ABSTRACT
John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667) The idea of sending civilians from Germany to Wilton Park was first officially mooted in the British Control Commission for Germany (CCG/BE) in May 1946, and first seriously discussed on September 9 at a meeting in Berlin attended by representatives of the Control Commission and by emissaries from the London Control Office for Germany and Austria (COGA). COGA’s UnderSecretary Richard Wilberforce, Koeppler’s Oxonian ally, was particularly keen on the idea. Recalling the event, Koeppler thanked ‘the support of the Foreign Office and the interest of Control Commission officers’, which made it possible to ‘convert’ Wilton Park from POWs to civilians from Germany ‘sooner than I had dared hope’.
