Allied headquarters

Allied headquarters building at Kaiserswerther Strasse 16/18, Rudeloffweg 30, Thielallee 64 in Berlin-Dahlem

The Allied Kommandatura (original name: Allied Kommandatura , originally: Interallied Military Command ; Russian Komendatura ) was an allied authority through which the four occupying powers USA , Great Britain , France and the Soviet Union exercised the common government of Greater Berlin after the Second World War . It was composed of four city commanders who had been appointed by the relevant representatives of the occupying powers in the Allied Control Council. From 1945 to 1949 it was subordinate to the Control Council, after its failure as the highest joint control body it was led by the Allied High Commission .

In occupied Vienna there was an Allied command post, which was subordinate to the Allied Commission for Austria .

history

Memorial plaque on the building at Kaiserswerther Strasse 16/18 in Berlin-Dahlem

Allied city commanders 1949: General Bourne (GB), General Howley (USA), General Kotikov (USSR), General Ganeval (F)

As early as September 1944, Great Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union had agreed that after the German unconditional surrender, Greater Berlin would not be considered part of the Soviet occupation zone , but that it would be “a special Berlin area [...] under the joint occupation of the three Powers “with a uniform special status. At the Yalta Conference in 1945, the main victorious powers reached agreement on recognizing France as an occupying power with a seat and a vote in the Allied Control Council. Therefore it got its own "sector" of Berlin.

After British and US troops had moved into the German capital, which had been captured by the Red Army , the Allied Command for Berlin met for the first time on July 11, 1945 in the premises of the Soviet Central Command. On July 25, 1945, the headquarters moved to the American sector in Berlin-Dahlem at Kaiserswerther Strasse 16/18. In the former headquarters of the Association of Public Fire Insurance Institutions built by Heinrich Straumer , the Allied Command ruled in the form of "Orders to the Berlin Magistrate and the Lord Mayor ". These orders had to be decided unanimously by the four commanders. If they could not agree, they asked the coordination committee of the Allied Control Council to mediate .

The headquarters, consisting of the city commanders of the occupying powers, was subordinated to the Allied Control Council outside the zonal competencies of the four military commanders in chief.

On June 16, 1948, the Soviet representative Alexander Kotikov unilaterally withdrew from the Allied headquarters. The Western representatives declared on December 21, 1948 that the Allied Command would continue to exist and symbolically left a seat for the Soviet representative during their deliberations. However, they could only enforce their decisions in the three Western sectors, subject to the rights and responsibilities that all four powers had for Berlin as a whole.

The activities of the Allied Commandant's office were officially ended when the Two-Plus-Four Agreement came into force in 1991. The building has been used by the Free University of Berlin as the Presidential Office since 1994 .

Military missions

According to Article 8 of the London Agreement on Control Institutions of November 14, 1944, 16 other victorious powers were invited to set up military missions to the Allied Control Council in order to be able to raise their governments' concerns in matters affecting Germany as a whole. 15 states made use of this.

After the USSR withdrew from the Allied Control Council in 1948, it was up to the Allied High Commission , which was formed later, to decide on applications, in particular to certify the replacing heads of the missions. In 1955 this function was transferred to the three western ambassadors in Bonn . When the new chief of a military mission took office, one of the Allied chiefs of protocol introduced him to the city commander in charge. The two city commanders from the other sectors attended the ceremony, in which no Soviet representative has attended since 1951. It took place in the Allied Control Council building. The two eastern mission heads from Poland and Czechoslovakia , who, according to the Soviet point of view, eluded the non-existence of the Control Council, treated the Allied authorities as "acting chiefs" like the other members of the missions who did not require certification and only had their arrival in advance had to show.

Also accredited at the Allied Command in the first post-war years was a "repatriation delegation" which dealt with the repatriation of Swiss nationals from the former eastern German territories . After the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the “home creation delegation” became a “Swiss delegation”. In 1973 the delegation was converted into a consulate general. It was based in the building in the Spreebogen , in which the Swiss embassy in Berlin has resided since German reunification , as it did before the war .

All missions enjoyed diplomatic immunity and were on an equal footing with the occupation authorities. Their vehicles bore the special license plate "MM" with an allied registration number and the respective nationality symbol .

