The Propaganda War in the Rhineland

Weimar Germany, Race and Occupation After World War I

Peter Collar

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786722140
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Piecing together a fractured European continent after World War I, the Versailles Peace Treaty stipulated the long term occupation of the Rhineland by Allied troops. This occupation, perceived as a humiliation by the political right, caused anger and dismay in Germany and an aggressive propaganda war broke out-heightened by an explosion of vicious racist propaganda against the use of non-European colonial troops by France in the border area. These troops, the so-called Schwarze Schmach or 'Black humiliation' raised questions of race and the Other in a Germany which was to be torn apart by racial anger in the decades to come. Here, in the first English-language book on the subject, Peter Collar uses the propaganda posters, letters and speeches to reconstruct the nature and organisation of a propaganda campaign conducted against a background of fractured international relations and turbulent internal politics in the early years of the Weimar Republic. This will be essential reading for students and scholars of Weimar Germany and those interested in Race and Politics in the early 20th Century.

1

THE PFALZ: FOCUS OF FRENCH AMBITIONS IN THE WEIMAR CRISIS YEARS

With the signing of the Armistice Agreement, which brought World War I to an end, came also the occupation by Allied forces of those margins of Germany that lay to the west of the Rhine. On 1 December 1918 Allied troops crossed the German frontier and within a few days the occupation of the Rhineland was complete. Initial reactions to the arrival of enemy troops were muted. While there were peace negotiations in the offing there was always hope that the Allies would withdraw following a settlement. Such hopes were dashed, however, when the Allied terms for the peace settlement were made known on 7 May 1919. These were punitive. Underlying them was the insistent claim that Germany bore full responsibility for the war. The reaction in Germany was one of both dismay and fury and there was initial agreement across the political spectrum that the terms should be rejected. This position could not be sustained, however. In the face of Allied demands for unconditional acceptance, with the threat of renewed hostilities, the terms were accepted by the Reich government with only minor modification from the original draft.

The act of signing the Peace Treaty at Versailles on 28 June 1919 following a majority vote in the National Assembly was to lay bare the schism that existed in post-war German society. Reluctantly agreed to by the left-of-centre SPD-Centre coalition government led by Gustav Bauer, following the resignation of the Scheidemann Cabinet over the issue, the signing was bitterly opposed by the political Right. It was seen as a shameful act of betrayal. Together with the accusation that the civilian home front had metaphorically stabbed the army in the back and thereby lost the war for Germany, the acceptance of the Versailles terms was to provide the mainstay of the ideological hostility shown by the Right towards the revolution of November 1918 and the Weimar Republic that emerged from it. The extent to which this hostility influenced the propaganda campaign that was conducted against the provisions of the Peace Treaty will emerge in the following chapters.

The final settlement at Versailles was very much to the detriment of the German Reich. Amongst the measures imposed upon Germany were the payment of reparations, the confiscation of German colonies and the loss of substantial German territory to adjacent nations. In the east, parts of Silesia, West Prussia and Posen were ceded directly to Poland, while in the west an area around Eupen became part of Belgium. Plebiscites to determine future statehood were to be arranged in certain other areas. Alsace, taken by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, was returned to France and the future of the Saarland was to be the subject of a plebiscite following a period of administration by the fledgling League of Nations. The occupation of the Rhineland would continue as a guarantee of payment of reparations, the amount of which would be determined by a Reparations Commission established for the purpose.¹

Those regions of Germany that lay to the west of the Rhine, together with bridgeheads at Cologne, Coblenz, Mainz and Kehl (Strasbourg), were occupied by the forces of four Allied nations, France, Great Britain, Belgium and the USA. A complicating factor in the administration of the zones was the fact that the territory belonged to different German states: Prussia, Hessen, Bavaria, Oldenburg and Baden. The partitioning arrangements are shown in fig. 1. The French zone was the largest of the four and included part of the Prussian Rhine Province, territory belonging to Hessen and the Bavarian Pfalz. It extended from Bonn in the north to the border with Alsace in the south, with the addition of the bridgehead at Kehl.

Figure 1. The occupied Rhineland

Zones of occupation were to be progressively vacated by the Allies after periods of five, ten and fifteen years, beginning with the northernmost areas. Amongst the last areas to be evacuated was to be the French-occupied Bavarian Pfalz. This was no accident. The Pfalz had always held considerable geopolitical significance for both France and the German-speaking peoples east of the Rhine. The reason lay in the topography either side of the Rhine valley. The river itself, together with the hilly terrain on either bank, provided a natural defensive frontier for both countries. Only where the Rhine bordered the Pfalz – and perhaps a smaller area around Cologne – would an invading army from either side have found relatively easy access to the territory of the other side.²

As a consequence the region had endured a violent history. Now, in 1918, the strategic importance of the Pfalz was perceived by France to be as great as it had been in earlier times and this was a principal factor in determining French post-war policy towards Germany. It comes as no surprise that the turbulent history of the region was exploited in the propaganda of both sides during the Rhineland occupation. It is therefore worth examining briefly the history of the Pfalz before returning to the events of 1918.

