Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

WAR IN THE RUHR 161that she would renounce the two hundred and twenty thousand Germansin South Tyrol and would not molest Italy on their account. Immediatelyafter Mussolini's rise to power, a cold, lonely voice in Munich declared,amid a storm of protest, that the issue of South Tyrol must not beallowed to come between Germany and Italy; if Fascist Italy wasprepared to oppose France, this represented such a gain for Germanythat she might calmly renounce South Tyrol. It was the voice of theunknown Hitler.This, roughly, was the political situation at the beginning of 1923,when the struggle with France for the Rhine approached its climax. Theterm of Raymond Poincare, President of the French Republic, hadexpired in 1920. Georges Clemenceau had attempted to succeed him,but failed; embittered, he had withdrawn from political life. ButPoincare had returned: in 1922, he became premier and prepared aviolent and final settlement with conquered Germany. Germany, too,was arming for a test of strength. Both sides used the question ofGerman reparation payments as a pretext. Germany, without denyingher obligations, wanted them to be clearly defined and finally settled,for as long as they were not, the country's balance of payment remainedan unknown and unsafe factor, and inflation was there to stay. Francemaintained that Germany's obligations had been defined and settled bythe London plan of 1921, and that there was nothing to settle any more— which was quite true except that the London settlement, with its onehundred and thirty-two billions, certainly exceeded Germany'scapability to produce and to pay, and France's capability to receive andto digest.In Germany the Wirth cabinet which, by its policy of 'fulfilling'obligations that simply could not be fulfilled, had aroused doubts ofGermany's sincerity, fell in autumn, 1922. It was replaced by the mostconservative and nationalistic government that the German Republichad had up to that time. Doctor Wilhelm Cuno, the new Chancellor,who had been director of the leading German steamship line, tried invain to reach a definite settlement.On January 11, 1923, a French army occupied Germany's last andgreatest coal province, the industrial heart of the Reich, the Ruhr. A warbroke out between France and Germany, in so far as one can speak ofwar between a first-class military power and a dis-