1. 1
THE RUHR CRISIS OF 1923:
French occupation of the Ruhr Valley in 1923 and its short-term and long-term consequences for
Europe
First and Last Name
Class
Date
2. 2
The French control of the German Ruhr Valley from 1923-1925 has for the most part been given
short confession, frequently agreed just a couple pages inside bigger treatments of the interwar
phase.1 Fischer legitimately reinstated the centrality of this occasion to the bigger history of and
interwar Europe and Weimar Germany.2 In evaluating the Ruhr Crisis, it doesn’t seem the
occupation itself as an image of Weimar's prevalent shortcoming. Rather, he focuses on that the
ability of the Ruhr populace to participate in an aloof resistance battle (January-September 1923)
in opposition to the occupation highlights the boundless authenticity that the Weimar Republic
really appreciated according to its masses. Well known ID with republican qualities stirred by
the emergency, truth be told, held the capability of hardening the increases of the 1918
Revolution and permitting an "other Germany," in view of liberal just values, to flourish forever.
Furthermore, Fischer proposes that the contention offered the open door, given the political will
to bargain, of making another western European monetary request along the post's lines World
War II European Steel and Coal Community, in which exchange and modern connections in the
middle of France and Germany would be fortified.
Sadly, as Fischer underlines, seeks after another Europe were hasten as neither Germany nor
France was readied to accommodate its question. The German regime under William Cuno was
not well arranged for the occupation and amid the emergency swayed between open resistance
and political supplications for transaction that were not particularly substantive. In the wake of
1 Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic (1987; New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); and
Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe, 1914-
1940 (London: Arnold, 1995).
2 For other recent accounts of the Ruhr Crisis see, Stanislas Jeannesson, Poincare, la
France et la Ruhr (1922-1924): Histore d'une occupation (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de
Strasbourg, 1998); Elspeth Y. O'Riorden, Britain and the Ruhr Crisis (New York: Palgrave,
2001); and Barbara Mueller, Passive Widerstand im Ruhrkampf_ (Muenster: Lit., 1996).
3. 3
expecting force in mid-August 1923, Stresemann's legislature built up a more lucid technique
intended to produce a trade off. On the other hand, new activities from Berlin were, if not so
much too minimal, then in any case much past the point of no return. The focal government had
effectively lost control of occasions in the Ruhr by the early summer and, given the fleeting
expansion, now held a poor hand with which to deal - a circumstance that the French in this
manner used further bolstering their good fortune.3
Significantly all the more harming to any prospect for an enduring settlement were the state of
mind and activities of the French, who fall off severely in this record. Fischer contends that the
French took an especially hard line towards Germany in light of the broad feeling that France
had won the battle, yet was trailing the serenity. Assumed partners seemed more worried with
France's wartime obligation than with Germany's reparation commitments and German monetary
force appeared to be resurgent even as French industry kept on battling. This situation stirred
profound situated security fears. By 1923, French head Raymond Poincare became resolved to
bring the "Ruhr noblemen to heel [...] paying little heed to the value that France's infringement of
the 1919 peace settlement may request and paying little heed to the harm his invasion may cause
on the juvenile German republic".4 Fischer recommends that such revisionism at last blinded
French powers to bona fide endeavors by German agents to suit them on reparations and bigger
security concerns. It additionally had life and demise results for those living in the possessed
Ruhr.
3 Report of the Labour Delegation to the Ruhr District, 3 Apr. 1923, N.E.C. vol. 26, L.P.
Archives. Congress, p. 417.
4 Memorandum by Mr Niemeyer on the Reparation Experts Report, 14Apr. 1924
(hereafter Niemeyer memo.), P.R.O. F.O. 371 9740.
4. 4
The genuine estimation of this book is completely uncovered in the demanding examination of
ordinary life in the Ruhr under French occupation. In inspecting the high legislative issues
between the French and German governments, Fischer depends to a great extent upon distributed
essential and optional sources, though his investigation of the real occupation misuses a limitless
exhibit of up to this point obscure proof separated from territorial German files. Such materials
incorporate inner German and Prussian regime communication, daily paper records and industry
records.
