Area swap in the Harz Mountains in 1945

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Overview map of the Harz
The area swap of July 23, 1945. Areas affected. Dark red: ceded from the British to the Soviet- occupied zone; dark blue: ceded from the Soviet to the British occupied zone; yellow: zone boundary after the swap.

The exchange of territory of July 23, 1945 in the Harz Mountains was the largest exchange of territory between zones of occupation in occupied Germany . It led to radical territorial changes in the Harz Mountains and affected the future of more than 36,000 people.

history

background

The reason for the exchange of territory was the British fears that with the handover of the territories occupied until July 5, 1945 to the Soviet Union, they would no longer be able to guarantee the energy supply for their zone of occupation . In direct connection with it was the east of Helmstedt lignite mining area , about 500 meters east of the proposed line of demarcation , lying power plant Harbke .

The areas west of the Elbe in what was then the province of Magdeburg had already come under the control of the 9th US Army in April 1945 as part of the Anglo-American final offensive against the German Wehrmacht . British Military Government Detachments were assigned to the American associations for the tasks of the occupation authorities. The most urgent task of these military government elements was the immediate repatriation of displaced persons and the restoration of public order.

Mid May 1945 began the US armed forces with the departure of the in Thuringia standing first US Army from Europe . The resulting vacuum was filled by troops of the 9th US Army, which were replaced in the Magdeburg province by units of the British 21st Army Group . As a result, the parts of the province of Magdeburg to the west of the Elbe came completely under British control. The organs of the military government responsible for the Province of Magdeburg were subordinated to the 229th / 305th Province Military Government Detachment in Hanover and thus came under the command of the XXX. Corps .

Only now did the British realize that the course of the demarcation line between the British and Soviet zones, confirmed in February 1945 during the Yalta Conference, contradicted the interests of the economic viability of their zone of occupation. The number and condition of the power plants located in the British zone, which on their own were regarded as inadequate to guarantee the energy supply for the north-west of Germany, played a decisive role in this finding . This is evidenced in documents deposited in the Public Record Office in London . The first weekly report of 229/305 MilGovDet province noted that 65 percent of the electricity required in the British zone was generated in the Harbke coal-fired power station, i.e. in the Magdeburg province that actually belongs to the Soviet zone. At the beginning of June, the British still assumed that the medium-term energy supply in north-west Germany could be viewed as secure based on the transmission lines agreed with the Americans from the Leipzig area .

The British were all the more surprised by US President Truman's actions . After brief consultation with British Prime Minister Churchill on June 11, 1945, the US President announced to the Soviet head of state Stalin his intention to withdraw the Anglo-American troops from the temporarily occupied areas of the Soviet occupation zone by the end of June. This rapid withdrawal to the zones of occupation confirmed in Yalta would inevitably have posed considerable problems for the British with regard to the energy supply in north-west Germany.

Proposal dated June 15, 1945

Proposal by 229 (P) MilGovDet Hanover from June 15, 1945

The military government for the province of Hanover and the state of Braunschweig , the 229/305 (P) MilGovDet, saw itself prompted to subordinate the XXX. Corps to submit a proposal to counter the expected economic disadvantages by expanding the British zone of occupation to the east into the area of ​​the province of Magdeburg . In the June 15, 1945 at the Military Government Department of the XXX. Corps received dossier was due to a supposed economic affiliation with the Lower Saxony area recommended the annexation of large parts of the Province of Magdeburg in the British zone.

Specifically, the following should be adopted:

  • From the district of Wernigerode : 46 municipalities, 721 km², 74,441 inhabitants
  • From the district of Quedlinburg (with the district town of Quedlinburg ): 13 communities, 150 km², 60,736 inhabitants
  • From the district of Oschersleben : 35 municipalities, 320 km², 40,377 inhabitants
  • From the district of Haldensleben : 24 municipalities, 300 km², 21,000 inhabitants
  • From the Gardelegen district : 12 municipalities, 200 km², 13,800 inhabitants
  • From the Grafschaft Hohenstein district : 17 communities, 160 km², 22,970 inhabitants

Total: 147 municipalities, 1,871 km², 233,324 inhabitants

The proposal made by XXX. Corps was headed to the 21st Army Group on the Military Government strand, represented an affront to the Soviets after the actual withdrawal of British and US troops from the temporarily occupied territories on July 5, 1945 . they assumed that implementation of this bold proposal would not be successful. The importance of the energy generated in the Harbke power station for the British is illustrated by the initiative of the General Commanding XXX. Corps of July 7, 1945, written down in an alternative negotiation proposal for the 21st Army Group.

