9th November 2008
In my last two posts, I described the short documentary film K.R.O. Germany, 1947, and an article about the film written by the director, Graham Wallace, in the magazine Documentary Film News.
The British authorities in Germany must have thought that Kreis Resident Officers, or KROs as they were known for short, represented the acceptable face of the British Occupation of Germany after the war – acceptable to the people back home that is. Hard working, authoritative and respected by those in their care, they combined a paternalistic concern for the well being of the people living in their Kreis (or district) while at the same time keeping a careful eye on everyone and everything, and prepared to take strong action to prevent trouble if necessary – much like an old fashioned headmaster. Or alternatively like a district commissioner in some far flung part of the British Empire.
At least, that was how the KRO was presented in the film, and I was interested to find a similar image in a radio script, produced by the Control Commission for Germany for the British Forces Network and broadcast in March 1948, two months after the film KRO Germany 1947 was first released in Britain.
In the radio programme, two KROs, one for the country town of Iserlohn and surrounding district, and one for the heavily industrialised urban district of Oberhausen, talked with the presenter about what they did.
It’s not clear if the script was written after the broadcast, and so represents a more or less spontaneous conversation, or if it was carefully scripted, jokes and all. I may well be wrong, but I suspect it’s the latter. Here are a few extracts.
Firstly the answers to the question posed by the presenter: what was the idea behind the job of a KRO? The country KRO, Wing Commander Bird, answered first:
“The idea, I should say is to interpret to the Germans the true spirit of democracy and the essentials of self-government. You see, it is in the parish or the towns or the county councils that parliamentarianism, as we know it, is born, and it is only at this level that the people can be taught the real meaning of self-rule.”
The city KRO, Colonel Moir, agreed and added “I think that the best way to put it, is that a Kreis Resident Officer is one of the principal means by which official policy is put into practice. He is the man who is in the closest contact with the German life ‘on the ground’.”
Much of the time was spent talking about the three main problems both KROs had to cope with: food, housing and education, in that order. Their concerns were very similar to those shown faced by the KRO in the film. For example, one of the biggest issues in Iserlohn was finding accommodation for refugees from the East. As W/Cdr Bird said: “For a long time past, there has been an influx of about 200 a month … Finding them somewhere to live has been a permanent shadow over all my work.”
But the asides in the conversation were, in many ways, the most revealing. Some of these involved Wing Commander Bird’s wife, who was also present at the interview. I imagine they were introduced into the script in an attempt to liven up the conversation. For example, what do you make of the following exchange, which starts with W/Cdr Bird telling the presenter, Mr Llewellyn, how many staff he had to help him with his work?
Wing Cdr Bird: "I’ve got a deputy KRO working with me, two German interpreters, two typists and two Public Safety clerks. No other British staff."
Mrs Bird: "Why are you laughing whenever my husband says ‘British’, Colonel Moir?"
Colonel Moir: "I think that it’s very tactful of him … he must have noticed the kilt that I am wearing. A pity that the BFN [British Forces Network] haven’t gone in for television."
Mrs Bird: "I think it looks sweet. It must save a lot of coupons.
A word of explanation is possibly needed here. Wing Commander Bird would normally have said no other English staff, but was being polite, because he knew Colonel Moir was Scottish. As the previous two posts showed, both British and German people after the war very often called someone or something 'English' rather than 'British', when they were actually referring to the whole of the United Kingdom. In the same way, they talked about 'Russia' and the 'Russians' instead of the Soviet Union (and 'America' or 'Americans', instead of the USA).
W/Cdr Bird: "I was just saying what staff I had got. Not on my staff, but working in the closest cooperation with me, is the Public Safety Officer. And then there is the Intelligence Team."
Colonel Moir: "I have got a German staff of three. They all speak English well, but we try and conduct all our activities in German. My interpreter was a sergeant-major in a German tank regiment. He was taken prisoner in Italy."
Mr Llewellyn: "KROs are obviously not overstaffed. Probably Mrs Bird has got more staff to run her house."
Mrs Bird: "I object to that Mr Llewellyn. As a matter of fact, I have only got a cook and a manservant."
Mr Llewellyn: "I apologise!"
There had been much criticism in Britain that some members of the occupation forces were living a life of idleness and luxury. Both the film and this broadcast appear to have been designed, in part, to convey the impression that, in fact, they worked very hard. I’m not sure they succeeded here, with Mrs Bird managing to run her house with only a cook and a manservant! But it was very common for British officers after the war to employ German servants and many would have had more than just two working for them.
Finally, both KROs answered the question whether they were “afraid of a revival of Nazism?” It seems to me that, in their replies, they could have been speaking about the natives in some unruly part of the British Empire.
Colonel Moir: "Not so long as we stay in Germany. If we were to leave, I’m afraid that political resistance to its return might not be strong enough to keep it at bay."
W/Cdr Bird: "The elements are still there. The German instinctively prefers to be ruled, and not to have to carry the baby himself. If democratic government fails to put Germany on its feet, there would be certainly a big risk of the revival of totalitarianism."
Mr Llewellyn: "I am afraid that our time is about up. Mrs Bird, when the time comes for you to go home for good, what part of your job, as a KRO’s wife, will you feel has helped your husband most?"
Mrs Bird: "Honestly truthfully, getting tea, I think, after he and some of his German officials have been talking politics – and German politics at that – for three solid hours."
Colonel Moir: "I must warn my wife about that. I’m hoping that she will join me in the Spring. There is so much work I cannot touch, that a woman alone can handle."
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post on this blog on the theme of Englishness and Empire and ‘Winning the Peace’. It’s interesting to see the same themes recur as I work my way through my research.
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