Kreis Resident Officers | Control Commission G

KREIS RESIDENT OFFICERS

The Role of the Kreis Resident Officer

In April 1946 as the Control Commission embarked upon major manpower reductions, and with the progressive devolution of responsibility for governance to German authorities, it became necessary to reorganise the arrangements at Kreis level. The military ‘K’ (Kreis) Detachments which had been formed after the invasion to provide supervision and control would be replaced by a Kreis Resident Officer (KRO). The new arrangements would apply throughout the British Zone and were to be in place by 1st January 1947. Detailed Policy Instruction 24 set out the detailed arrangements. [1] Each Kreis would have a KRO of Lt Col or civilian Principal rank. Initially KROs would be military officers, often the former Kreis commandant, but they would be progressively replaced by civilians or by civilianised military officers. Groups of Kreise within an area would be organised under a Kreis Group HQ. Kreis Resident Officers would normally live in their Kreis unless that meant living alone, in which case they must live in the Group HQ or the nearest Army or RAF unit.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS OF KREIS OFFICERS

Political
1. To help development of self-government, by guiding local Councils.
2. To supervise political activity, especially in the Stadt Kreise.
3. To prevent the parties successful at the polls from victimising their opponents.
4. To prevent the stifling of criticism and produce healthy public opinion.
General Information

To produce general information of what the Germans are thinking and doing is a vital function of the present Kreis Detachments and must be continued. Personal knowledge by Kreis officers of local German personalities will be important.

General Inspection and Supervision

Kreis officers will also be responsible for inspection and supervision to ensure that British policy is being applied by the Germans in accordance with current British directives

Zonal Policy Instruction 24, 14 April 1946

KROs would be responsible for three main functions at Kreis level: supporting and supervising political development; keeping the Control Commission informed of German opinion and activities; and inspection and supervision to ensure Germans were applying British policy.KROs would spend most of their time out and about inspecting and discussing problems with German officials, so the key to their success would be to keep them free from paperwork: KROs “must not be involved in office work”.[2] Each KRO would have only a small administrative support team of around eight civilians, so functional officers would in future be responsible to their respective Divisions and Branches for activities relating to policy implementation. KROs’ current duties in respect of Summary Courts would be reassigned: additional Legal officers would be appointed to act as circuit Summary Court Presidents, and the Public Safety Branch would in future be responsible for preparing prosecution cases for the Courts. In preparation for the new arrangements, Divisions and Branches were instructed to review and amend all their instructions calling for a written response – even a signature! - from the KRO.

Development of the KRO Handbook

To help KROs to exercise their new roles successfully, and to guide them in performing their duties, a two-part handbook was produced, summarising important CCG policy and technical instructions. Described by the Deputy Military Governor, as a vade vecum (Latin ‘go with me’)[3] a working party was established In June 1946 of a to design the Handbook.

Volume I would cover:

an historical outline
the German administration
the Control Commission
British Policy
the duties of KROs (the meeting decided that this section should be moved to the initial section of Volume II).

Volume II would contain technical information required by Kreis Resident Officers while carrying out their duties, in the form of a series of pamphlets which would be contained together within a small sturdy binder. The pamphlets would cover:

Local Government
Education and Religious Affairs
Political parties
Manpower questions, including Trades Unions, industrial organisations and labour supply
Transport
Public Safety
Intelligence
Legal questions
Finance
Miscellaneous, including post and telecommunications, public health, news control, travel, allied liaison
Glossary of German terms

Divisions and Branches were asked to send their comments on the Part I document, and to prepare draft pamphlets for inclusion in Part II.[4] Not everyone was supportive of the initiative. Major General Erskine, Deputy Chief of Staff (Policy) questioned the value of Part II because CCG was in a state of evolution and change, so that “much which we write down will be out of date tomorrow”.[5] Another commentator, Lt Col P Lynden-Bell was dissatisfied with Part I, which he thought could be improved by including a mention of the C19th Schleswig-Holstein wars which had created ongoing problems in the northern Kreise. He also thought it would help KROs to have a summary of current outstanding problems such as Germany’s Eastern boundary, the Saar, the Ruhr and its French claims, the western frontier and Dutch claims. These suggestions were not adopted.[6]

