Download this summary catalogue (PDF) ›PATON WALSH, Brig Edmund James (1897-1985)

Identity statement

Reference code(s)

GB0099 KCLMA Paton Walsh

Title

PATON WALSH, Brig Edmund James (1897-1985)

Date(s)

1885-1947

Extent and medium of the unit of description (quantity, bulk, or size)

21 boxes

Context

Name of creator(s)

Walsh, Edmund James Paton, 1897-1985, Brigadier

Administrative / Biographical history

Born 1897; Wellington College, Berkshire, until 1916, Royal Military Academy, Woolwich; Royal Artillery, 1918-1935; service in Palestine and Syria, 1940; Assistant Provost Marshal on GHQ, Northwestern Expeditionary Force (Norway); Deputy Provost Marshal, 1 Army, North Africa, [1942-1943]; Chief Instructor and Commandant, C Wing, Civil Affairs Staff Centre (CASC), 1943-1944; served in Allied Control Commission Germany, including on the Quadripartite Commission charged with the detection of war criminals, [1944-1947]; retired from active service and promoted to Brigadier, 1947; Governor HM Prison Service; died 1985.

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

The papers were transferred to the Centre by the family in three tranches between 1986 and 1993.

Content & structure

Scope and content

Papers comprising printed or typescript reports and supporting publications, on the 1 Army, North Africa, Civil Affairs Staff Centre (CASC), and on the administration of civilians in occupied territory including the Control Commission Germany (CCG), 1885-1947; notably comprising printed and typescript instructions, orders and reports issued by the Provost Marshal's Office, 1 Army, North Africa, including on traffic control, stores, planning, lessons learnt from the operations, intelligence summaries, 1 Army newsletters, 'Crusade', with an air raid precautions poster from Algeria, 1939-1943; reports and typescript summaries relating to the Civil Affairs Staff Centre (CASC), on 'captivity neurosis', the economics and finance of wartime Europe, fire and civil defence, road transport, military writing, the welfare of occupied populations, Nazi doctrines, files of information on national temperaments and characteristics of various occupied countries including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and Italy, 1943-1944; appointments diary compiled by Paton Walsh (1945), memoranda, correspondence and papers on aspects of the German penal system under the Nazis and Allied occupation, notably the police, procedures, juvenile courts, penal statistics from Nazi Germany, 1929-1947, including copies of British Zone Review , Nov 1945-Dec 1946; papers on the Control Commission Germany including confidential reports on police trainees, lectures given by Paton Walsh, the purging of Nazis from office, training and planning for post-Nazi administration, training and organisation of the penal system in Allied occupied Germany with observations on the regulation of the system under the Weimar Republic and the National Socialists, precautions against sabotage directed against occupying forces, 1943-1946; witnesses' depositions in the Nuremberg trials, account of Brendonk Concentration Camp, defence positions of the Gestapo, Sturm Abteilung (SA), 1945-1946; papers on Cologne Prison, including an autobiographical account and journal of Rudolf Kirsch, prisoner, and correspondence, 1939-1944, papers on executions at Cologne Prison with copies of the last letters of the condemned, 1941-1944; publications in English on military law, police and transport, mainly manuals, regulations and information notes on Imperial policing, traffic patrols, military law, inspection and care of vehicles, 1917-1945; publications on the Allied occupation of Germany, consisting of notes on the military government of occupied territory, internment camps, contact lists for civil administrators, Who's who in occupied Europe, chart of the Nazi administrative structure, re-education programmes, maps and gazetteers of Germany, Austria and Denmark, 1943-1945; American publications, namely civil affairs information guides, fileld manual of military government, an entertainment guide for American soldiers entitled, 'What's Cooking in Berlin', copies of The Stars and Stripes and the New York Herald Tribune , 1940-1946; general military handbooks including guidance for officers on allowances, the training of Army tradesmen, training manuals on air support of infantry and the use of parachute troops, catering, defence of aerodromes against attack, the disposition of unit records, signals, mine clearance, anti-malarial precautions, 1939-1943; Army Education booklets in a series entitled 'The British Way and Purpose', 1942-1943; German language publications on law, crime and prisons especially regulations, criminal biology, youth crime, 1885-1942; German National Socialist publications on topics ranging from flying schools, the SA in Berlin to the beginnings of radio broadcasting,1926-1946; maps, mainly Ordnance Survey and Stanfords, of United Kingdom cities and counties, including Wolverhampton, Winchester, Dover, East Sussex and Suffolk, 1913-1940; maps of Germany, central and eastern Europe, 1936-[1945]; maps of Algeria, French North Africa, Tunisia, 1942; propaganda cartoon and other posters published by the Evening Standard , Stationery Office and Army Bureau of Current Affairs, 1944; 1 file of telegrams, commission of 1918 and details of the various promotions of Paton Walsh, 1916-1947.

Accruals

The collection comprises three accessions, 1986-1993

System of arrangement

Arranged into the main series of papers covering the career of Paton Walsh as shown above in the Scope and Content section.

Conditions of access & use

Conditions governing access

Some items closed. All items listed in the Scope and Content section above are open subject to signature of a reader's undertaking form.

Conditions governing reproduction

Copies, subject to the condition of the original, may be supplied for research use only. Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, attention of the Director of Archive Services.

Language/scripts of material

English and German

Physical characteristics and technical requirements

One box is outsize.

Finding aids

Draft list is available in hard copy in the reading room. 

Allied materials

Existence and location of originals

King's College London College Archives

Related units of description

The Centre holds a number of related items: Control Commission Germany: Garside, Hart, Lethbridge, Lindsay-Young and Waite collections. Liddell Hart 15/8 contains a good selection of military training manuals.

Description control

Archivist's Note

Entry compiled by Geoff Browell for the RSLP AIM25 Project.

Rules or conventions

Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal Place and Corporate Names 1997.

This catalogue is made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution License. This catalogue may be updated from time to time in order to reflect additional material and/or new understandings of the material.

Date(s) of descriptions

June 2003, updated 2016