Frederick Bonnart RIP

Kyt · May 10, 2008

Frederick Bonnart | Times Online Obituary

If there is a European equivalent of the Greatest Generation, Frederick “Freddy” Bonnart merits a distinguished place in its ranks. Outwardly epitomising the old-world values of a typical British Army officer — a profession he pursued for almost 30 years before turning to journalism — Bonnart was this and more.

The elder son of one of Austria’s leading Social Democrats between the wars, Julius Braunthal, Bonnart traced his intellectual roots to that great pre-Holocaust generation whose language was German but whose outlook was profoundly European and cosmopolitan in the best sense of the term. Forced to flee with his father in 1935, he moved first to Brussels and then to London. War brought ten months of internment in Canada as an enemy alien. Bonnart was eventually allowed to return to Britain to join the fight against Nazism.

He landed in Normandy on D+2, June 8, 1944, and part of his wartime duties involved crawling out ahead of the front line armed with microphone and loudspeaker to encourage German soldiers to surrender.

Bonnart’s unit eventually took part in the liberation of Brussels. He rarely recounted wartime tales, unless prompted, but friends recall him saying while retrieving his accreditation from some grandly appointed EU office that he had slept on the floor of that very building, exhausted in the aftermath of the advance. After the war he decided to remain in the Army, working in a variety of jobs at both the staff and operational level. Colleagues from those days noted his pleasure in riding; some of the German barracks taken over by the British retained well-stocked stables.

Bonnart finally retired from the Army as a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Signals in November 1972.

Settling in Brussels, he determined to embark upon a new career in journalism, specialising in defence and strategic matters — a path that brought together the benefits of a lifetime of military service and a sharp intelligence and an acute, inquiring mind. He earned his bread and butter from specialist publications but his analysis was brought to a wider audience by his frequent contributions in the broadsheet press, not least in the pages of The Times and The International Herald Tribune. He was also frequently heard as an analyst on the BBC World Service.

Not a Nato conference, not one of the great events through which the Alliance passed in recent years, was missed by Bonnart’s opinion pieces. Fair to all sides, reasoned and politically far from predictable, he chronicled Nato’s changing fortunes in the post-Cold War world. When asked by a journalist at one press conference for an explanation of some particular aspect of the strategic debate, the then Nato Secretary-General then, Javier Solana, responded: “I suggest you read the piece by Freddy Bonnart in this morning’s Herald Tribune.”

What marked Bonnart out was his interest in principled debate. His analysis was often sharp but his writing was never cruel, and he remained courteous and courtly.

With no family of his own Bonnart determined his own legacy; a series of grants for students — the Bonnart-Braunthal Scholarship — aimed at tackling the causes and consequences of intolerance.

Frederick Bonnart, soldier and defence journalist, was born on August 27, 1922. He died on April 23, 2008, aged 85
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Frederick Bonnart RIP

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