When Germany’s Weimar government failed to remit a portion of the 33 billion dollars it owed under it’s obligations agreed to in the Versailles Treaty, France lost little time deploying her army into the coal rich regions of the Ruhr Valley. This article, illustrated with cartoons and maps, offers a collection of assorted observations and editorial opinions gathered from from across Europe concerning the event:
“The Frankfurter Zeitung cries out against France’s action as ‘one of pure violence,’ which ‘we must suffer to-day, but we know that sooner or later this violence will be terribly avenged on those who have exercised it and those who have consented to it.’
“Premiere Poincare remarked, ‘the French troops will remain in the Ruhr as long as may be necessary to assure the payment of reparations, but not a single day longer.'”
The French Army decamped in 1930.
A war veteran named Adolf Hitler had some opinions about the 1923 Ruhr occupation, click here to read about him.
