The aircraft
Cold War-era planes and engines.
This museum documents a strange and largely forgotten chapter of post-war Germany: the presence of the Canadian air force in the Black Forest for forty years. After NATO was formed, a Canadian air base was established at Söllingen near Baden-Baden in 1953, and it stayed operational until 1993, when Canada withdrew from Europe after the Cold War ended. At its height the base was an entire Canadian community on German soil: thousands of personnel and their families, with schools, shops, hockey rinks and a radio station broadcasting in English and French. A whole generation of Canadians was born and raised here, and their alumni associations still visit the site. The museum occupies a building within what is now the civilian Baden Airpark, displaying aircraft, engines, uniforms, documents and photographs of daily life on the base. The place is specialist and lies about eleven kilometres west of the town, requiring a car, and its hours are limited — but it is genuinely unusual for anyone interested in Cold War history.
Cold War-era planes and engines.
A whole Canadian community in Germany.
Baden Airpark, 77836 Rheinmunster
Because Canada was a founding NATO member and committed to stationing forces in Western Europe to deter a Soviet attack — and West Germany was the immediate front line. Canada maintained several air and land bases there throughout the Cold War and withdrew them all in the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed and the rationale disappeared.
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