In reestablishing the occupation, Fischer highlights the escalation pitiable conditions most
Germans practiced, including declining genuine wages and expanding hunger, under French
organization. Shocked the quality of the to a great extent homegrown inactive resistance
development, the French and their Belgian partners soon occupied with a war of whittling down
intended to break the will to stand up to. French powers raised traditions boundaries that cut
financial connections and later restricted physical development between the Ruhr and whatever
is left of Germany. Occupation authorities likewise started to oust 8,500 senior German
authorities, cops, postal specialists and railway men, frequently with their families, from the
Ruhr. Germans considered being risky however significant, for example, Fritz Thyssen and
Gustav Krupp, were detained and subjected to court military. The Ruhr populace was irritated
and brutalized. Ladies were here and there singled out for particularly brutal treatment and over
the span of the occupation; many assaults and rapes were accounted for to neighborhood
powers.5
5 Curzon to Poincar?, 11 Aug. 1923, 371 8648 (also in Misc. no. 5 (1923).
Correspondence with theAllied Governments respecting Reparation Payments by Germany,
Cmd. 1943).
5. 5
While captures and badgering made life troublesome, Fischer makes clear that the best hardship
confronted by Ruhr tenants was the absence of sufficient nourishment supplies. As a mechanical
district, the Ruhr expected to import sustenance from the encompassing farmland; on the other
hand, traditions hindrances and the continuous swelling made deficiencies. In addition, as
Fischer apropos outlines, French authorities were willing to utilize nourishment as an apparatus
of intimidation, postponing or restricting shipments to especially troublesome ranges, while all
the while opening French-run sustenance outlets under the conviction that the speediest route to a
Ruhr occupant's heart was through his stomach. The nourishment emergency in the Ruhr soon
prompted a standout amongst the most fascinating, if minimal known, parts of the occupation, in
particular, the departure of pretty nearly 300,000 youngsters from the Ruhr to non-involved parts
of Germany amid the spring, 1923. While this clearing ought to later on warrant a different
monograph treatment, particularly for its impact on national personality improvement, Fischer
makes a wonderful showing highlighting the evacuation's injury and in addition its part in
reinforcing responsibility to detached resistance inside of the overall public.6
However, over the long haul resistance had its cutoff points and the expanding brutality of day
by day life took its toll. By late summer 1923, strikes emerged among laborers coordinated not at
the French but rather at German head honchos, who had, as Fischer notes, "expected new social
parts" (p. 121) amid the occupation. As far as it matters for them, directors discovered it
progressively hard to pay their laborers as a result of the expanding uselessness of the imprint
and a French battle to seize organization payrolls. Further, manager determination for detached
resistance was additionally declining as a few industrialists, for example, Otto Wolff, started
6 Press statement issued on 6 Nov. 1923 by the J.I.C., J.I.C. Minutes (1918-1926), TUC
Archives, London.
6. 6
introducing the subject of cooperation. These components, brought together with the developing
acknowledgment in Berlin that hyperinflation and developing political friction in Germany made
backing for aloof resistance untenable, inevitably prompted the crusade's deserting toward the
end of September 1923.7
The breakdown of inactive resistance had broad results. As Fischer highlights, while France
delighted in a brief triumph of sorts, it increased small enduring advantage. The Dawes Plan of
1924 soon superceded the more positive MICUM (the Inter-Allied Mission for the Control of
Factories and Mines) accords arranged straightforwardly with German industry in late 1923 and
mid 1924. Dawes committed France to clear the Ruhr by 1925, leaving French trusts that the
Ruhr occupation would prompt the formation of an autonomous Rhineland cradle state. To
compound an already painful situation, France left the Dawes assention without picking up
obligation help or other noteworthy pay consequently to leave the Ruhr. The Ruhr occupation
additionally added to the ruin of Poincare's administration in decisions amid Spring 1924. Over
the long haul, Fischer finds that the French experience in the Ruhr "showed the restrictions of
French power and demonstrated later on that any enduring peace in Europe would depend
eventually on German goodwill. The principal suggestions of the disaster of May 1940 were at
that point gathering not too far off". 8
In conclusion, Fischer's contentions and utilization of proof is enticing. Be that as it may, a few
components of his study could have been investigated in more prominent point of interest. As a
