abstract
| - Following the end of the Second World War, British troops in Germany were deployed along the international borders of the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany to control the flow of refugees and prevent smuggling. They were replaced in 1946 by the Frontier Control Service, a civilian frontier force administered by the British Control Commission of Germany. It went through a series of names thereafter: the Frontier Control Service from 1946–49; the Frontier Inspection Service, 1949–55; and British Frontier Service, 1955-91. Many of its members were recruited from the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy and the British Army. Its first director was a Royal Navy officer, Captain Guy Maund DSO. It was under his leadership that the BFS adopted its distinctive naval-style uniform with silver rank badges. Its personnel were given honorary Army ranks, with its director given the rank of full colonel. The BFS initially had 300 personnel, augmented by remaining personnel from the German customs service. Former German customs officials were released from prisoner of war camps and put to work carrying out day-to-day border control duties, while the BFS concentrated on preventing illegal activities such as smuggling and unauthorised border crossings. For the first few years after the war it concentrated almost entirely on Germany's borders with Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, leaving the border of the Soviet occupation zone almost entirely unguarded. This changed after the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49 and the increasing flow of illegal imports from the Soviet zone. The BFS and the newly established West German Zollgrenzdienst (Federal Customs Service) were deployed along what became the inner German border from Lübeck down to Göttingen, a distance of some .
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