Alternative proposal

Alternative proposal by the 21st Army Group on July 10, 1945

The negotiating recommendation submitted on July 10, 1945 by Brigadier David Belchem , Chief of Staff of the 21st Army Group, to the Control Commission for Germany-British Element provided for the 229/305 (P) MilGovDet's proposal to be negotiated with the Soviets first. Only in the event of an expected rejection should the XXX. Corps developed alternative proposal. This envisaged only taking over the town and the Harbke power station, plus the area around Bad Sachsa in the southern Harz foreland in the British zone and for this to cede most of the Brunswick district of Blankenburg in exchange to the Soviets.

Negotiations and exchanges of territory

The negotiations for the exchange of territory had been conducted since July 10, 1945 on the basis of the British alternative proposal. On the British side, the commanding general of the XXX negotiated . Corps , Lieutenant General Horrocks , on the Soviet side the commander of the 12th Guards Rifle Corps of the 47th Army. The British negotiator managed to secure a permanent delivery of 75 percent of the output of the Harbke power station to the British zone in exchange for coal deliveries from the Helmstedt lignite mining area, but the Soviets did not want to cede the power station itself.

Finally, presumably on July 12, 1945, the agreement to exchange the eastern part of the Blankenburg district from the British to the Soviet zone and the town of Bad Sachsa including the town of Tettenborn from the Soviet to the British zone took place.

An authorization of the 21st Army Group from July 18, 1945 allowed the commanding general of the XXX. Corps ratifying the convention. The date for the area swap was scheduled for July 23, 1945, 8:00 a.m. local time.
By then, the British had taken extensive measures to withdraw the 111th District Military Government Detachment responsible for the district of Blankenburg and parts of their 5th Infantry Division from the area to be ceded by July 22, 1945.

In the district of Blankenburg, this agreement affected an estimated 30,000 people, mainly in the places Blankenburg , Benzingerode , Heimburg , Timmenrode , Cattenstedt , Hüttenrode , Wienrode , Altenbrak , Treseburg , Allrode , Hasselfelde , Stiege , Trautenstein and Tanne . In the Grafschaft Hohenstein district , an estimated 6,000 people in the city of Bad Sachsa and the rural community of Tettenborn were affected.

In order to avoid mass exodus, neither the British nor the Soviets made the area swap public.

British Memorandum to the Control Council

The result of the negotiations conducted, the European Advisory Commission was notified (EAC), but could not in the third EAC - Zone protocol flow. In order to make the changes to the course of the demarcation line between the British and Soviet zones legally binding, the British drafted a memorandum , which the Supreme Representative of the Control Commission for Germany-British Element , Field Marshal Montgomery , entered into the constituent session of the Allied Control Council for Germany . In the memorandum, which was ratified by the members of the Control Council, the exchange of territories between the British and Soviet occupation zones is documented.

The following are listed in detail:

The agreement reached for the delivery of electrical energy from the Harbke power plant to the British zone, the actual British intention to conduct negotiations, and the delivery of lignite from the Helmstedt mining district to the Soviet zone are not mentioned in the memorandum. These agreements were incorporated into a bilateral agreement in October 1945 in the so-called Harbke Agreement , with which the British secured the supply of energy from the power plant against the supply of lignite until 1952.

consequences

The state of Braunschweig 1945 with demarcation line ( zone border )

The Brunswick district of Blankenburg was divided at its narrowest point west of the village of Sorge . The larger eastern part of the district with the district town of Blankenburg was now part of the Soviet occupation zone . The population living in the designated areas stayed there with their property. With the founding of the GDR and the establishment of the border barriers , the new affiliation of the exchanged locations was in fact sealed.

The city of Bad Sachsa and the community of Tettenborn were reclassified to the district of Osterode am Harz in the British zone of occupation on September 1, 1945 .

From 1954 to 1996, the Herford parish of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia took over in trust the administration of the two evangelical parishes Bad Sachsa and Tettenborn, which belonged to the Evangelical Church of the ecclesiastical province of Saxony , which was in the GDR.

By ordinance of the President of the State of Thuringia , the County of Hohenstein was renamed the County of Nordhausen with effect from October 19, 1945 .

The eastern part of the old district of Blankenburg continued to exist as an independent district (excluding Braunlage and the communities in Lower Saxony ) until June 30, 1950 and was then divided between the districts of Quedlinburg and Wernigerode . The western German district of Blankenburg (district town Braunlage) was dissolved in 1972 with the Lower Saxony regional reform and assigned to the districts of Goslar and Osterode am Harz.