List of Military Missions (MM)

Country	founding year	address	Development of the MM	Year of closure
Australia	1945	Olympic Stadium , Westend	MM existed formally until 1991, head in Bonn, Kölner Strasse 157	1991
Belgium	1945	Stößerstrasse 16-18, Konradshöhe	MM existed formally until 1991, head in Bonn, Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße 22 (MilAtt in Rheinallee 31a)	1991
Brazil	1946	Wannsee	MM was converted into a consulate in 1950	1950
China (National China)	1945	Podbielskiallee 62, Dahlem	1950 closure of the MM "for economic reasons"	1950
Denmark	1946	Drakestrasse 1 Tiergarten (formerly Danish Legation), 1949 Tiergartenstrasse 48, Tiergarten	MM existed formally until 1991, head in Bonn, Poppelsdorfer Straße 45	1991
Greece	1946	Graf-Spee-Strasse 13–15, Tiergarten, 1953: Uhlandstrasse 7, Charlottenburg	MM existed formally until 1991, head in Bonn, Koblenzer Straße 73a (MilAtt in Meckenheimer Allee 143)	1991
India	1946	Olympic Stadium, Westend	1947 Appointment of the civil chargé d'affaires as general, 1949 accreditation with the Allied High Commission on the Petersberg	1949
Yugoslavia	1945	Rauchstraße 17/18, Tiergarten (former Yugoslav Legation), 1954 Taubertstraße 18, Grunewald	MM existed until 1991	1991
Canada	1946	Olympic Stadium, Westend	MM existed formally until 1991, head in Bonn, Zitelmannstrasse 22	1991
Luxembourg	1946	Ulmenallee 32, Westend	MM existed formally until 1991, head and address in Cologne, Martinstrasse 20	1991
Netherlands	1945	Hohenzollerndamm 46, Grunewald, later: Meierottostraße 7, Wilmersdorf	MM existed formally until 1991, head in Bonn, Sträßchensweg 2	1991
Norway	1945	Rauchstrasse 11 Tiergarten (former Norwegian Legation)	MM existed formally until 1991, head in Bonn, Gotenstrasse 163	1991
Poland	1945	Schlüterstrasse 42, Charlottenburg, later Lassenstrasse 19–21, Grunewald	MM existed until 1991	1991
South Africa	1946	Olympic Stadium, Westend	MM existed formally until 1991, head and address in Cologne , Heumarkt 1	1991
Czechoslovakia	1945	Limonenstraße 27, Dahlem, residence of the manager at Podbielskiallee 54, Dahlem	MM existed until 1991	1991

literature

Gerhard Keiderling: The principle of unanimity prevailed. The Allied Command 1945–1948 . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 12, 2000, ISSN 0944-5560 , p. 67-72 ( luise-berlin.de ).

Web links

Digitized legislation of the Allied Command
Timeline (DHM) ( memento from December 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ): “13. August 1948: In Berlin, the Soviet delegation takes down its flag in front of the Allied command and finally pulls out of the building in the Kaiserwerther ... "
Declaration by the Allied Command over Berlin dated May 5, 1955 (The Western Allies explain their view of the status of West Berlin; change to 1950; at verfassungen.de)
Entry in the Berlin state monument list: Association house of the public fire insurance companies
Structure of the Allied Kommandatura Berlin , University of Wisconsin Digital Collection (PDF; English)

