French Policy in the Rhineland

From the Treaty of Versailles through to the Dawes Plan, France tried, at various times, to pursue an active policy in the territories on the left bank of the Rhine, hoping eventually to create an autonomous political body in the Rhineland detached from Berlin. The methods and objectives were not always the same under Millerand, Briand, and Poincaré, the latter in particular envisaging this as a prelude to the total disintegration of Weimar Germany. The final halting of this Rhineland policy, as part of the outcome of the Ruhr invasion, marked clearly the limits of French power in the post-war era, though it is not certain if all of France's rulers grasped this.