7 Quoted from Sir William Tyrrell's minute (addressed to Curzon), 13 Apr. 1923, P.R.O.
.O. 371 8730.
8 A. Chamberlain, ''The Dawes Report and the German Loan', in 1924 General Election,
Conservative Party Archives, London (hereafter Chamberlain).
7. 7
matter of first importance is the issue of culpability. This book characteristics the lion's offer of
the fault for lethally debilitating an early majority rules system through a superfluous, vindictive
attack to the French, in this way having a tendency to cloud, and in a few ways restore, the
similarly appalling activities of the German government and enormous business both preceding
and amid the occupation. Gerald Feldman's work on right on time Weimar and the considerable
expansion uncovers all the more completely the disappointments on the German side.9 what's
more, Fischer's finding that Germany's thrashing in the Ruhr flagged the end's start of the
Weimar Republic is a touch teleological. Obviously, the result of occasions in the Ruhr managed
a noteworthy hit to the administration's authenticity and, in a few ways mentally molded the
German individuals for the later triumph of National Socialism. By the by, the German state
oversaw, astoundingly enough, to survive the Ruhr emergency and alternate occasions of 1923 in
place. While the financial "recuperation" of the mid-to late-1920s was not especially hearty, trust
stayed in accomplishing more prominent solidness. Politically, Germany was coordinating itself
into the multilateral structures of Europe. Just with the knockout punch of the Depression was
the destiny of Weimar pretty much fixed.10
10 In the Winter of 1923-4 the British Labour Party collected ?6,648 3s., J.I.C., 16 July
924, L.P. Archives, N.E.C., vol. 31.
8. 8
BIBLOGRAPHY:
A. Chamberlain, ''The Dawes Report and the German Loan', in 1924 General Election,
Conservative Party Archives, London (hereafter Chamberlain).
Curzon to Poincar?, 11 Aug. 1923, 371 8648 (also in Misc. no. 5 (1923). Correspondence with
theAllied Governments respecting Reparation Payments by Germany, Cmd. 1943).
Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic (1987; New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); and Anthony
Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe, 1914-
1940 (London: Arnold, 1995).
Gerald D. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German
Inflation, 1914-1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Also useful is the recent
work by Theo Balderston, Economics and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002); H-German review, October 2003, at
http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=98201066101037.
In the Winter of 1923-4 the British Labour Party collected ?6,648 3s., J.I.C., 16 July 924, L.P.
Archives, N.E.C., vol. 31.
Report of the Labour Delegation to the Ruhr District, 3 Apr. 1923, N.E.C. vol. 26, L.P. Archives.
Congress, p. 417.
Memorandum by Mr Niemeyer on the Reparation Experts Report, 14Apr. 1924 (hereafter
Niemeyer memo.), P.R.O. F.O. 371 9740.
Press statement issued on 6 Nov. 1923 by the J.I.C., J.I.C. Minutes (1918-1926), TUC Archives,
London.
Quoted from Sir William Tyrrell's minute (addressed to Curzon), 13 Apr. 1923, P.R.O. .O. 371
8730.
Stanislas Jeannesson, Poincare, la France et la Ruhr (1922-1924): Histore d'une
occupation (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 1998); Elspeth Y.
O'Riorden, Britain and the Ruhr Crisis (New York: Palgrave, 2001); and Barbara
Mueller, Passive Widerstand im Ruhrkampf_ (Muenster: Lit., 1996).
