Occupation of the Rhineland


The Occupation of the Rhineland placed the region of Germany west of the Rhine river and four bridgeheads to its east under the control of the victorious Allies of World War I from 1December 1918 until 30June 1930. The occupation was imposed and regulated by articles in the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the Treaty of Versailles and the parallel agreement on the Rhineland occupation signed at the same time as the Versailles Treaty. The Rhineland was demilitarised, as was an area stretching fifty kilometres east of the Rhine, and put under the control of the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission, which was led by a French commissioner and had one member each from Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States. The purpose of the occupation was to give France and Belgium security against any future German attack and serve as a guarantee for Germany's reparations obligations. After Germany fell behind on its payments in 1922, the occupation was expanded to include the industrial Ruhr valley from 1923 to 1925.
In the early years of the occupation, a number of separatist movements – some supported by the French – attempted to create an independent Rhineland allied to France, but none of them had significant popular support. Relations between the occupying forces and the German residents were often strained, although more so in the French and Belgian zones than in the American and British. Both the French and the Germans engaged in major propaganda campaigns, the French to try to win the Rhinelanders over to their side and the Germans to rouse national and international feelings against the occupation. The German propaganda war included racist attacks against black French colonial troops.
Following the signing of the Locarno Treaties that settled Germany's western border in late 1925, the northern occupation zone around Cologne was evacuated in January 1926. The Koblenz region, which the Americans had handed over to the French in 1923, was evacuated in November 1929. After a "final" agreement on reparations was reached in the 1929 Young Plan, the occupation of the Rhineland ended on 30 June 1930, five years earlier than originally set down in the Treaty of Versailles.
File:Western Germany 1923 hist.png|thumb|Occupation of the Rhineland and Saar regions:
vertically hatched: France, now including the former American zone around Koblenz
horizontally hatched: Belgium
diagonally hatched: Great Britain
dark: Ruhr, joint-occupation by France and Belgium
dark dotted: Saarland, also to France, though under the auspices of the League of Nations |497x497px

Timeline

  • 11 November 1918: Armistice ending the fighting in World War I signed
  • 28 June 1919: Treaty of Versailles and the Rhineland Agreement signed
  • 10 January 1920: Treaty of Versailles and Rhineland Agreement came into force; the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission established
  • 11 January 1923: Occupation of the Ruhr began; lasted until 25 August 1925
  • January 1926: Withdrawal from the northern occupation zone around Cologne
  • November 1929: Withdrawal from the central zone around Koblenz
  • 30 June 1930: Withdrawal from the southern zone around Mainz, resulting in the end of the occupation
  • 7 March 1936: German remilitarisation of the Rhineland under Adolf Hitler

    Background

Versailles negotiations

At the peace negotiations that began in Versailles in January 1919, French prime minister Georges Clemenceau sought to fix France's border with Germany at the Rhine. All the territories on the west bank of the river were to be detached from Germany and form one or more sovereign states aligned with the French Third Republic. He saw the idea, which had originated with General Ferdinand Foch, as the only way to remain secure against Germany, noting that it had invaded France four times in 100 years.
Clemenceau was unable to convince his allies to accept the proposal. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson advocated the right of peoples to self-determination, which he said should not be denied the Germans. British prime minister David Lloyd George did not want the settlement to "leave a legacy of injustice which would rankle as Alsace–Lorraine had rankled".
As a compromise, the United States and the United Kingdom agreed that if Germany should attack France again, they would enter the war on its side. Clemenceau then accepted a maximum fifteen-year time limit for the occupation. As a prerequisite for withdrawal, Germany would be required to fulfil the requirements of the peace treaty and meet its reparations obligations on time. The function of the occupation was thus changed from an instrument for weakening Germany to a bargaining chip for Germany's reparations obligations.

