Why did France occupy the Ruhr in 1923?

Answer 1

The French (and Belgians) claimed that Germany had defaulted on reparations by delivering 100,000 telegraph poles ten days late in January, 1923. The German government replied that weather conditions had been unusually bad in the last two months of 1922 and that this had caused the delay, a point accepted by Britain. However, the French (and Belgians) occupied the Ruhr. For some years the French had wanted to separate the Ruhr and the Rhineland from Germany and set up a satellite French state there. The occupation of Germany's industrial heartland was met by passive and active resistance. In some case where factories refused to let French troops in, the latter just sprayed the works with machine-gun fire without further ado. The occupation of the Ruhr united Germans right across the political spectrum, from the various nationalist groups to the Communists. The occupation and an earlier attempt by armed Polish groups to seize part of Upper Silesia in 1921 enraged the Germans even more than the Treaty of Versailles itself. The occupation triggered the final, frenetic round of Germany's post-World War I inflation, and by September and October 1923 prices were rising at 26% a day! France's action caused immense resentment in Germany. It was a flagrant attempt to go beyond the Treaty of Versailles. The occupation also led to a serious rift between France and Britain, as the British government dissociated itself from the French action, criticized France and withdrew co-operation in some spheres.

Answer 2

Adolph Hitler envisioned a new German Empire (Reich) that would dominate the world and last a 1000 years. France just happened to be close when he tried to make his vision a reality.

If you're asking 'Why did Hitler decide to invade and occupy France during WW2' - the answer is quite simple: France and Great Britain declared war on Germany after Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland in 1939. The Western Allies then lost the subsequent Battle of France in 1940. As a result, France fell under German occupation until it was liberated in 1944 when the combined US-British forces landed in Normandy and retook Paris.

Note that according to 'Mein Kampf' - the infamous book that Hitler wrote more than a decade earlier - his goal was to conquer, enslave and possibly depopulate Eastern Europe as far as the Urals in order to create living space (Lebensraum)for the Germans. Hitler actually had no interest in occupying France or Britain. He sees them as near-equals in terms of racial purity, and was willing to let them maintain their overseas colonial empire as long as they left Germany alone in their quest to dominate Europe. Of course, when the Western Allies declared war this was no longer possible, although some people have speculated that Hitler would have probably given back France her independence after the Germans have defeated the Soviet Union. However, it is likely that France would have been little more than a Nazi satellite state (i.e. puppet government, no standing army in the continent, and its police force controlled by the Gestapos), just like Eastern European countries became Soviet satellite state after the war.

If you're asking 'Why did the French allow itself to be occupied by the Germans', then this gets into a more interesting territory. Many historians have debated as to how the most powerful standing army in Western Europe at the time allowed itself to be annihilated within six weeks by a smaller, less well-equipped army. Remember that the German Wehrmacht of 1940 was actually not that impressive. German tanks in the early stage of the war was significantly inferior to British or French tanks in terms of amour and fire power (though they did have an advantage in both speed and mobility), and would have certainly lost on a one-on-one slogging match. Furthermore, with the exception of aircrafts, the Germans were outnumbered by the Allies almost two to one in terms of heavy equipment, and had only six weeks worth of ammunition available at the time of the invasion. From statistical standpoint, the German army of 1914 stood a much better chance of defeating the French than the Germany army of 1940.

However, a combination of clever tactical planning by German generals like Von Manstein and Guderian, Hitler's calculated bet that the Allies are not prepared to fight, and the idiocy of the British and French High Command, allowed the Germans to achieve this stunning victory. The Germans invaded the Lowland (thus bypassing the entire Maginot Line), cut the Allied army in half and threatened Paris. The German's ability to achieve localized superiority thanks to efficient logistics and tactics, as well as the total lack of communication between Allied units in the field, forced the already demoralized French High Command to overestimate the strength of the Germany Army. Then, in what became known as one of the worst military decision in history, the French leadership surrendered even though it could have continued to fight on and prevented its capital from being taken as the German forces were already stretched thin and running low on ammunition. This may have been one of the few recorded cases where 'shock and awe' tactic worked.

Answer 3

Germans, and Hitler especially, were very angry with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which limited had humiliated the German government and forced them to take responsibility of causing the First World War. Hitler wanted to bring that humiliation to the French people, which he did in the Second World War, signing France's surrender in the same railway carriage that Germany signed their armistice in WWI. Hitler then took control of France to prevent the British from landing on the European continent.