John Ashworth Barraclough

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Sir John Ashworth Barraclough , CMG , DSO , OBE , MC (* 4. August 1894 , † 31 August 1981 ) was an officer in the British Army , who in the First and Second World War served. In post-war Germany he was military governor (Officer Commanding, Regional Commander) of the province of North Rhine from May 1945 to June 1946 , and from July 1945 with the rank of brigadier . With the establishment of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the summer of 1946, he took over the function of Deputy Military Governor (Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff North Rhine and Westphalia) . The dismissal of Konrad Adenauer from the office of the mayor of Cologne on October 6, 1945 is considered to be his most politically momentous act .

Career

Barraclough was the son of John and Isabella Barraclough. On June 16, 1915, he joined the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment as a Second Lieutenant . After he was posted to the Royal Flying Corps from June 1916 , he returned to the 1st King's Own in August of the same year . From August 28, 1916, he served in the Machine Gun Corps . On September 14, 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant . He was acting captain between August 1917 and March 1918. During this time he was awarded the Military Cross for his achievements . From April 1, 1918 to April 20, 1919 he was employed in the function of an acting major . In February 1921 he suffered a serious wound while using his Machine Gun Corps in the former British Mandate Mesopotamia . As adjutant of the 5th King's Own he served from May 6, 1924 to August 31, 1928. There he was promoted to substantive captain on May 6, 1925 . He then served in the 1st Battalion in Aldershot , Palestine , Cairo and British India , as its adjutant from February 5, 1933 to February 5, 1936. On August 13, 1936 he was promoted to substantive major . From August 24, 1939, he worked briefly as an acting lieutenant-colonel in the British military government of the Mandate Palestine in Hebron , before he became Officer Commanding Troops of the Crown Colony of Cyprus from October of the same year , and from December 1939 in the rank of temporary lieutenant-colonel . During this time George VI awarded him . the Officer's Cross of the Order of the British Empire . In the following years he commanded the 2nd King's Own in Egypt , Syria and Tobruk ( Italian Libya ), where he earned merits in July 1941 in connection with operations for the defense of Tobruk , which included being mentioned in war reports and the award of the Distinguished Service Order were honored. He then had various assignments in the Middle East as Officer Commanding Red Sea Area , from 1942 to 1943 as Officer Commanding Lebanon Area , from March 1943 in the rank of temporary colonel .

At the end of the war, Barraclough exercised the function of military governor of the province of North Rhine in the southwest of the British occupation zone in Germany as Officer Commanding North Rhine Province until the founding of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the summer of 1946 . As such, he issued the German President of the Province, Johannes Fuchs (until October 1945) and Robert Lehr (from October 1945), as well as the District Presidents Ludwig Philipp Lude (Aachen), Eduard Sträter (Düsseldorf) and Clemens Busch (Cologne) instructions on occupation law . After William Asbury had largely taken over this role as British civil governor in May / June 1946, Barraclough then officiated until 1950 as Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff North Rhine and Westphalia under the British military governor General William Alexander Bishop (1897-1984). His responsibilities included the execution of dismantling and demilitarization . His office was the Stahlhof in Düsseldorf . In 1950 George VI raised him. to the Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George . In the same year he finished his military career and returned to Great Britain . There he married Monica (Nick) Jenvey († 2003) in 1951, with whom he last lived in the London borough of Marylebone . Until 1967 he served as a functionary of interest groups , from 1950 to 1961 as chairman of the Engineering and Allied Employers' Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stafford District Association (later Engineering Employers' Association - Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stafford District and West Midlands Engineering Employers' Association ). On February 13, 1962, Barraclough was raised to the British knighthood by Elizabeth II as a Knight Bachelor . Since 1962 he was Deputy Lieutenant for Warwickshire .

