until the end of 1922. Then the Germans
defaulted once again and disputed with Poincaré,
by then prime minister, the amounts due and
already delivered. Despite British disapproval,
French and Belgian troops occupied the industrial
Ruhr in January 1923, ostensibly with the object
of collecting what was due. The more important
objective was to weaken Germany’s reviving
power by occupying its most important industrial
region. French uncertainties about Germany’s
ultimate intentions had been increased by the
murder of Rathenau, by the political instability of
the country and by what appeared to be deliber-
ate attempts to evade its obligations.
The French move was no sudden reaction but
the result of a carefully thought-out policy. It
separated France from Britain, as the Germans
could not fail to note, and they exploited the split
successfully in the 1920s. The German govern-
ment called an industrial boycott in the Ruhr,
thereby providing the French with a reason for
staying there; only the German coal owners
refused to behave so patriotically and continued
delivering coal to the French. The ruin of German
finances, which was the consequence of Ger-
many’s decision to order industrial passive resis-
tance in the Ruhr, was a victory of sorts for
Poincaré. In outward appearance his resistance to
British mediating pressure seemed justified too.
He demanded that the Germans call off their
industrial boycott before fresh negotiations over
reparations could be started to resolve the under-
lying problem that had led to the occupation. In
September 1923 the new Stresemann govern-
ment abandoned resistance and agreed to resume
reparations payments.
All along, however, reparations had been only
part of the reason for the conflict. The French felt
too weak to control the Germans single-handed.
The years 1923–4 marked France’s last effort to
attain what it had failed to secure at Versailles, a
means of checking the future threat of German
preponderance in Europe. France failed in 1924
and had to bow to the pressure of the US and
Britain. This was marked by its agreement that
experts should work out a new reparations settle-
ment which, when accepted by Germany, would
leave France no excuse to stay in the Ruhr. The
American expert Charles G. Dawes gave his name
to the reparations plan of 1924; it did not fix a
final total but, as expected, scaled down the
immediate annual payments and coupled payment
to a loan to the Germans. The Germans accepted
the plan and with the restoration of the value of
their currency became internationally credit-
worthy. Poincaré fell from power. Briand, who
returned to power, had no option but to end
the occupation. Meanwhile, all the efforts that the
French had made to encourage separation in the
Rhineland failed.
The French had to make the best of the situ-
ation. The outcome was the European reconcili-
ation of Locarno. Briand and Stresemann to all
outward appearances had buried wartime en-
mities. In the Locarno Treaties, signed on 16
October 1925, the Germans renounced any
desire to change their western frontier with
France and so accepted the loss of Alsace-
Lorraine. Britain and Italy guaranteed the
western frontiers and the continued demilitarisa-
tion of Rhineland against a ‘flagrant breach’, and
engaged themselves to aid the victim of aggres-
sion whether France or Germany. The British
congratulated themselves that their original
Versailles obligations were now lessened, since
‘flagrant’ was an adjective open to different inter-
pretation. The French sadly noted that they had
secured British support not in an equal Anglo-
French alliance but with Britain in its new role
as mediator and arbitrator. Much would there-
fore depend on the view Britain took of any
particular situation.
France was left with no secure allies. Its posi-
tion was worse than in 1914 when Russia, mili-
tarily, had been a powerful and reliable ally. It had
a new alliance with Poland and Czechoslovakia,
but these two countries could not be relied on to
fight for French security, nor France for theirs,
for there was a ‘catch’ in the European security
arrangements. The Germans had refused to
include their eastern frontier with Czechoslovakia
and Poland in the Locarno Treaties package.
Britain and Italy did not act as guarantors of
these frontiers, either. The Germans had signed
arbitration treaties with Czechoslovakia and
Poland separately, but they were worth little. The