Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Acts of violence and accidents caused by the occupying forces had resulted in 137 deaths and 603 injuries by August 1924, shortly before the passive resistance was called off. Monetary damages to the economy of the Ruhr caused by the occupation were estimated at between 3.5 and 4 billion gold marks. [17]
During its brief three months in office, the Great Coalition ended the passive resistance against the Ruhr occupation, successfully stabilized the currency by replacing the worthless Papiermark with the Rentenmark and expelled the German Communist Party from the governments of Saxony and Thuringia by means of a Reichsexekution. [1]
The Cuno strikes were a nationwide wave of strikes in Germany against the government of Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno in August 1923. The strikes were called by the Communist Party of Germany in response to Cuno's policy of passive resistance against the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr and the hyperinflation that resulted from it.
The occupation of the Ruhr ended on 25 August 1925. Germany considered the Dawes Plan to be a temporary measure and expected a revised solution in the future. [ 17 ] In 1928 German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, the former chancellor, called for a final plan to be established, and the Young Plan was enacted in 1929.
During his brief chancellorship, he abandoned the policy of passive resistance against the French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr and introduced the Rentenmark in a (relatively successful) attempt to tame hyperinflation in the country. In November, Stresemann's reshuffled government collapsed after the Social Democrats withdrew from the coalition.
Even though relatively little violence accompanied the passive resistance, [2] French authorities imposed between 120,000 and 150,000 sentences against resisting Germans. Some involved prison sentences, but the overwhelming majority were deportations from the Ruhr district and the Rhineland to the unoccupied part of Germany. [4]
Although the French succeeded in their objective during the Ruhr occupation, the Germans had wrecked their economy by funding passive resistance and brought about hyperinflation. [70] Under Anglo-American pressure and simultaneous decline in the value of the franc, France was increasingly isolated and her diplomatic position was weakened. [71]
The German government's response was to order a policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr, with workers being told to do nothing which helped the French and Belgians in any way. While this policy, in practice, amounted to a general strike to protest the occupation, the striking workers still had to be given financial support.