March 7, 1936: French forces re-enter the Rhineland

Hitler's credibility stops and Germany collapses. A communist government rises and the combined forces of Germany and the USSR are so strong that no war goes on except these two countries dividing Poland. Japan would not dare do anything as the Europeans have no distractions and the USSR is much stronger than them... :D

It would be interesting to see ww2 sparked by a German civil war. France and Britain don't want Germany going communist, so what do they do, Send forces to assist the collapsing fascist government? Do they let the soviets swoop in and take control of the country, using the local communists as puppets?
 
Say what ?
Not to defend the original claim, but..

It's been 18 years since the last serious fighting in europe, most of the troops involved in such an action wouldn't even have been born at the start of WW1 - battlehardned is not quite the term....

French governments in the 30's were notoriously unstable and shortlived.
If the operation goes well, fine they buy a few months extra, but if anything goes wrong, before, during or after, it's goodbye to another french government.

That's true. Over-look on my part :eek:
 
March 8. The french goverment collapses again and the forces go home.

Without a government to give them the order? Fat chance. Collapse of the French government is probable, particularly if the ruling Coalition doesn't agree on the move (or on some totally unrelated issue). But once in Rhineland, the troops would remain there until recalled.
 
Without a government to give them the order? Fat chance. Collapse of the French government is probable, particularly if the ruling Coalition doesn't agree on the move (or on some totally unrelated issue). But once in Rhineland, the troops would remain there until recalled.


Which they soon would be.

OTL, Allied troops didn't even stay on the Rhine as long as they were entitled to under the ToV, quitting five years ahead of time. And since the building of the Maginot Line, the French Army no longer includes the Rhineland in its defensive plans. In such circs, it won't be long before someone decides that the troops are sitting in the Rhineland to no real purpose, and they are brought home.
 
What would have to happen diplomatically and politically for the French government at the time to decide to "go it alone" and risk war with Germany? Let's assume for a moment that no souffles with immediately collapse.

Gamelin's report to the government, in which he said that a full mobilization (horribly expensive) was necessary, was actually the worst-case scenario. What if Weygand had delayed his retirement and is still in position in 1936? I don't know enough about the man to guess whether he would have made the same decisions.
 
Which they soon would be.

OTL, Allied troops didn't even stay on the Rhine as long as they were entitled to under the ToV, quitting five years ahead of time. And since the building of the Maginot Line, the French Army no longer includes the Rhineland in its defensive plans. In such circs, it won't be long before someone decides that the troops are sitting in the Rhineland to no real purpose, and they are brought home.

People who think ww2 and the events leading up to them is a game of HoI2 are funny aye?
 
Had French forces crossed the border the Wehrmacht had orders to immediately withdraw from the Rhineland offering no resistance.

Hitler’s confidence would have been dealt a blow to say the least, and French confidence would have been boosted enormously.
Perfectly true. The real problem is to get the French government to march into the Rhineland in the first place. But this is precisely the POD the original post had already taken for granted. If even Hitler acknowledges that his forces are vastly inferior, and orders a retreat, then the French army and government cannot help but succeed.
If Hitler does not give the order to retreat, the tiny German force in the Rhineland has the alternative of either surrendering or getting wiped out.

The French now have gained two huge advantages:
1. They have occupied the Ruhr district, as a part of the Rhineland. This is by far the biggest and most important industrial area in Germany. Germany's prospect for gaining even military parity with the French are not good, and the prospect for beating a coalition of France and Britain, not to mention other countries, have become utopian.
2. They have humbled a dictator whose unspoken motto is "might makes right" and who, so far, has impressed quite a number of people inside and outside Germany. If people find out that Hitler cannot deliver the "might", most or all of his prestige will vanish overnight. Every German at the time either remembered the hardships of World War One very well, or knew many people who remembered them. If Hitler failed this early in his career, they will rightly fear another war as a total disaster.

France's allies on the other hand, will regain confidence in France. Belgium will not renounce its military convention with France in 1936.
If a French government has decided on re-occupying the Rhineland (as is stated in the OP), they cannot help but be successful. Once they, and the French public, realize that they have been successful, there is absolutely no reason why the occupation cannot remain in place for many years, let's say until Germany becomes a democracy again. With the Ruhr district in French hands, the Germans cannot defeat the French.
There still may be other big wars in the future, but definitely no World War Two as we know it.
 
Last edited:
It's probably still goodbye even if nothing goes wrong.

Remember, France had been here before. The occupation of the Ruhr had been a complete success, and was also perfectly legal under the Treaty of Versailles - yet the French government which undertook it fell a few months later. There was no political mileage in such adventures, however legal or however successful.

Nor was the French Army really interested. Even a year before, at the time of the Stresa Front, Franco-Italian military conversations were copnfined to the defence of Alsace and S Tyrol, with the Rhineland DMZ silently written off. Once they came to regard the Maginot Line as their defensive position, the DMZ became irrelevant, so naturally they poured cold water on any proposal to recover it.
The comparison to the occupation of the Ruhr is misleading. The Ruhr district was occupied in order to extract more reparations from Germany, and this aim was not reached, therefore it was far from being "a complete success" as you write.

The occupation of the Rhineland, as a reaction to Hitler's re-militarizing the erea, would have had the much simpler task of negating the erea's industry to the German armed forces, and to deprive Germany of a staging area for an attack on France, or alternatively give the French armed forces a staging area for inroads into Germany further East. In contrast to the earlier occupation of the Ruhr, the French cannot be thwarted with any strikes or self-induced economic chaos.
 
Which they soon would be.

So what? Eternal occupation of the Rhine isn't necessary to make your point to the Germans that Germany isn't supposed to militarize it. Once the German troops scamper away, there's really no reason to keep French troops there anyway.

And the (salutary) effects on Germany are huge.
 
In contrast to the earlier occupation of the Ruhr, the French cannot be thwarted with any strikes or self-induced economic chaos.

They can in principle - to the point that the French public thinks it costs too much to keep up the occupation. In this case, however, if Hitler follows the recipe of 1923 to keep the strikers financed the German finance system wil not survive it - and Hitler's cabinet either. A second hyperinflation in 13 years will be too much for the German population.

However, if the French visibly cause widespread poverty and ruin in Germany for the 2nd time, the rapprochment that is direly needed to stabilize Europe is difficult to achieve for a post-Hitler givernment. The French will remain the hereditary enemy and impoverished Germany falls back into pre-Napoleon years...
 
So what? Eternal occupation of the Rhine isn't necessary to make your point to the Germans that Germany isn't supposed to militarize it. Once the German troops scamper away, there's really no reason to keep French troops there anyway.

And the (salutary) effects on Germany are huge.

This. Even once the French withdraw, it's a huge stretch to say that a now-discredited Hitler could persuade the Army to try it all over again. He could try to move forward with the Anschluss, but even that would probably be heavily butterflied - he doesn't have the look of a man of destiny anymore.
 
Top