Konrad Adenauer was released on October 6, 1945

Konrad Adenauer , Lord Mayor of Cologne since May 4, 1945 , quickly got into conflict with the representatives of the British occupying forces, who had taken control of the cathedral city from the United States Army on June 21, 1945 , especially over questions of energy supply. the reconstruction, the removal of war rubble and the incorporation of surrounding communities, which Adenauer wanted. As a result, Barraclough had a letter of discharge dated October 1945 prepared in which he only had to insert the current date. On October 5, Adenauer gave an interview to the Germany correspondent for the News Chronicle and a journalist for the Associated Press in his home town of Rhöndorf . He said:

“I underlined my fears about the intention of the Allies not to give the German population any coal to cook with… I also told you that de Gaulle gave a speech these days in Saarbrücken and, according to the Londoner Broadcasters in her said that the French and Germans had to put a line under the past, work together and remember that they were Europeans. The journalists said ... de Gaulle had even said that the French and Germans had to remember that they were Western Europeans. I replied that I wanted an English statesman to have spoken of us as Western Europeans. "

The next day Barraclough pulled out the prepared letter of discharge and signed it. He ordered the deputy Cologne city commandant Colin Lawson to bring Adenauer to headquarters immediately. Since Adenauer was not in his office, but at a soul mass in Cologne Cathedral, Lawson sent a military patrol who picked up the Cologne mayor at the cathedral gate and took him to Barraclough by car. There, Adenauer was read out the letter of discharge in an unfriendly atmosphere, the receipt of which he silently acknowledged. In addition to the accusation of neglect of duty, the letter also contained an instruction to leave Cologne within eight days and a temporary ban on political activity. According to Michael Thomas (1915–1995), the liaison officer to the Deputy Chief of Staff for the British Element (CCG / BE) Gerald Templer , the latter commented on Barraclough's actions as follows: “Barraclough obviously made a mistake, but I have no choice. than to cover him. "

As a result of the dismissal, Adenauer took care of the development of the CDU in the Rhineland , a crucial prerequisite for his further political career, which finally brought him into office via the CDU parliamentary group chairmanship in the Appointed Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia and the chairmanship of the Parliamentary Council of the first Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany .

literature

  • Barraclough, Brigadier Sir John (Ashworth) . In: Chris Cook, LSE Library (Ed.): The Routledge Guide to British Political Archives. Sources since 1945 . Routledge, New York / NY 2006, ISBN 978-0-415-32740-4 , p. 14 ( Google Books )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Military governors and provincial commissioners 1945–1953 , website in the maegges.net portal , accessed on March 20, 2016
  2. ↑ Christina Strick: Beyond the routine? The district government of Düsseldorf from 1945 to 1955 . Dissertation University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 93 ff. ( PDF )
  3. ↑ Walther Hensel : 3 x local politics. 1926-1964. A contribution to contemporary history . Verlag G. Grote, Berlin 1970, p. 60
  4. ↑ Knights and Dames (A - Bec) , website in the leighrayment.com portal , accessed on March 20, 2016
  5. ↑ Adenauer: Never forgiven . Article from October 24, 1962 in the portal spiegel.de , accessed on March 20, 2016
  6. ↑ Georg Bönisch: 1945: Crash into the Bottomless (Part III) . Article from April 22, 1985 in the portal spiegel.de , accessed on March 20, 2016
  7. ↑ Bernhard Josef Neumann: Däh, jetz ham mer den Kriech (There, now we have the war - 1939–1945). How it came about, what followed from it . Volume 2, Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-9301-3 , p. 690 ( Google Books )
  8. ↑ Noel Annan : Changing Enemies. The Defeat and Regeneration of Germany . Cornell University Press, Ithaca / NY 1995, ISBN 0-8014-8490-1 , p. 168 ( Google Books )
  9. ↑ Tam Dalyell: Obituary: Lord Borthwick . Article from January 15, 1997 on independent.co.uk portal , accessed March 20, 2016
  10. ↑ Michael Thomas: "Just go to Rhöndorf" . Article from September 24, 1984 in the portal spiegel.de , accessed on January 22, 2017
  11. ↑ Winfried Sträter: The British as an occupying power . Article from July 28, 2005 in the deutschlandradiokultur.de portal , accessed on March 20, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Barraclough, John Ashworth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British officer and military governor
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1894
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1981