The exchange of territory was not reversed after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Only the Neuhaus office came back to the Lower Saxony district of Lüneburg on June 30, 1993 . With regard to the territorial assignments of the member churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany , the eastern part of the former district of Blankenburg went back to the regional church in Braunschweig .

Current research and processing

Files and documents for the exchange of territory in the Harz are kept in the National Archives in London , among others .

Research and research on this have been part of an ongoing Citizen Science project of the Grenzlandmuseum Bad Sachsa since 2020 , in which the previous research results have been incorporated into the trilingual exhibition.

See also

literature

  • Statistics of the German Reich: Official municipality register for the German Reich. Volume 450, Berlin 1939.
  • Wolfgang Marienfeld: Conferences on Germany - The Allied Germany Planning and Germany Policy 1941-1949. Publishing house for literature and current affairs, Hanover 1963.
  • Eberhard Doll: The history of the border protection command north 1951-1991. Edited by Grenzschutzkommando Nord , Hanover 1991, ISBN 978-3-98025-852-4 .
  • Klaus-Dietmar Henke : The American occupation of Germany. Volume 27, published by the Institute for Contemporary History , R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3-48656-175-3 , p. 739.
  • Earl F Ziemke: The US Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946. Edited by University Press of the Pacific, Forest Grove (Oregon) 2005, ISBN 978-1-41022-197-1 .
  • Volker Koop : Occupied - British occupation policy in Germany. be.bra Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-89809-076-6 .
  • Gerhard Möller: When "the Russians" came - and went. On the change from Bad Sachsa and Tettenborn from the Soviet to the British occupation zone in July 1945. In: Harz-Zeitschrift, 60th volume, 1st edition, publisher Harz-Verein für Geschichte und Altertumskunde , Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-042-9 , pp. 169-196.
  • Horst Möller , Alexandr O. Tschubarjan (ed.): SMAD -Handbuch - The Soviet Military Administration in Germany 1945–1949. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-48658-696-1 , p. 63.
  • Uwe Oberdiek: Blankenburg's partition documents are kept in London - more than 75 years ago, the largest swap of territory in occupied Germany led to radical territorial changes in the Harz Mountains. In: ZwischenRuf 01 | 2021 - The magazine of the State Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt , pp. 18-19. → PDF file

Web links

Individual references and comments

  1. ^ British Zone - Military Government Detachment (MilGovDet) = organizational form (department) of the military government
  2. ^ National Archives UK , holdings: MG (Military Government) organization, FO 1030/375
  3. ↑ National Archives UK, inventory: 229 (P) Detachment, weekly reports, FO 1030/383
  4. ↑ National Archives UK, inventory: 229/305 (P) Detachment, weekly reports, FO 1030/368
  5. ↑ National Archives UK, inventory: 30 Corps Military Government, weekly reports, FO 1030/366
  6. ^ National Archives UK, holdings: Delineation of zones of occupation, FO 1032/1507
  7. ↑ Belchem, Ronald Frederick King David . In: Generals.dk, accessed on May 10, 2021.
  8. ↑ National Archives UK, inventory: Delineation of zones of occupation, 10th July 1945, CiC 21 AG to CCG / BE, FO 1032/1507
  9. ↑ Horst Möller : SMAD -Handbuch, Group of the Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany (GSBSD) , page 63
  10. ↑ National Archives UK, holdings: Delineation of zones of occupation, 30 Corps, GO / 217
  11. ↑ National Archives UK, holdings: Delineation of zones of occupation, Main HQ CCG / BE to 21 AG
  12. ^ Military Government Detachments (PDF file) , accessed May 5, 2021.
  13. ↑ National Archives UK, inventory: Delineation of zones of occupation, Sheet 5A, Memorandum to Control Council, Revision of Boundaries
  14. ↑ National Archives UK, inventory: Control of Harbke power station, FO 1028/432
  15. ↑ Herford Church District , accessed on May 30, 2021.
  16. ↑ Ordinance on the renaming of the Grafschaft Hohenstein district of October 19, 1945 , accessed on May 5, 2021.
  17. ↑ Until 1950 the district was also referred to as the remaining district of Blankenburg .
  18. ↑ 20 years ago the Neuhaus district became part of Lower Saxony - only the bridge is missing . In: Schweriner Volkszeitung , January 3, 2013.
  19. ^ Parishes and provosts of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Braunschweig , accessed on May 5, 2021.
  20. ↑ Grenzlandmuseum Bad Sachsa / Citizen Science (German / English / Dutch)