Britain's alleged balancing

British collective insecurity provoking DIVIDE ET IMPERA

Cologne is Germany's biggest city on the Rhine's left bank. The Ruhr and right Rhine may be seen as the country's inner part where cities such as Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Dortmund are situated. Almost ten years after the outbreak of the Great War (1914–1919), the return of peace was written in the stars on either side of the river. Since January 1923, Belgian and French armies kept Weimar Germany's industrial heartland as well as cities such as Düsseldorf occupied. A Weimar faltering in the transfer of reparations caused Paris and Brussels to use this as an argument for crossing the Rhine with their troops comprising colonial, in other words black soldiers and marching all the way up the Ruhr. This intrusion came in addition to the occupations of the left bank which the British army marched in together with its Entente partners over the Armistice 1918–1919.

On 11 August 1923, when any consumer in either republican or occupied Germany had to pay a few hundred thousand, if not millions of marks for a single bread, Great Britain sent a note to these mainland allies. According to London, they had acted in conflict with international law: The Rhineland occupations were said to be illegal.

It cannot be denied that this allied controversy went down in school and history books. In this blogpostk this standard interpretation from 1945 is questioned.

In the fourth year following the ratifications of the dictated Treaty of Versailles, Britain's inter-Allied note seemed to convey detente. It looked like showing comprehension, if not compassion, for a subjugated or collectively weakened and humiliated Germany coping with a domestic process of similarly huge proportions: the transition to a democratic republic.(1)

What is being left out in the bulk of school and history books? Obviously, these are mostly written in the tradition of Anglo-Saxon historiography which goes back to the unprecedented collectivity of thirty (25 states and five of Britain's colonies) victorious powers at the end of the First World War. (2) Germany's mainstream historical output though cannot be credited for different interpretations.

For the answer it is always beneficial to look at history, not the least its contemporary manifestations. Both time frames of historiography and the historical events apply to the following case containing a covertly propagandistic performance. As of February 1919, Britain had no other interest than pursuing conservative policies ("reactive", Dr. Connor Mulvagh, The Irish Partition and the Treaty of Lausanne 11 Aug.! Glasgow lecture). Months before the French conference host was able to secure his vital interests in the treaty concept, the British Imperial Delegation as a surprising newcomer at the stage of international relations and the British Delegation under the lead of David Lloyd George bluntly ignored the Armistice agreement by totally demolishing the German colonial empire. No aspect of Germany's overseas assets would be left out, be it traffic or the living of its pioneers, that is their empire's one and only generation on from 1884. It took these double delegations about four weeks to secretively "decolonize" the internally transforming and internationally isolated Armistice partner. It seemed to bother neither the Empire forces searching for independence in a conditional bond with the motherland nor its sub-imperialism introducing war cabinets that their colonial machinations meant a total breach with the 1918 ceasefire agreement.

Now move on a few years in history: Summer 1923 and the British memorandum on the new occupations. In order to contain the risk of nationally revisionist movements in Germany, the British did their best to restrain their allies from actions such as this military campaign with colonial troops into the industrial heartland of the decolonized state. A less revanchist Weimar or a moderate stance of its nationalists and revisionists would definitely serve Britain's interests. Neither of the war aims achieved by the Australian, New Zealand and South-African proxies and the motherland over the first winter days in Paris, 1919, would be jeopardised in the long run. Particularly the gains of the maritime variant of "Alsace-Lorraine à l'envers", which implied the huge risk of any Rhineland occupations, would not be put at risk to be reversed. The opportunist sub-imperialists from the settler colonies in the southern hemisphere may have consented tacitly to the motherland's memorandum. What the imperialists around Lloyd George overlooked, was that their divide-et-impera policies against the mainland Europeans brought systemic insecurity for all of Europe (and the world). This ignorance or self-delusion can also be attributed to his successors.

✍️   Peter de Bourgraaf

(1)  Lena Mörike. Nationale Geschichtspolitik. Der Versailler Friedensvertrag in der 100-jährigen Erinnerung in Schulbüchern aus vier Nationen. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2022, 118 and 124.