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The Ruhr Crisis, 1923-1924

The Ruhr Crisis, 1923-1924. Key Background Factors. Suspension by the Weimar Republic of reparations payments to France in November1922. Germany hyperinflation and economic collapse. But also, broader factors: Disastrous relations between France and Germany. Eg:

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The Ruhr Crisis, 1923-1924

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  1. The Ruhr Crisis, 1923-1924

  2. Key Background Factors • Suspension by the Weimar Republic of reparations payments to France in November1922. • Germany hyperinflation and economic collapse. But also, broader factors: • Disastrous relations between France and Germany. Eg: • Aims of French politicians such as Poincare and Tardieu to create a separate Rhineland Republic as a buffer against Germany. • Germany signing a military cooperation Treaty with Bolshevik Russia at Rapallo, 1922.

  3. The occupation 1921: reparations commission decides that Germany is to pay 132 billion marks. 1922: Nov. Germany suspends payment. 1923: 11 Jan. French troops enter the Ruhr. Strikes: 67 out of 70 iron-smelting furnaces closed. Coal production fell from 7.5 million tonnes per month to 2.5 million tonnes per month. Weimar Government advocated passive resistance. 130 German resisters were shot by French soldiers.

  4. French soldiers in Cologne, 1923

  5. French soldiers in Essen

  6. Albert Schlageter • Freikorps and Nazi Party member. • Executed by the French on 26 May 1923 for leading a resistance group.

  7. Consequences of the crisis inside Germany • The greatest single effect of the crisis was massive hyperinflation inside Germany. • By August 1 US Dollar = 1.23 trillion Reichsmarks.

  8. 50 Marks, 1919 100 Billion Marks, 1924 5,000 Marks, 1922 1 Rentenmark, 1924 German Currency 1924

  9. Money and Hyperinflation

  10. Fall of Chancellor Cuno’s government • In August 1923 Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno resigned. • Gustav Stresemann, leader of the DVP, formed a new government. • Passive resistance was ended in the Ruhr. • Stresemann introduced a new temporary currency, the Rentenmark. • Negotiations opened with the Americans for a massive loan to re-float Germany’s finances. (The Dawes Plan, 1924). • Reparations payments were renewed (“The fulfilment strategy”) – and French soldiers withdrew from the Ruhr in Autumn 1924.

  11. Criticism of Stresemann’s Fulfilment Strategy • From the extreme right: • Radical nationalists declared Stresemann a traitor. • The extreme right tried to seize power in Munich in November 1923 (“The Munich Putsch”). • From the extreme left: • The German Communists saw this as the final collapse of capitalism. • There was an attempted Communist revolutions in Saxony and Hamburg in late October • From both the right and the left: • Both claimed that the Dawes Plan made Germany slaves of American capital.

  12. Opposition to Stresemann KPD and Nazi election posters of 1925, both Attacking the Dawes Plan

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