Publication of the KRO Handbook

PART I

Part I of the Handbook was published in November 1946, broadly along the lines originally envisaged, i.e. Historical Outline; The German Administrative Structure; The Control Commission; British Policy in Germany. Part I also contained several interesting and useful appendices, including a bibliography of authorities on German history, a time chart of German history from AD800 to 1939, provinces and Länder of the British Zones, Allied Control Authority organisation chart, CCG organisation chart, lay-out of a Regional Headquarters, layout of a Land/Regional Headquarters, abbreviations in general use in the Control Commission, lay-out of the Nazi Party, and a map of the British Zone. A final appendix describing the Zonal Advisory Council was added after the local council elections in Autumn 1946, just before publication. [The appendices will be attached as linked documents.]. While written for KROs, Part I was also intended to inform CCG officials more generally and seems to have been issued to existing Officers and new arrivals to the organisation.[7]

Chapter I - the Historical Outline is intended to provide background about Germany against which the work of the Control Commission should be seen, and to place into perspective historical developments such as the ascendancy of Prussia, the work of Bismarck and the rise of the National Socialist state. But there is no doubt about the lens through which German history is to be viewed. Describing how “the collective spirit of every nation today contains a few political ideas, which …go far back into history”, it is claimed that, in the case of Britain, these include the instinct of personal liberty, while “German traditions are those of subjugation of the individual to the ‘state’”. Then, acknowledging that even the most regimented nation is not homogenous, the author then describes how a “minority political consciousness … embodied in the commercial cities of the Middle Ages… passed to the class of skilled artisans who formed the backbone of modern Germany”. The remainder of the Chapter is a fairly straightforward account of the main periods of Germany’s history from Charlemagne onwards, but the conclusion sees a link between the Holy Roman Empire’s purported dream of world-domination and the “more sinister and retrograde” Second and Third Reichs, and implies that this is due to “the absence of the ordered process of evolution which has formed our present English [sic] State”.[8]

Chapter II The German Administrative System describes, first, central government and the Länder, tracing their development from the Weimar Republic onwards. It explains the various levels of local government: Regional (Land or Province), Kreis (literally circle, but broadly ‘county’) and Gemeinde (community, or parish); and then the centralised functions (Sonderverwaltungen) such as defence, railways and postal services. Since there was as yet no central government in Germany, it was local government bodies with whom CCG officials were primarily engaged. It was decided that, apart from noting that the process of centralisation had been ruthlessly enforced by the Nazis, it was unnecessary to devote much space to the administrative machinery of the National Socialist (Nazi) state, since “one of the principal objects of the occupying forces is to eradicate all traces of it”.

Chapter III The Control Commission has three Sections. Section I begins by explaining that British post-war planning had commenced in 1943, when a Civil Affairs Training Centre was established in Wimbledon to train the mixed US/UK civil affairs detachments who were to go ashore with the occupation assault divisions and follow behind them as they made their way across Europe to ensure law and order and to control relations between the Allied Armies and the liberated populations. Then follows a description of how the Civil Affairs operation became the Military Government in February 1945 when the 21st Army Group crossed into Germany. At this point, the joint US/UK units were unscrambled, and the US forces went south to the American Zone. Military Government (MG) in the British Zone then became purely British. MG detachments were progressively established at every level of German administration: Province (P Dets), Land, Regierungsbezirk (L/R Dets), Landkreis and Stadtkreis (K Dets), and Special Relief (R) Detachments to cope with displaced persons with the assistance of UNRRA United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration). Their tasks were defined as:

The establishment of law and order
The enforcement of the Instrument of Surrender
The repatriation of displaced persons
The protection of Allied property
The arrest of war criminals
The elimination of Nazism
The establishment of a suitable civil administration.

These tasks were described as having been undertaken “in a somewhat hand-to-mouth manner” to date, which was hardly surprising, since they were of a continuing nature and unlikely to be completed before the arrival of the Control Commission in July 1945 or perhaps for many years thereafter.

The final paragraphs of Section 1 covered the period from the arrival of the Control Commission in July 1945 until the appointment of Regional Commissioners in May 1946. It explained how responsibility for direction of the Control Commission had first been transferred from the Foreign Office to the War Office[9] and then, in July 1945, to a stand-alone Ministry under the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. More significantly, the Potsdam Agreement, published in July 1945, had legitimised the four Zones of occupation, and established the Inter-Allied administrative machinery.

