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Occupation of the Ruhr
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The Occupation of the Rhineland gave the French and Belgian armies the springboard from which it was easy to undertake the occupation of the Ruhr.
The Occupation of the Ruhr between 1923 and 1924, by troops from France and Belgium, was a response to the failure of the German Weimar Republic under Cuno to pay reparations in the aftermath of World War I. Having been thwarted by the British and Americans in their attempts to establish more robust security guarantees vis-à-vis Germany after World War I, the French had sought to tip the economic balance more into its favour by exacting arguably over-severe German reparations, which Britain at first supported, only to reconsider later.
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Encyclopedia
The Occupation of the Rhineland gave the French and Belgian armies the springboard from which it was easy to undertake the occupation of the Ruhr.
The Occupation of the Ruhr between 1923 and 1924, by troops from France and Belgium, was a response to the failure of the German Weimar Republic under Cuno to pay reparations in the aftermath of World War I. Having been thwarted by the British and Americans in their attempts to establish more robust security guarantees vis-à-vis Germany after World War I, the French had sought to tip the economic balance more into its favour by exacting arguably over-severe German reparations, which Britain at first supported, only to reconsider later. John Maynard Keynes, a leading figure in the Treasury in the post-War period, suggested that if Germany were to be crippled, Britain, its second largest trading partner, would go down with it. Thus, Britain proposed that Germany could pay more installments of lesser amounts of the $33 billion owed.
Initiated by French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré, the invasion took place on January 11, 1923, with the aim of occupying the centre of German coal, iron and steel production in the Ruhr area valley, in order to gain the money that Germany owed. It is important to note that France had the iron ore and Germany had the coal. Each state wished to obtain free access to the resource it was short of, as together both resources had far more value than each resource valued separately. (Eventually this problem was resolved in the European Coal and Steel community.)
The occupation was initially greeted by a campaign of passive resistance, and a few incidents of sabotage (which the Nazis later exaggerated for a myth of widespread armed resistance). In the face of economic collapse, with huge unemployment and hyperinflation (see 1920s German inflation), the strikes were eventually called off in September 1923 by the new Gustav Stresemann coalition government, which was followed by a state of emergency. Despite this, civil unrest grew into riots and coup attempts targeted at the government of the Weimar Republic, including the Beer Hall Putsch.
The Rhenish Republic was proclaimed at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) in October 1923.
Internationally the occupation did much to boost sympathy for Germany, although no action was taken in the League of Nations since it was legal under the Treaty of Versailles. The French, with their own economic problems, eventually accepted the Dawes Plan and withdrew from the occupied areas in July and August 1925. The last French troops evacuated Düsseldorf, Duisburg along with the city's important harbour in Duisburg-Ruhrort, ending French occupation of the Ruhr region on August 25, 1925.
The unsuccessful conclusion from the French point of view may have contributed to France's failure to oppose Hitler's Remilitarization of the Rhineland eleven years later, in a clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany's part.
M.I.C.U.M
M.I.C.U.M-(Inter-Allied Mission for Control of Factories and Mines (Micum) was a body set up in the period of the Ruhr Crisis, which took place in reaction to World War I.
France had suffered extensive infrastructure damage in World War I. As such, entering negotiations regarding a settlement post World War I, France, given its previous negative history with Germany was determined to ensure Germany was punished fully for her part in the war.
As such, a diplomatic battle ensued, in which France argued that it desired full reparations as in accord with the Treaty of Versailles settlement, and Germany argued that the reparation schedule was harsh; indeed so harsh that she could not meet the repararations schedule defined.
France, determined to extract what she felt was rightfully hers, began to develop and forward the idea of occupying the Ruhr region of Germany. Thus, when France argued that Germany defaulted on reparations payments France used the opportunity to invade the Ruhr district, and suggested that such an invasion was justified on the basis of extracting what she was owed in terms of reparations.
Following France's decision to invade the Ruhr in January 1923 the Inter-Allied Mission for Control of Factories and Mines [M.I.C.U.M.] was set up, as a means of ensuring coal and coke repayments from Germany [Fischer, p 51]. However, international discord met France's attempts to enforce sanctions on Germany, and eventually the M.I.C.U.M was disbanded, with France's diplomatic situation worsening and the invasion of the Ruhr abandoned, resulting in the Dawes plan and an end to the Ruhr crisis, with France being the ultimate losers.
See also
Bibliography
- Michael Ruck, Die Freien Gewerkschaften im Ruhrkampf 1923 (Frankfurt am Main, 1886);
- Barbara Müller, Passiver Widerstand im Ruhrkampf. Eine Fallstudie zur gewaltlosen zwischenstaatlichen Konfliktaustragung und ihren Erfolgsbedingungen (Münster, 1995);
- Stanislas Jeannesson, Poincaré, la France et la Ruhr 1922-1924. Histoire d'une occupation (Strasbourg, 1998);
- Elspeth Y. O'Riordan, Britain and the Ruhr crisis (London, 2001);
- Gerd Krüger, Das "Unternehmen Wesel" im Ruhrkampf von 1923. Rekonstruktion eines misslungenen Anschlags auf den Frieden, in Horst Schroeder, Gerd Krüger, Realschule und Ruhrkampf. Beiträge zur Stadtgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Wesel, 2002), pp. 90-150 (Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte von Wesel, 24) [esp. on the background of so-called 'active' resistance];
- Conan Fischer, The Ruhr Crisis, 1923-1924 (Oxford / New York, 2003);
- Gerd Krumeich, Joachim Schröder (eds.), Der Schatten des Weltkriegs: Die Ruhrbesetzung 1923 (Essen, 2004) (Düsseldorfer Schriften zur Neueren Landesgeschichte und zur Geschichte Nordrhein-Westfalens, 69);
- Gerd Krüger, "Aktiver" und passiver Widerstand im Ruhrkampf 1923, in Günther Kronenbitter, Markus Pöhlmann, Dierk Walter (eds.), Besatzung. Funktion und Gestalt militärischer Fremdherrschaft von der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich, 2006), pp. 119-30 (Krieg in der Geschichte, 28);
- Ben Walsh, GCSE mordern world history;
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