Robert Cottrell-Hill

Robert Charles Cottrell-Hill CB CBE DSO * MC (born November 7, 1903 in Khadki / Maharashtra , India as Robert Charles Hill ; † November 10, 1965 in Oxford , England ) was a British officer and Major General of the Army .

From 1955 to 1956 he was the seventh in command of the British Sector of Berlin and thus one of the Allied city ​​commanders .

Military career

Cottrell-Hill was born in India and attended Bedford School in Bedford / Bedfordshire, England . He then graduated from the Royal Military College Sandhurst .

In 1924 he was assigned to the 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment , which was used in the 1938 Arab Revolt in Palestine . For his work, Cottrell-Hill was awarded the Military Cross .

During the Second World War , Cottrell-Hill took over the post of chief of staff , later that of the commander of the 71st Indian Infantry Brigade .

In 1944 he was deployed in Arakan and landed on Ramree Island a year later . In the same year he was awarded the Officer of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and the Distinguished Service Order .

After the Second World War he was in 1948 as Deputy Head of Department in the Ministry of War appointed and 1950 for the Chief of Staff of troops in Malaya . After a brief return to the ministry, he was promoted to major general. In the meantime he had received further awards for special merits, including the level of Commander of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire .

City Commander in Berlin

As the successor to William Oliver , Cottrell-Hill became the new commander of the British sector of Berlin on May 1, 1955, and thus one of the Allied city commanders. Together with the Americans George Honnen and Charles Dasher (from September 1955) and the French Amédée Gèze, 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, Cottrell-Hill, 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 Cottrell Hill and his family moved to Berlin in the 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 .

On February 6, 1956, Cottrell-Hill was recalled and replaced by Francis Rome as city commander. At just nine months, the Cottrell-Hills tenure was one of the shortest of the British city commanders.

As the last stop of his active career , he became an administrative post and entered 1959 in the retirement .

Only six years later, on November 10, 1965, Robert Cottrell-Hill died, a few days after his 62nd birthday.

Awards

• Military Cross (1938)
• Officer of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1944)
• Distinguished Service Order (1944, 1945)
• Commander of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1946)
• Companion of The Most Honorable Order of the Bath (1952)

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. ↑ LONDON GAZETTE (Ed.): Robert Cottrell-Hill . London 10th October 1944.
2. ↑ LONDON GAZETTE (Ed.): Robert Cottrell-Hill . London 4th June 1946.