https://declassified.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/9a9420d3a98fceedbaf4a49d197a5470.pdf 0aea5c4246b7087ada891e557fb7f6bd PDF Text Text ,. .. " ti ._, I Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces a /'information < ,, ~0A ii OTTAWA Ho .. /.f'!f~ ................ . Date . ... J~i;i~. J..Q >. .+9.5. ).•............ . Despatch No... FILE /9./~7.-...¥:G? ...... SECURITY ( ~1 CLA!fSIFICATION COI'!FIDEt-J TI AL FROM: THE P.uRMANENT REPRESENTATIVE TO THE NCR.THATLANTICCOUI~CIL OB..t!,C, PARIS THE SECnETARY OF STATEFOR EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, CANADA MD f TO: Reference .................................................................................... . You may remember that at the time the Ministers were meeting in Paris in April I was invited to attend the Coronation ceremonies planned by the Headquarters of the 27 Infantry Brigade at Hanover and to take the salute at the Coronation parade on June 2. After consulting you, I accepted the invitation and have now returned to Paris. I thought that a brief report might be of some interest to you and to your colleague, the 1.inister of National Defence. ,. (\ I Cb~' es ~11:lba £erred To.............. . 2. I took advantage of the opportunity to travel via Cologne and Hamburg and to spend the weekend before the Coronation Day ceremonies in Berlin. In doing so I found occasion to meet, in addition to our own people both civil and military, a number of United Kingdom officials and a few German politicians. J. Mr. Davis, through whose kindness my arrangements were made and who originally suggested that I visit the Brigade, met me in Cologne and I spent a useful twenty-four hours with him and the officers of his 1-iission in Bonn. 4. On Saturday, May 30, I flew to Berlin from Cologne where I was met by Captain O'Hagan who as you know has been a member of our Military Mission there since 1947. During my stay in the city he devoted almost his whole time to me and proved, as I had expected, an exceedingly knowledgeable and helpful guide. It was obvious to me that he is a very useful officer and I strongly support the recomuendation put forward by Mr. Davis that sympathetic consideration be given to providing him with permanent status in our Service. No. of Enclosures 1 5. In Berlin I stayed at the Military Mission's residence which is occupied by the senior resident officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Larocque and his wife. This is a substantial modern house with a large garden and is maintained I understand without cost to the Government of Canada. Post File No............... . cc: Can. Embassy,Bonn Minister of National Defence s 6. The following day, Sunday, I attended a special Coronation Service in the British Sector and later met Major-General Coleman, British Commandant, at lunch. In conversation with Coleman I heard once more the opinion previously expressed by other United Kingdom officials that the maintenance of a Canadian Mission in Berlin was regarded as important in terms of Soviet and Soviet Sector opinion. Again, it is not so much the good effect of our remaining but the bad effect of our withdrawal that is emphasized. Coleman told me that the West Berliners were very sensitive to anything which might be taken as evidence of the Western Powers' reduction of their commitment to Berlin. It was obviously in this context, and particularly in relation to the "Commonwealth", that Coleman expressed 2. . • 000916 �Document disdosed under the Acce.s.sto Information Act Document d,vulgue en ~rtu de lo ~o, sur rocces a l'informot,on r M iO: 18 ' 000917 �.. Document isc ose un er t e Access to In ormation Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur l'acces o /'information .. - 2 - to me his opinion. 7. In the afternoon of Sanday May 31, I was able to visit the Eastern Sector and on the morning of the following day to drive along the boundary between the Western Sector and the Soviet Zone. There is very little that I can add to . what you have already heard and read about the contrast between the two Sectors of this beleaguered city. It is indeed hard to tell how much one's impression results from preconceptions and how much from personal observation. In any event my reactions were conventional. Stalinallee was a papier-mache fa~ade hiding ruined areas behind it. The traffic on the streets even on Sunday was very light and the people one saw seemed distinctly less prosperous than the Western Berliners. The Russian War I1emorial in Treptow Park was more impressive than I had anticipated and strangely akin to the sort of thing that one associates with Hitlerian Germany. Perhaps the most striking evidence of the physical reality of the Iron Curtain was the boundary to the west between the British Sector and the Russian Zone. There to the left of the boundary road (which is literally divided in two), as we drove northward, was a cleared area of 50 to 75 yards beyond which were woods, a six-strand barbed wire fence and lurking members of the eastern volkspolizei with slung rifles. There too, on every available building were large blatant communist slogans. 