internationalisation had receded, British
Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and US
Secretary of State George C. Marshall agreed that the Ruhr's industries should be distributed to help the economy of war weary Europe. In
Essen the British set up its headquarters for the North German Coal Control at the
Krupp Mansion at
Villa Hügel. From there they organised the output and distribution from all the Ruhr coal fields. The Royal Engineers restored much of the transport infrastructure but labour shortage was a huge problem. In an effort to find more labour the British launched Operation
Coal Scuttle during the autumn of 1945; where 30,000 former soldiers were released to work in the coal mines. Nevertheless this was far fewer than were needed to restore output to pre-war production levels. Severe shortages of labour and raw materials meant that production remained at very low levels throughout 1945 and 46, nevertheless the economy started to revive. The destroyed German transportation infrastructure created additional logistical difficulties, with rail lines, bridges, canals and terminals left in ruins. The turnaround time for rail wagons was five times higher than the pre-war average. Only 1,000 of the 13,000 kilometres of track in the British zone were operable. Urban centres often had to be supplied with horse-drawn carriages and wheeled carts. at the 1948
Amsterdam International Autoshow -
Volkswagen was revived under the direction of British army officer Major
Ivan Hirst of the
Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) One of the many factories the British had taken over was the
Volkswagen plant at Wolfsburg in June 1945. This was put under the overall direction of Colonel Michael McEvoy at Rhine Army Headquarters. A
Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) officer Major
Ivan Hirst revived the factory soon after, which had been badly damaged by allied air attacks. Hirst had the drains fixed, and bomb craters filled in; land in front of the factory was given over to food production. He discovered an intact
Volkswagen Beetle within the factory from which he was able to present at headquarters. Hirst recognized that economical vehicle production would help in remedying the transport bottlenecks of the British Army. On 22 August he received an order to produce a vast number of Volkswagen Beetles for the British military administration. Cars were put together with old-stock and whatever could be found, many using parts from the
Kübelwagen until 1946, when the factory produced about 1,000 cars a month. With the start of civilian series production by 27 December 1945, the Wolfsburg plant became the first automotive factory in Germany to resume production after the war. Aside from some remaining military production, civilian output reached almost 9,000 units in 1947, and for 1948 total production increased to 19,244 cars. Hirst also managed to establish a network for exports to the
Netherlands. He carried on the supervision until
Heinz Nordhoff was appointed director of the factory in 1949. Other German businesses were assisted by the Army, including the
KWS Grain Factory and the Huth-Apparatebau radio factory in Hanover. The latter employed locals to make radio sets manufactured primarily from components salvaged from German military equipment. A solution by the British for the Germans to become self-sustaining industry was to build up a strong, free
trade union movement in Germany. In early 1947 several unions joined to form the
Gewerkschaftsbund in der britischen Besatzungszone. On 23–25 April the
Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB was founded in
Bielefeld as a confederation of twelve unions. By 30 June 1949 the DGB within the British zone had some 2,885,036 members. To solve the issue with the Ruhr, an Authority was set out in the communiqué issued 7 June 1948, after the
London Six-Power Conference. The Authority would "supervise the production, organization, trade and ownership policies of the Ruhr industries and distribute their products so that all countries cooperating for the common economic good will have adequate access to them". The Statute for the
International Authority for the Ruhr (IAR) was signed and came into effect on 28 April 1949.
Media and sport in 1946. In 1946 a short documentary film,
A Defeated People, made by the
Crown Film Unit and directed by
Humphrey Jennings, depicting the shattered state of Germany after the war. The film was one of the first to show the consequences of the war for ordinary German civilians and showed what needed to be done – both by the British zone and the German people themselves to build a better Germany from the ruins. A radio station was set up in Hamburg as the sole broadcasting station by British authorities to provide information to the population of the area.
Hugh Carleton Greene, on secondment from the
BBC was sent to create a public service broadcasting in their Zone. On 22 September 1945, Radio Hamburg became
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR) which was run as part by the REME. In Hanover, Major
John Seymour Chaloner who was assigned to the
Public Relations and Information Services Control, a unit rebuilding the German media industry under the supervision of the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office helped set up a magazine titled
Diese Woche (meaning
This Week in English), which had first been published in November 1946. Challoner worked with recently released German prisoner of war
Rudolf Augstein and the magazine was later renamed
Der Spiegel which was first published on 4 January 1947. The British helped to revive
association football in Germany. An attempt was made to stage a
German football championship in 1947 but this failed. The 1947
British occupation zone football championship saw the best teams in the regional leagues compete against each other with
Hamburger SV winning the final. Eventually an attempt to stage a German championship paid off from all four zones. A championship was staged with the best two clubs from the British zone championship who qualified for the tournament. In
1948 German football championship was created with
1. FC Nürnberg becoming champions.
Sub-zones Belgium Army units from other countries were stationed within the British occupation zone. The largest was the
Belgian Sector allocated on 1 April 1946 to three Belgian infantry brigades of
I Corps under the command of Lieutenant General
Jean-Baptiste Piron. They controlled a -strip from the Belgian-German border at the south of the British zone, and covered the cities of
Aachen,
Cologne,
Soest,
Siegen and
Kassel. Corps headquarters moved to
Haelen Caserne,
Junkersdorf,
Lindenthal, Cologne, in 1948.
Poland Polish units which included
1st Armoured Division were stationed in the
zone, in the northern area of the district of
Emsland, as well as
Oldenburg and
Leer. The administrative centre was the city of
Haren and was renamed
Maczków (after divisional commander
Stanisław Maczek) from 1945 to 1947. Polish units within the British Army were demobilised in June 1947 the last elements leaving the following year.
Norway The
Norwegian Brigade Group in Germany had 4,000 soldiers based in Hanover. It would later have headquarters in
Oerlinghausen,
Neumünster and
Rendsburg.
Denmark A
Danish Brigade in Germany of 4000 men, under British command, was sent to occupy
Oldenburg in the summer of 1947, after an agreement, signed at
Copenhagen in April 1947, between
Denmark and United Kingdom. A Danish Occupation Force was formally established on 7 October 1949. The headquarter was in the town of
Jever in
East Friesland. However, it was decided to move the brigade to
Itzehoe in October 1949, naming itself as
Tysklandsbrigaden. It remained stationed at Itzehoe, under the name of The Danish Command in Germany, until 1958.
Netherlands The London conference of 23 April 1949, during the
Six-Power Conference, gave the
Netherlands some less far-reaching border modifications, after the failure of
Bakker-Schut Plan. So, at 12 noon that day, Dutch troops moved to occupy an area of 69 km2 (17,000 acres), the most relevants parts were
Elten (near
Emmerich am Rhein) and
Selfkant. Many other small border corrections were done, mostly in the vicinity of
Arnhem and
Dinxperlo, which also were part of this small sub-zone. ==Cold War==