Saar Plebiscite (1 results)

A significant collection documenting the 1935 Saar plebiscite, compiled by Spence, a British intelligence officer on the international force which oversaw it. The Saar was carved off in the Treaty of Versailles, and its resounding vote to rejoin Germany was a major triumph for the Nazi government. The personal photographs give a compelling insight into the event and the popular enthusiasm for reunion. The collection opens with the telegram summoning Spence to the War Office, his trunk label, and a personnel list of the British contingent, followed by his railway Ausweis and a French consulate sauf-conduit. Ephemera includes an unused ballot form, a cancelled polling card, and Spence's pass and badge for entry to the Wartburg count. The photographs show armoured cars and troops on the streets, voters at polling booths, and exhausted vote-counters surrounded by discarded ballots. Other images include swastika flags on the streets, a window displaying a poster of Hitler among Christmas garlands, and a Deutsche Front rally at the airfield, where rain left more umbrellas than flags visible. Group portraits feature the British contingent, signed by commander-in-chief Major General J. E. H. Brind and others, and the commission in session, signed by president Geoffrey Knox and Yugoslav member Milovan Zoricic. The collection closes with a letter from Bernard Paget at the War Office, congratulating Spence on "the excellent work you did for us in the Saar. The Director of Military Operations and Intelligence is writing to General Brind to express his appreciation, but I should like to send mine to you direct. Now you must get into Staff College". Spence passed Staff College and became an instructor at Sandhurst after returning from the Saar. During the Second World War, he served with the BEF in France and as a liaison officer in Canada and the USA. From 1948 to 1950 he was colonel in charge of administration at the British Joint Services Mission in Washington. He died in 1960. The collection is accompanied by two 1934 pamphlets: The Responsibilities and Duties of the League of Nations towards the Saar, printing a speech made by Saar Gauleiter Joseph Bürckel, and an official War Office handbook Notes on the Saar, For Issue down to Platoon Commanders. 8 landscape quarto album leaves with mounted telegrams, other documents and ephemera, and 68 original photographs, mainly smaller formats, but a few larger group portraits. Leaves removed from a cloth-hinged post-bound album, neat punch holes to each leaf, the mounted materials all in very good condition.