Remarks

^ Protocol concerning the zones of occupation and the administration of "Greater Berlin" , agreement of the European Advisory Commission , initialed on September 12, 1944.
↑ ^a ^b Dieter Mahncke , Berlin-Problem , in: Wichard Woyke (Ed.): Hand Wortbuch Internationale Politik , 3rd edition, Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1986, ISBN 978-3-8100-0539-7 , ISBN 978-3 -663-20299-8 (eBook), pp. 64–75, here p. 64 f.
↑ See the resolution of the Allies of July 7, 1945 on the joint administration of Berlin; Ingo von Münch (Ed.), Documents of the divided Germany. Source texts on the legal situation of the German Empire, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Vol. 1, 2nd, unv. Edition, Stuttgart 1976, p. 137.
↑ See the Soviet announcement of July 1, 1948 on the cessation of cooperation by the Soviet Union in the work of the Allied Command of the City of Berlin since June 16, 1948; Documents on the Berlin question 1944–1966 , ed. from the research institute of the German Society for Foreign Policy e. V. , Bonn, in cooperation with the Senate of Berlin, 3rd edition, Munich 1967, p. 66 f.
^ New Zealand decided not to set up a military mission.
↑ The military missions in Berlin had de facto diplomatic status and they were granted many diplomatic privileges . They replaced the embassy or legation and their activities included the usual diplomatic and consular activities. They also faced many problems related to the end of the war and some state interests. These were restitution and reparations , the return of German prisoners of war and evacuated people back to Germany, the return of interned and other prisoners of war from Germany to their countries, the search for missing people and war graves, but also activities in the field of social work between their own nationals Germany and the renewal of normal trade relations (text on the Czech Embassy website).
↑ Because of the war damage in Berlin, temporary accommodation took place: In the American sector: Brazil , National China , Denmark , Czechoslovakia . In the British Sector: Australia , Greece , India , Canada , Netherlands , Norway , Poland , South Africa . In the French sector: Belgium , Luxembourg . In the Soviet sector: Yugoslavia .
^ Belgium kept a colonel in Berlin until 1988, the last of the western states.
↑ Drakestrasse 1 was sold to the consulate in 1949, and in 1977 to the " Neue Heimat " housing association .
↑ This accreditation resulted in the very early end of the state of war (as the first state ever, even before the Western victorious powers) and the diplomatic recognition of the Federal Republic of Germany.
^ Rauchstraße 17/18 1953 to ORG ( Supreme Restitution Court for Berlin , an authority of the Allied Control Council), 1999 to DGAP ( German Society for Foreign Policy ).
^ Rauchstrasse 11 (today: Georgian Embassy).
↑ Lassenstrasse 19–21 (today: Polish Embassy).
^ Limonenstrasse 27 (today: part of the Free University), Podbielskiallee 54 (today: Lessing University for Adult Education).

52.448055555556 13.285833333333Coordinates: 52 ° 26 ′ 53 ″ N , 13 ° 17 ′ 9 ″ E

[1] Protocol concerning the zones of occupation and the administration of "Greater Berlin" , agreement of the European Advisory Commission , initialed on September 12, 1944.

[Mahncke_64f-2] Dieter Mahncke , Berlin-Problem , in: Wichard Woyke (Ed.): Hand Wortbuch Internationale Politik , 3rd edition, Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1986, ISBN 978-3-8100-0539-7 , ISBN 978-3 -663-20299-8 (eBook), pp. 64–75, here p. 64 f.

[3] See the resolution of the Allies of July 7, 1945 on the joint administration of Berlin; Ingo von Münch (Ed.), Documents of the divided Germany. Source texts on the legal situation of the German Empire, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Vol. 1, 2nd, unv. Edition, Stuttgart 1976, p. 137.

[4] See the Soviet announcement of July 1, 1948 on the cessation of cooperation by the Soviet Union in the work of the Allied Command of the City of Berlin since June 16, 1948; Documents on the Berlin question 1944–1966 , ed. from the research institute of the German Society for Foreign Policy e. V. , Bonn, in cooperation with the Senate of Berlin, 3rd edition, Munich 1967, p. 66 f.

[5] New Zealand decided not to set up a military mission.

[6] The military missions in Berlin had de facto diplomatic status and they were granted many diplomatic privileges . They replaced the embassy or legation and their activities included the usual diplomatic and consular activities. They also faced many problems related to the end of the war and some state interests. These were restitution and reparations , the return of German prisoners of war and evacuated people back to Germany, the return of interned and other prisoners of war from Germany to their countries, the search for missing people and war graves, but also activities in the field of social work between their own nationals Germany and the renewal of normal trade relations (text on the Czech Embassy website).

[7] Because of the war damage in Berlin, temporary accommodation took place: In the American sector: Brazil , National China , Denmark , Czechoslovakia . In the British Sector: Australia , Greece , India , Canada , Netherlands , Norway , Poland , South Africa . In the French sector: Belgium , Luxembourg . In the Soviet sector: Yugoslavia .

[8] Belgium kept a colonel in Berlin until 1988, the last of the western states.

[9] Drakestrasse 1 was sold to the consulate in 1949, and in 1977 to the " Neue Heimat " housing association .

[10] This accreditation resulted in the very early end of the state of war (as the first state ever, even before the Western victorious powers) and the diplomatic recognition of the Federal Republic of Germany.

[11] Rauchstraße 17/18 1953 to ORG ( Supreme Restitution Court for Berlin , an authority of the Allied Control Council), 1999 to DGAP ( German Society for Foreign Policy ).

[12] Rauchstrasse 11 (today: Georgian Embassy).

[13] Lassenstrasse 19–21 (today: Polish Embassy).

[14] Limonenstrasse 27 (today: part of the Free University), Podbielskiallee 54 (today: Lessing University for Adult Education).