Political talks 80 years ago Hitler and Chamberlain in Bad Godesberg
Bad Godesberg · Exactly 80 years ago, German dictator Adolf Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met in the Rhine hotel Dreesen in Bad Godesberg.
than the rescue of European peace was on the agenda - in which Hitler wasn’t even interested, but which the British Prime Minister Chamberlain hoped to connect to his appeasement policies. Neville Chamberlain came to Bad Godesberg against the background of the Sudeten crisis to meet up with Hitler in the Hotel Dreesen - hoping to prevent the imminent world global conflagration at the last second.
At the start of the 20th century, Dreesen had turned into a major attraction on the Rhine, which was also noted by Adolf Hitler. The contact with Hitler was initiated by Rudolf Heß, who used to be in boarding school at the Otto Kühne school. Heß and his parents had appreciated the Dreesen as a first class accommodation and made it their favourite refuge at the Rhine. Hitler stayed there more than 70 times in the 1920s and 1930s - but only one visit made international headlines: The meeting on September 22, 1938 with Neville Chamberlain.
Swastikas and Union Jacks in the streets
Hitler, of course, knew the hotel very well but that wasn’t the only reason why Bad Godesberg was chosen: „Nobody wanted Chamberlain, who had only flown for the first time in his life just days prior, to haveto endure another long flight to meet Hitler in Berchtesgaden - so they opted for the airport in Cologne“, reports hotelier Fritz Georg Dreesen. „And so the world suddenly noticed the small city on the Rhine called Bad Godesberg.“ The world press was there and reported in flowery details of the small city „decorated“ with swastikas and union jack flags. The small Chamberlain delegation, who stayed on the Petersberg, included his First Embassy Secretary and interpreterIvoneKirkpatrick. It was exactly the same diplomat who succeeded Brian Robertson in the role of the British High Commissioner in the federal republic of Germany in 1950 in Bonn.
Kirkpatrick continuedhis work after the end of the waras a diplomat, and he was accredited to the British Embassy in Rome amongst other duties. Incidentally, between May 13 and May 15, 1941, he questioned Rudolf Heß in London, who had parachuted over Scotland, to mediate, on his own initiative, a peace between Great Britain and the national socialist Germany. So exactly the man, who - unknowingly - ensured that Bad Godesberg was briefly a place of world politics in 1938. Thus closed a circle connecting Heß via Hitler with Chamberlain.
The meeting in Bad Godesberg wasa kind of a warm-up for the Munich conference which was about to go down in history. And: It was the eve of the Second World War.
(Original text: Michael Wenzel / Translation: Mareike Graepel)