Section 2 is a detailed, 4-page description of the administrative machinery established to provide Allied control of Germany, beginning with the Declaration of Defeat signed on 5th June 1945 at Marshal Zhukov’s Wendenschloss HQ. This informed the German people that they had been utterly defeated and that the four Allied Governments were taking over supreme authority in Germany. The Handbook states that “[a] great experiment had begun”.[10] Section 2 then proceeds to describe the Allied Control Authority (ACA)in some detail:

the Control Council and its chairmanship
the Coordinating Committee
action in the case of failure to agree
the Allied Secretariat
the Directorates
the Allied Control Authority Building (in Berlin)
the Allied Kommandatura in Berlin[11]

A simplified diagram of the ACA is attached at Appendix C (mistakenly labelled G) on page 62 of the Handbook.

The remaining paragraphs of Section 2 explain that the ultimate objective of the Allied Control Authority, after disarmament and demilitarisation of Germany was to prepare for the reconstruction of German political life on a democratic basis, and the country’s eventual peaceful cooperation in international life. The Potsdam agreement had stated that Germany should be treated as a single economic unit, although no agreement had by then been reached on the establishment of central Ministries and, due to continuing Soviet objections, such agreement was never reached.

Chapter IV British Policy in Germany

Chapter IV summarises the Potsdam Agreement, and then explains the policies being adopted to implement its main provisions, namely disarmament, de-Nazification and Democratisation. These are summarised briefly below. [Sections detailing the tasks involved are progressively being added to the Functions chapter of the website.]

Disarmament. Achieving an agreed Allied disarmament policy had proved extremely difficult. British and American policy was devised to ensure that, while warlike materials and productive capacity should be destroyed, German industry must be allowed sufficient production of essential commodities for the country’s internal consumption and for export trade. The Soviet Union took a more punitive view, and considered it was within its rights to appropriate German industrial plant and machinery for its own use. A ‘level of industry’ agreement was eventually reached in April 1946, which aimed at restricting productive capacity to a percentage of 1938 levels; and certain industries were forbidden altogether, such as war materials, shipping (except fishing vessels), heavy machine tools, aluminium, radio transmitting equipment. The Military Government’s Service Divisions were responsible for removing and destroying German military equipment, while CCG’s Trade and Industry Division was responsible for supervising the reduction and destruction of industry within the British zone.

De-Nazification. British policies were aimed at the elimination of all Nazi and anti-democratic influences from German life. The Nazi Party and its affiliated organisations had been abolished, and prominent Nazis had been brought to trial at Nuremburg. But there were many more-than-nominal Party members, as well as active Nazi sympathisers who had to be removed from positions of influence in public life, and in industry and commerce. It was a fundamental principle that purging Germany of Nazis and Nazism should as far as possible be carried out by the Germans themselves, so that they should feel responsible for its successful implementation and also, more practically, because the task could not be done without the Germans’ help and knowledge. The aim would be to complete the process as soon as possible, to “close an unpleasant chapter in the history of the Occupation”.

Democratisation.

Re-education of the Germans was hampered by the severe economic difficulties in the British Zone, which was the country’s most populous and industrialised area. The British Zone produced less food than the other zones but could not export goods in return for food because Germany was not yet an economic unity. The situation was aggravated by the influx of two million refugees, mainly women, children and old people who were economically unproductive;

The machinery of democratic government had been established with the formation of local councils, political parties, trades unions, etc. To restore political life, the Germans must now be encouraged to use and value the potential of democratic institutions and political activity, including the foundation of political parties;

The first step in the evolution of local government had been taken in establishing nominated representatives with advisory powers first to the lowest levels – Gemeinde, Amt and Kreis - and then Land/Province. The next stage was the transformation of councils into elected bodies and their assumption of executive authority. The first Gemeinde, Amt and Kreis elections had been held in autumn 1946, and those at Land/Province level would follow;

The policy was to establish in the British Zone a separation of political and administrative functions, as was the practice in England [sic] where there was a clear distinction at every level of government between those responsible for making policy and those responsible for its execution. This was a new idea to the Germans, and much guidance and encouragement would be needed to ensure its adoption;

Most provinces of the British Zone had been part of Prussia, which had indoctrinated other German states with its ‘blood and iron’ traditions. Prussia’s abolition and partition was therefore essential, but the form which the regional reorganisation in the British Zone should take was still under consideration (in mid 1946);

Despite the Germans’ current apathy towards running their own affairs, and the “incurable British colonising instinct of ‘ruling the natives for their own good’”, there was no wish to replace the Nazi ‘Führer-Prinzip’ with British direct rule. As soon as Law and order and essential services had to some extent been restored, executive responsibility was being progressively handed over to the Germans, under the principle of indirect rule.