Arguably the most notorious episode associated with the region took place between 1688 and 1697 when a French army under the command of the Compte de Mélac rampaged through the countryside at the behest of Louis XIV. Louis had laid claim to the Pfalz³ on the death of its ruler, the childless brother of his sister-in-law. When he failed to achieve his aims by diplomacy he resorted to force. This war of succession was conducted with extreme brutality and it resulted in the systematic sacking and pillaging of major towns and numerous villages on both sides of the Rhine. While Mélac himself was not solely responsible for the atrocities committed in the southern Rhineland, he applied himself so ruthlessly to his task that it is with his name in particular that the events of the time are still associated.⁴

There was a renewed French presence in the Pfalz a century later when in 1792 the revolutionary government in Paris sought, in missionary style, to free the peoples of the Rhineland from what was regarded by France as the tyranny of the German princes. It could be said that it was simply a case of the expansionist ambitions of the old regime in France re-emerging in the foreign policy of the new regime, though now clothed in a new moral ideology.⁵ The occupation of Mainz, Speyer and Frankfurt by revolutionary troops met relatively little resistance but soon the French intentions were meeting with difficulties inasmuch that the Rhinelanders’ concept of freedom differed from that of the liberators. Over the next few months a campaign that had begun as an act of liberation was transformed into an occupation in the face of an increasingly hostile population. Also, with changes in perceived political priorities French national defence interests then took precedence. A particular goal was the occupation of the west bank of the Rhine, in this way to establish the Rhine as the eastern frontier. In the winter of 1793–4 French troops plundered the Pfalz in a manner reminiscent of the action of a century earlier⁶ – an act that was exploited by propagandists for the old feudal regime.

By 1798 French policy had changed again and the emphasis was now on the incorporation of the Rhineland rather than mere occupation. The subsequent years under Napoleon brought far-reaching administrative, political, economic and social reforms. By and large the population came to accept the new regime, for the benefits of reform offset accompanying disadvantages such as increased taxation and conscription into the imperial armies. The Rhineland could even be said to have shown, to a certain degree, political loyalty to France while, however, retaining its German identity and culture at its core.⁷ The liberation of the Rhineland by the combined armies of Prussia, Russia and Austria in 1814 brought yet another upheaval. The territory on the west bank of the river that corresponded to the Pfalz of the early twentieth century was administered jointly by Austria and Bavaria from 1814 to 1816.

Before 1792 the original region, the Kurpfalz, had also included areas east of the Rhine. It had long been linked with Bavaria through various branches of the royal Wittelsbach dynasty. The connection had become particularly close when in 1777 the ruler of the Kurpfalz, Karl Theodor, Duke of Sulzbach, also inherited the Electorate of Bavaria. His title and authority were subsumed into that of Elector of Bavaria and he moved his seat from Mannheim to Munich. In 1802, in addition to the annexation by France of Kurpfalz territory on the west bank, areas east of the Rhine, including Mannheim and Heidelberg, were ceded to Baden. Following the collapse of the Napoleonic regime Bavaria was able to make justifiable demands at the time of the Congress of Vienna for the restoration of her Rhineland territories. With the signing of the Treaty of Munich in 1816 territory on the west bank – with some additions – once again became a Bavarian province under Wittelsbach rule. The reacquisition of territory east of the Rhine which would have provided a direct connection with Bavaria was never realised, however, in spite of Bavarian efforts to achieve this.⁸ Thus the Bavarian province on the west bank – given the name Die Pfalz in 1838 – was left physically isolated from the mother state. It was a failure that was to have serious consequences a century later.

The change in governance in 1816 was greeted in the province with rather less enthusiasm than had been anticipated in Bavaria. It could be said that the years spent under French authority, and the fact that the Rhineland had effectively been isolated from developments in mainstream German society, had led to the beginnings of a Rhenish identity, distinct from its German parentage. There was now considerable uncertainty throughout the Rhineland as to what the future might hold. There were worries that the reforms that had been gained during the Napoleonic era would be overturned in a return to the old feudal systems still in place elsewhere in the German states,⁹ though in fact this did not happen in any of the Rhineland provinces. An additional reason lay in the fact that the Pfalz had little in common with strongly Catholic Bavaria. Not only did it have a slight Protestant majority,¹⁰ but its customs and its dialect differed markedly from those of Bavaria. This fact was well illustrated a century later when recruits to the Bavarian army from the Pfalz at the outbreak of World War I were said to have experienced great difficulties because they could not understand what was being said to them.¹¹ Underlying all of this was the undeniable fact that the Pfalz was far distant from Munich, the centre of Bavarian power (see fig. 2).

Whether as a result of enlightened administration or through practical expediency, Bavaria made only limited changes in the Pfalz and left the civil constitution essentially unchanged. The reforms brought about during the Napoleonic era were reduced but not lost. In this respect the Pfalz enjoyed a special status within Bavaria. Yet in another sense it was substantially disadvantaged. It was under-represented in government and so lacked influence. Furthermore the Bavarian government proved to be consistently neglectful of the economic wellbeing of its province. Under such pressures the sense of local identity in the Pfalz was reinforced, and this was accompanied by a growing degree of liberal radicalism. There emerged also a growing desire for German national unity, a feeling encapsulated in the first mass rally in support of this ideal that took place in May 1832 at Hambach in the Pfalz.¹² These feelings culminated in the revolutionary uprisings of 1848–9. Revolution was, however, effectively suppressed in the Pfalz and the following decade was marked by economic depression and passive acceptance of the political status quo.

Figure 2. The states of the German Reich

With a gradual revival of political and economic life in the 1860s emerged a new elite in the Pfalz which was to form the backbone of the National Liberal political party. This comprised wealthy bourgeois landowners, winegrowers, senior government officials and, as industrialisation gathered pace, the new captains of industry. Rapprochement with Bavaria was accompanied by continuing support within the Pfalz for the unification of Germany although the sense of local identity was preserved and indeed encouraged by the new elite. In 1870 the Pfalz formed the springboard for the Franco-Prussian War and this served simply to reinforce the support for the creation of the German Reich that took place under Bismarck in the following year.¹³

The sense of regional identity in the Pfalz was further nurtured in the latter part of the nineteenth century by the concept of Heimat. This was a new consciousness which was awakened quite widely in Germany and which took particularly strong root in the Pfalz. It embodied the sen...