8. On Monday afternoon June 1, I reached Hanover by air and was met by the Brigade Commandant, Brigadier John Pangman, DSO. That evening I dined with him at the Brigade Quarters' mess and received my instructions for the ceremonies of the following day. 9. The arrangements for the parade were admirably planned and carried out. Following a brief meeting of the princip ea,)!._. participants at Pangman's mess we proceeded at 10:15 am. to the central square of Hanover, Waterloo Platz, where the whole Brigade was drawn up. After I had completed somewhat apprehensively my "jeep" inspection of all the units we returned to the reviewing stand for the raising of the royal standard, the royal salute by guns of the R.C.A., feu de joie by the rifle batallion and a fly past by five>abres of No. 2 Wing R.C.A.F. from Gros-Tenquin. The royal standard was then lowered and I took the salute of a full march past by the Brigade. 10. The appearance and bearing of the units on parade was very good indeed. During the inspection and salute they were a n1odel of steadiness and in the march past they made a fine impression, I feel sure, on the thousands of Hanoverians who had gathered for the event. In addition to the three infantry batallions, the tanks of the R.C.Ds, the Brigade artillery and elements of the R.C.A.S.C., R.C.O.C., R.C.E.M.E. and R.C.A.fu.C. all participated. The whole performance occupied something over l! hours. The enthusiasm of the crowd, despite the cold gray day, was well justified. 11. A number of prominent Land officials including Minister- Prllsident Kopf were present as well as the United Kingdom Land Commissioner, Malcolm Henderson, and Brigadier Shacklock, the senior United Kingdom Administrative Officer of the area. At the official lunch given by Brigadier Pangman after the parade, I had sufficient conversation with Germans 3. . . 000918 �.' •• Document disclosed under the Access to Information Act Document divulgue en vertu de la Loi sur /'occes a /'information I' .. - 3 - and British to gain the impression that the Canadian Brigade, at least at the senior officer level, had established remarkably good relations with the combined local authority. It was particularly evident that the British civil and military representatives had done much to assist in solving CanadiaIJ problems. 12. After attending a Coronation garden party the same afternoon, given jointly by Henderson, Shacklock and Panginan (incidently a good exaruple of the co-operation existing between them), I drove to Hamburg the same evening. 13. The next day \lednesday June 3, 1 was taken in hand by the United Kingdom Land C.:onurri.ssioner and Consul-General for Hamburg, Dr. J.K. Dunlop, and also by F.J. Brand ( a Canadian from Vancouver) who is in charge of the British Information Centre in Ha111burg. Dr. Dunlop is an unusually experienced official who has been in Hamburg pretty well since the liberation. He was very interesting in his comments on many phases of the German problem. l 14. During the morning Dunlop took me for a motor tour of the city and in the afternoon showed me around the harbor in a British launch. Like all travellers in Western Germany I could not fail to be impressed by the evidence of activity of every kind, in particular by the anrount of construction as well as reconstruction which had obviously been done since the war. One rather unusual exainple of this, peculiar to Hamburg, is the large plant in which rubble and brick from destroyed buildings are reduced to a gravel-like material to be refabricated into building block and used in the work of reconstruction. I shall not attempt to describe further impressions which have been conveyed to you privateli and publicly from much better informed sources. Incidendl.y in answer to niy enquiry, Dunlop gave me a note of work done by the Consulate-General in the Canadian interest; I am attaching a copy. 15. Altogether the trip from my point of view was very valuable. Although it only occupied a few days and quite apart from the really impressive Coronation celebration at Hanover of the 27 Infantry Brigade, I feel that I acquired a picture of the Western Zone and of Berlin which will in future give me a much better appreciation of German questions. 16. I am sending a copy of this your colleague, ~a-. Claxton. despatch ). I', directly to ._)u,,u_ PERi•J..ANENT REPRESENTATrl· 000919 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CDBC00350 Title A name given to the resource "Visit to Germany; Coronation Ceremonies at Hanover," Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council and OEEC, Paris, to SSEA, despatch no. 1843 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10-Jun-53 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived "BERLIN. Political Situation. Relations between West and East Berlin," RG25-A-3-c, Volume 8506, File number: 10937-40, File part: 2.3, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource LAC ATIP A-2024-01457 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Canadian Crown Subject The topic of the resource Berlin Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Canada Declassified Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English