The Ruhr Crisis 1923-1924

406 Pages·2003·11.18 MB·English

by  Conan Fischer

Title Pages
The Ruhr Crisis 1923-1924
Conan Fischer
Print publication date: 2003
Print ISBN-13: 9780198208006
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208006.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) THE RUHR CRISIS, 1923–1924 (p.ii)
(p.iii) The Ruhr Crisis, 1923–1924
(p.iv)
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Title Pages
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Ruhr Crisis 1923-1924
Conan Fischer
Print publication date: 2003
Print ISBN-13: 9780198208006
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208006.001.0001
(p.v) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
(p.v) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AT FIRST GLANCE the Ruhr crisis seemed deserving of an article or two, but the
far greater possibilities it offered quickly became apparent. In this regard I am
particularly grateful to Hans Mommsen, then of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum,
and Evelyn Kroker, Director of the Bergbau–Archiv in Bochum, for their advice
and encouragement at the outset and their many kindnesses thereafter. Friends
and colleagues at the Ruhr–Universität were helpful in a multitude of ways,
providing opportunities for discussion and debate, supplying valuable research
materials, and helping with the logistics of an intensive research programme. In
this regard I remain greatly indebted to Norbert Frei, Wolfgang Helbich,
Dietmar Petzina, Werner Plumpe, Klaus Tenfelde, and many of their colleagues.
The staff at the state archives in Düsseldorf and Münster and the National
Library of Scotland in Edinburgh provided a superb service and enthusiastic
support, for which I remain very grateful.
Friends and colleagues in Britain have assisted me in many ways, whether by
reading sections of earlier drafts, providing materials, or giving me the chance
to present and refine my ideas and findings. I am equally grateful to Jean-Paul
Bled at Paris IV–Sorbonne for his support, whilst Gunther Mai at the University
of Erfurt undertook the thankless and time-consuming task of reading through
the manuscript and thereafter offering me detailed and particularly valuable
advice. My thanks go to the British Academy and the German Academic
Exchange Service for their generous financial support, and also to the University
of Strath-clyde which provided seedcorn funding and additional research leave. I
am particularly indebted to Ruth Parr and Anne Gelling at Oxford University
Press for their constant encouragement, good advice, and tolerance during the
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
long haul to completion and press. Finally, yet again, I must apologize to my
family for the mess, distraction, and disruption book writing seems to engender.
C. J. F.
Edinburgh
May 2002 (p.vi)
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Abbreviations
The Ruhr Crisis 1923-1924
Conan Fischer
Print publication date: 2003
Print ISBN-13: 9780198208006
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208006.001.0001
(p.ix) Abbreviations
ADGB
Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
General German Trade
Union Federation
DDP
Deutsche Demokratische Partei
German Democratic Party
DEV
Deutscher Eisenbahnerverband
German Railwaymen’s
Union
DMV
Deutscher Metallarbeiterverband
German Metalworkers’
Union
DNVP
Deutschnationale Volkspartei
German National People’s
Party
DVP
Deutsche Volkspartei
German People’s Party
GHH
Gutehoffnungshütte
German steel and
engineering combine.
Literally: Good Hope
Steelworks
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Abbreviations
KPD
Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands
Communist Party of
Germany
Micum
Mission interalliée de contrôle des usines et
des mines
Inter-Allied Mission for
the Control of Factories
and Mines
RDI
Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie
National Confederation of
German Industry
SPD
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
Social Democratic Party of
Germany
ZAG
Zentral-Arbeitsgemeinschaft der industriellen
und gewerblichen Arbeitgeber- und
Arbeitnehmerverbände Deutschlands
Central Standing
Committee of the
Industrial and
Commercial Employers’
and Employees’
Federations of Germany
For abbreviations of sources cited in the footnotes please see the Archival
Sources and Documentary Sources sections of the Bibiliography, pp. 293–4.
(p.x)
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Map
The Ruhr Crisis 1923-1924
Conan Fischer
Print publication date: 2003
Print ISBN-13: 9780198208006
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208006.001.0001
Map
(p.xi)
(p.xii)
(p.xiii)
Map. 1 Overview Map
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Map
(p.xiv)
Map. 2 Ruhr Map
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Introduction
The Ruhr Crisis 1923-1924
Conan Fischer
Print publication date: 2003
Print ISBN-13: 9780198208006
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208006.001.0001
Introduction
Conan Fischer (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208006.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords
