On January 11, 1923, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr Valley of Germany, an important area containing industrial centers as well as coal and other natural resources. Germany had fallen behind in her reparation payments, which were becoming more and more worthless as the Deutschmark plummeted. The populace passively resisted for the most part, as ordered by Berlin, and they slowed the flow of resources from the occupied Ruhr Valley into France and Belgium, even as the occupying troops kept order under martial law. The Ruhr Valley Crisis of 1923 was exemplary of the type of harsh treatment that Germany received after the First World War and it was this lack of charity towards the German people, who were already suffering economically if not otherwise, that bolstered support for the National Socialist Party in the late 1920s and 1930s.

The carnage and horror of the First World War was did enormous damage to the European psyche and European economies. After battles at locations such as Flanders, Verdun, and the Somme, casualty rates soared and the war that many thought would be over by Christmas dragged on for years. and by the time it had ended, many of the nations of Europe were poor, severely damaged, and the people of these nations were both angry and tired of war. When the Treaty of Versailles was agreed upon, it placed huge financial burdens on Germany that she could not pay. But German diplomats had no choice but to accept the terms of the occupying forces, some of whom were thirsty for the proverbial “blood” of Germany. France and Belgium, the two countries who had suffered the most at the hands of the German armies, were by far the most vindictive. Billions of Deutschmarks were demanded for Germany’s part in the war. The harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles would later become one of Hitler’s greatest rhetorical assets in his rise to chancellorship and eventual dictatorship in Germany.

The economic problems of the Weimar Republic, the new German government formed after World War I, were what led to the Ruhr Valley Crisis in 1923. The government of Wilhelm Cuno, German chancellor, endorsed a policy of passive and nonviolent resistance toward the invaders, particularly in the sense of denial of resources to the Belgians and French. Some active and violent resistance also occurred, such as acts of sabotage, and the tension culminated in the death of a resistance member, who was later hailed by the Nazi Party as a hero, though he admitted that he had received payment for the act.

The French went so far in their occupation of the Ruhr Valley as to block travel and communication with the rest of Germany. This is also seen by many as an extension of their previous bid to take control of part of Germany that bordered Eastern France and turn that into a kind of buffer zone against German aggression, but this plan fell through and France used this invasion, though unsanctioned and against the regulations of the new League of Nations, to make its own buffer zone against Germany.

In the first few weeks of 1923 when the Ruhr was invaded, the die had been cast. The invasion began mildly: at first France sent a team to observe the German Coal Syndicate, ostensibly to make certain that the Entente was receiving its due from Germany in the way of coal. Berlin replied that this was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles, which was true, and ordered the affected elements of German industry to ship no coal to France or Belgium.  Despite the orders of the government, violence broke out nonetheless. The resistance of the German workers did not bode well for the French, mainly because they had to import French factory workers, miners, engineers, and other laborers to extract resources from the occupied territory. Tensions ran so high in Essen at the end of March 1923 that French troops opened fire on a group of workers, killing 13.      

While the political problems abroad became the political problems at home, the value of the German mark plummeted. In January of 1923, one US dollar was equivalent to 18,000 marks. By late autumn, the exchange rate was 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar. Investors and the common people had lost confidence in the scrip of the fledgling Weimar Republic. The lower and middle classes of Germany were devastated by the effects of the Ruhr Crisis, to the point that trains of food were sometimes raided by hungry Germans. The economic and political turmoil of the occupation of the Ruhr also gave extremist groups in Germany a chance to spread their manifestos. These groups included both the National Socialists and Communists.

August 1923 brought a change in government and with it the abandonment of the policy of passive resistance. New leadership ordered the resumption of factory production in the occupied Ruhr and lifted the ban on exports to France and Belgium. Almost all of the parties within Germany, due to the huge financial loss and the loss of more than 100 German lives, assented to the move. Though the German government had given in to the French and Belgian invaders in the form of industrial cooperation, the French still refused to negotiate with the Germans to resettle the schedule for repayment of reparations. As the occupation of the Ruhr Valley dragged on, it started to become not only a huge financial burden on Germany, but to France as well, itself struggling with post-war economic issues.  The economic and diplomatic pressure on France to remove its troops from the Ruhr motivated the government of France to negotiate with Germany via the United States. Out of this series of negotiations, which lasted much longer than any German could have preferred, came the Dawes Plan, which adjusted the plan for payment of reparations and removed occupation forces from the Ruhr Valley, a process that remained incomplete until 1925.

While the Ruhr Crisis did eventually gain a somewhat more fair reparations settlement for Germany, it came at enormous cost in terms of economic damage as well as political instability. This was yet another unfortunate chapter in the history of Franco-German relations and became a factor in fomenting anti-French and nationalist sentiment, sentiment that would eventually hand the German chancellorship to Adolf Hitler.