Treaty provisions

Article 42 of the Treaty of Versailles stipulated that the west bank of the Rhine and "the right bank to the west of a line drawn 50 kilometres to the East of the Rhine" be demilitarised. The provisions that related specifically to the occupation of the Rhineland were laid out in articles 428 through 432. The key article states:

As a guarantee for the execution of the present Treaty by Germany, the German territory situated to the west of the Rhine, together with the bridgeheads , will be occupied by Allied and Associated troops for a period of fifteen years from the coming into force of the present Treaty.

Article 429 added that if Germany fulfilled its obligations under the treaty, the Cologne region would be evacuated after five years, the Koblenz zone after ten years, and the remainder after fifteen years.
On 28 June 1919, the day on which the Treaty of Versailles was signed, France, Belgium, the Great Britain, the United States and Germany signed a separate agreement "with regard to the military occupation of the territories of the Rhine" as provided for in Article 432 of the Treaty.
The thirteen articles of the Rhineland Agreement included the following points:
  • The occupation of the west bank of the Rhine under the stipulations of the Armistice of 1918 was to continue.
  • No German troops were permitted in the zone; that is, it was to be demilitarised.
  • The Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission was constituted as the supreme representative of the Allied Powers in the occupied Rhineland. It was to be made up of one member each from Belgium, France, Great Britain and the United States. It could issue such ordinances as it thought necessary.
  • Germany retained civil and criminal jurisdiction except for offenses against occupation troops, which were subject to Allied military jurisdiction.
  • Civil administration also remained in German hands, except where the IARHC deemed it otherwise necessary for the needs of the occupation.
  • Germany was to bear the costs of the occupation.
  • Allied troops were to be housed in German military facilities. If those proved insufficient, the occupation authorities could take possession of any facilities they thought necessary. Civilian and military officers and their families could be billeted on German civilians.
  • The IARHC could declare a state of siege wherever and whenever it thought necessary. Military authorities could use the means they believed were required to restore order when it was threatened.

    Occupation

The occupied Rhineland made up 6.5% of Germany's total area and had a population of about seven million. While the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles were in progress, the region was under a state of siege and the number of occupation troops stood at approximately 240,000. By February 1920, a year after the Treaty had gone into effect, the number had dropped to 94,000 French and 16,000 Belgian troops.
In March and April 1920, a violent workers' uprising in the Ruhr district was suppressed by the German Reichswehr with assistance from units of the paramilitary Freikorps. As a reaction to the incursion of German troops into the demilitarised zone east of the Rhine, French troops temporarily occupied Frankfurt am Main, Darmstadt and several other smaller cities beginning on 6 April 1920. A much more substantial Ruhr occupation took place from 1923 to 1925 as a result of German default on its reparations obligations; for that part of the occupation, see [|§The Ruhr], below.

Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission

The Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission, which had its headquarters in Koblenz, was led by Paul Tirard, the French high commissioner. It was conceived as a civil authority independent of the governments supporting it. Because the United States Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, the American representative, General Henry Tureman Allen, was only an unofficial observer on the Commission, although either he or a deputy attended all Commission meetings, and when Allen attended he expressed his opinions freely. At the request of the state of Prussia, to which the majority of the occupied territory belonged, German interests were represented by the newly created Reich Commissioner's Office for the Occupied Rhine Territories. The first Prussian state commissioner was Karl von Starck; he was succeeded in 1921 by. Bavaria also had a state commissioner, since a small part of its territory was also occupied.
The legislative powers of the Commission, which had been granted to it in order to protect the occupying troops, were not precisely defined. The Commission was authorised to both approve and amend national laws affecting the Rhineland and decrees issued by Rhineland officials, making it de facto the supreme public authority in the occupied Rhineland. The Commission supervised German administration in the occupied territory through a system of district delegates who were placed at the side of the respective local German administrative officers.
In March 1921, Germany created a special department within the Ministry of the Interior to handle matters relating to the occupied territories. In August 1923, the department became the cabinet-level Reich Ministry for the Occupied Territories. It was tasked with safeguarding German interests in dealing with he occupying powers, including the IARHC, and with representing the interests of the occupied territories in the Berlin government.