This introductory chapter describes the traumatic consequences of the Ruhr
Crisis for the region's people. It argues that these events, in which Germany and
the Germans appear as victims, have been largely neglected by historians since
they fit uncomfortably within an essentially negative and pessimistic
understanding of 19th- and earlier 20th-century German history. However, the
Ruhr Crisis is best understood as a popular struggle rooted in the republican
values of Weimar Germany, conducted at an ultimately devastating price to the
ordinary people of the Ruhr and to the wider post-1918 revolutionary settlement.
All in all the character of post-1918 Franco–German relations and of early
Weimar Germany assume a form contrary to received wisdom.
Keywords:   Franco–German relations, German history, people of Ruhr, revolution, Ruhr crisis, Weimar
Germany
ON 11 January 1923 a Franco-Belgian army marched into the Ruhr District,
ostensibly to secure reparations deliveries of coke and coal. However, the
French authorities harboured deeper-seated fears and ambitions. Paris had
become increasingly alarmed at the perceived inadequacies of the Versailles
Settlement and exasperated at the failure of its wartime allies to provide robust
support during the uncertain months and years that followed the military victory.
Efforts to repair inter-Allied relations and also to secure a reparations schedule
acceptable to both Paris and Berlin foundered during 1922, leaving the French
Premier of the day, Raymond Poincaré, determined to bring the recalcitrant
Germans to heel and demonstrate that he could do so independently of his major
allies. The German authorities for their part accepted the principle of
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Introduction
reparations payments, but regarded the sum demanded and the attached
conditions as excessive and self-defeating. As public finances crumbled and
inflation gave way to hyperinflation, German foreign policy steered an erratic
and ineffectual course. On the eve of the Ruhr Crisis Chancellor Cuno hoped in
vain for British or American mediation, but instead was confronted by an
invasion of indeterminate duration, which effectively sundered Germany from its
industrial heartland. Lacking the means to offer military resistance, Cuno’s
government was pitched without prior planning into a campaign of ‘passive
resistance’, during which the workers and public employees in the occupied
territories struggled to obstruct or prevent the extraction of reparations and to
defy French efforts to assert a de facto sovereignty on the Rhine and Ruhr. The
campaign proved economically and politically ruinous for the German Republic,
whilst the people of the Ruhr District paid an extraordinarily high personal price
for their part in the struggle.
A vast literature has detailed the historical context within which this struggle
occurred, but most narratives have accorded the ‘battle of the Ruhr’ itself a few
pages at best. It is not entirely surprising that German historiography has
tended to neglect the episode, for the crimes of the Third Reich continue to cast
a particularly long shadow over the discipline. Premonitions of the Hitler state
can be found in the imperial era or before, engendering a profoundly pessimistic
teleology, posited in models of continuity from ‘Bismarck to Hitler’ or from the
‘Kaiserreich to the Third Reich’. This leaves the history of the first German
Republic almost fatally compromised. Weimar is frequently characterized as a
sickly youth, scarred by a traumatic birth, still harbouring many of its imperial
parents’ vices, whilst brooding, perhaps subliminally, upon an annihilationist
post-1933 adulthood. Placed within this essentially negative and pessimistic
continuity model, the 1923 Ruhr Crisis has been understood as a despairing and
ultimately unsuccessful effort by (p.2) France to contain a malignant Germany.
However, a closer examination of the period will indicate that in significant
respects the situation was otherwise.
The early historiography of the Ruhr Crisis has served to complicate matters
further. Republicans were quick to stake a claim on the episode, prompting
official Social Democratic publications to celebrate the region’s unarmed
struggle against the French and Belgian invaders.1 The Free (socialist-leaning)
Trade Unions’ history of the passive resistance campaign, which appeared in
1924, claimed for the unions a pivotal role in the struggle and identified
unequivocally with its wider ethos.2 Contemporary non-republican accounts,
such as Hans Spethmann’s multi-volumed history of the Ruhr mining industry
from 1914 to 1925,3 or Paul Wentzke’s two-volume history of the crisis,4 were
more critical of the republican labour movement’s politics, but confirmed its
indispensability to the resistance campaign. Thereafter, from 1933, a virtual
silence descended. This was not for want of resources, for the Prussian
government (itself staunchly republican) had identified unreservedly with the
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