The following section of Chapter IV covers Reparations and Restitution. Reparations to Russia, were to be met by removing materiel from the Soviet Zone. The Soviet Union was to settle Poland’s reparations claims; and the reparation claims of other United Nations were to be met from the Western Zones. In addition USSR was to receive 15% of such usable and complete German industrial capital equipment ‘found in the Western Zones’ as was ‘unnecessary for the German peace economy’, in exchange for food, coal and other commodities. Reparations were the subject of protracted arguments between the Allies and, in 1946, only limited progress had been made. Procedures for restitution of property removed by the Germans to the European countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, France) had been laid down by the Allied Control Authority in early 1946 but had already been in operation for many months beforehand.

The final paragraphs of Chapter IV cover Displaced Persons and Refugees. They describe how, at the end of the War there were over 2.1 million Displaced Persons and Allied ex-prisoners of war, former slave labourers, who had to be fed and repatriated. Repatriation had proceeded fast, but at the time of writing in 1946, there remained some 300,000 persons who were unwilling or unable to return to their former countries. In addition, several million Wehrmacht soldiers needed to be disbanded, and many of whom had been employed in the Autumn of 1945 to gather in the harvest under Operation Barley Corn.[12]

Refugees included expellees – German nationals who were being expelled from a country other than Germany. These were German minorities formerly living in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary, expelled in accordance with the Potsdam agreement. The British Zone was assigned to receive 1.5 million Polish expellees, of whom around 850,000 had been received by February 1946. Evacuees were German nationals who had been moved from their place of residence or whose homes had been destroyed by the war. In addition, the German population had to be adjusted between the four Allied Zones, to return to their former places of residence people who had been evacuated during the war from the Ruhr, Hamburg and Berlin. The largest adjustment was between the British and Russian Zones.[13]

PART II

Part II of the Handbook was published in 1947.[14] Entitled ‘Technical’, it consisted of ten individual pamphlets covering broadly the same topics as those originally envisaged:

The Kreis Resident Officer and his Relations with the German Administrations
Political Parties
Education
Religious Affairs
Public Relations and Information Services Control
Public Safety
Manpower
Legal
Economic Affairs
Transport

I have adopted these topics as Section headings on the website when describing CCG functions to answer the question ‘what did CCG actually do?’. Drafts of the individual pamphlets were prepared and circulated from mid-1946 onwards and published sometime later in 1947.

[more to come]

[1] 14.4.46 Zonal Policy Instruction 24: Reorganization of Kreis Detachments National Archives File FO1032/524

[2] Ibid

[3] 16.4.47 Memorandum from Deputy Military Governor to all Mil Gov HQs and Berlin File FO1032/524 National Archives

[4] 12.6.46 Minutes of first meeting of Handbook for Kreis Resident Officers Working Party File FO1032/524

[5] 26.8.46 Major General GWEJ Erskine to Major General P M Balfour File FO1032/1436 National Archives

[6] 27.12.46. Lt Col P Lynden-Bell to CCG Zonal Executive Offices File FO1032/1436 National Archives

[7] Bill Yeadell’s diary mentions the many background reading documents he was expected to read on arrival in Lübbecke in December 1946

[8] November 1946. Handbook for Kreis Resident Officers Part I Chapter 1, paragraph 2. Imperial War Museum

[9] The War Office, Air Ministry and Admiralty were brought together on 1 April 1964 to form the Ministry of Defence

[10] November 1946 Kreis Resident Officers Handbook Part I p36. Imperial War Museum

[11] The name given to the military commanders of the four sectors of Berlin

[12] The disbandment process was not made clear, but the implication is that it was not the same as demobilisation

[13] The Handbook does not explain the processes by which 1.5million expelled Poles were ‘assigned’ to the British Zone; nor how evacuees were resettled into the cities from which they had been moved. Nor is the large adjustment between the British and Russian Zones detailed, including the fact that many Germans had fled from the Russian Zone to the British Zone for fear of the Soviet occupiers.

[14] It was certainly 1947 but I have been unable to establish the exact date. Drafts were still circulating in August 1947.