British enter Cologne

On 6 December 1918 the first British troops entered Cologne, the largest city of the Rhineland. They were the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, which for several days had been moving ahead of General Herbert Plumer’s Second Army into Germany. Under the march plan the British were not due to reach the Rhine until several days later. According to Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s final dispatch, the cavalry was sent ahead at the earlier request of the German authorities, so that the city would not be left without any troops after the last German units had gone.

A city in revolution

Cologne had been through a turbulent month. On the night of 7–8 November mutinous sailors from Kiel arrived here by train. They removed the military governor of the city from power and freed about 5,000 people from the prisons, both political prisoners and ordinary criminals. On 8 November a workers’ and soldiers’ council was formed, dominated by moderate Social Democrats under Wilhelm Sollmann. The city’s Lord Mayor, Konrad Adenauer, a member of the Catholic Centre Party, quickly came to terms with it. He gave the council rooms in the town hall and headed a committee dealing with security, food supply and transport. From 11 November, for three weeks, German troops returning from the front passed east through Cologne and over its Rhine bridges, according to German studies about 500,000 soldiers and 300,000 horses. Adenauer had the stocks of alcohol in the municipal warehouses poured into the Rhine, and discharged soldiers received a ticket, pay and food only if they handed in their weapons.

When the last Germans had left, Adenauer feared that an interregnum would set in, and riots with it. He therefore pressed for the British to come as soon as possible and show themselves on the streets. On the German side the entry was prepared by Captain Otto Schwink of the General Staff, sent to Cologne to organise the passage of the troops and the handover of the city in accordance with the Armistice of Compiègne.

The cavalry rides in

The commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, General Richard Mullens, was escorted into the city by a detachment of armoured cars of the 17th Battalion, Tank Corps. The cars then occupied the bridges over the Rhine and, according to Haig, were the first British troops to cross to the far bank of the river. Hussars, dragoons and lancers rode through the streets. Haig wrote that great crowds of inhabitants watched them. The next day the 28th Infantry Brigade of the 9th Division arrived in Cologne by rail, and on 8 December the cavalry reached the Rhine along the whole British sector and secured the crossings. On 11 December the military governor, General Charles Fergusson, arrived by train. Escorted by the 9th Lancers, he drove through the crowded streets to the Hotel Monopol, where he set up his headquarters. As he stood at the entrance, the British flag flew over the roof for the first time.

Adenauer and the occupiers

The occupation weighed heavily on the city. According to a study by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the British, about 55,000 soldiers in all, had to be quartered in 88 schools, five hotels, more than 2,000 private flats and in closed factories. The occupiers imposed a curfew and ordered the inhabitants to salute British officers. Cologne was also cut off from unoccupied Germany, so its economy, tied to the Ruhr, began to crumble, unemployment rose and supplies worsened. Adenauer urged the inhabitants to behave calmly towards the occupiers, and in time obtained the easing of some of the more burdensome regulations. He got on well with Fergusson, who, like him, wanted above all calm and order. The governor stripped the workers’ and soldiers’ council of all its powers and declared that he would deal with all matters, including the police, exclusively with the Lord Mayor. According to his biographers, Adenauer himself had quietly encouraged this.

Cologne became the main headquarters of the British occupation forces in Germany. From March 1919 they were called the British Army of the Rhine. The British stayed in the city until January 1926.