Claude Dunbar

Claude Ian Hurley Dunbar CB CBE DSO (* 1909 ; † 1971 ) was a British officer and major general in the Army . From May to December 1962 he was the 10th Commander of the British Sector of Berlin and thus one of the Allied City Commanders .

Military career

Claude Dunbar entered the military in 1929 and was assigned to the Scots Guards . During the Second World War , he commanded the 1st and later the 3rd Battalion of the Scots Guards from 1943 as commanding officer .

After the war he remained battalion commander and in 1948 moved to the London District as deputy quartermaster general . In 1949 he was first commander of the 2nd Guards Brigade, and one year later he took over the 4th Guards Brigade .

In 1952 he was promoted to regimental commander of the Scots Guards and promoted to brigadier two years later . After an administrative assignment, Dunbar was named major general in 1959 and commanding general of the 42nd Infantry Division .

In 1960 he took over the North West District in the same function .

City Commander in Berlin

As the successor to Rohan Delacombe , Dunbar became the new commander of the British sector of Berlin in May 1962 and thus one of the Allied city commanders. Together with the American Albert Watson II and the French Edouard Toulouse, he formed the highest authority of the Western Allies in Berlin . He was thus a member of the Allied Command , which was subordinate to the Allied Control Council .

As city commander, he assumed one of the most important and outstanding posts that the British military had to fill outside of Great Britain. As such, he was on the one hand the military, but above all the "political leader" of his country and exercised a kind of representative status for Queen Elizabeth II , since Berlin was formally not part of the scope of the Federal Republic of Germany and Great Britain's ambassador residing in Bonn was not responsible.

Like his predecessors, Dunbar, as city commander, concentrated mainly on the political and diplomatic representation of his country and his duties as a member of the Allied Command, while the respective brigade commander took over the purely military command of the British armed forces in the four-sector city .

With the move to Berlin, referring Dunbar with his wife in the Berlin district Gatow located Villa Lemm . The members of the British royal family also resided on the property during their stays in Berlin. The function of the host towards the royal family was fulfilled by a British city commander at least once a year when the Royal Birthday Parade ("Queens Birthday Parade") was to be accepted on the Berlin Maifeld at the Olympic Stadium .

The death of Peter Fechter , who died on August 17, 1962 at the Berlin Wall , also fell during his term of office . Dunbar subsequently advocated that initially planned escorts for the transport vehicles of the guards for the Soviet memorial in the British sector by the British military police and the West Berlin police were not implemented.

After only a few months in office, Dunbar was recalled in December 1962 and replaced by David Peel Yates as city commander. His tenure was one of the shortest of any British city command.

The post in Berlin was also the last major command for Dunbar, who retired in 1963 .

Private

Claude Dunbar was married to his wife Susan. He died in 1971.

Awards

• Companion of The Most Honorable Order of the Bath
• Commander of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire

• Distinguished Service Order

literature

• Robert Corbett: Berlin and the British Ally 1945-1990 . 1991.

Web links

• The British city commanders on the GSU History website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ilse Dorothee Pautsch, Mechthild Lindemann, Michael Mayer: Files on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany 1962 . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-59192-7 .