What if: 1919 - Rhineland also given to France

As in the case of Southern Ireland?
Yes.

And the French came in for international flak just for occupying the Ruhr.
OTL French got the flak because they occupied foreign country to demand payments that world believed Germans cannot pay no matter how harshly you'd abuse them to force payments, therefore French ocupation was in the eyes of objectors self-evident proof that French are invading for shit and giggles - pure sadism.
ITTL French are acting within borders or their own country, forcing their own citizens to obey their own laws.
 
Yes.


OTL French got the flak because they occupied foreign country to demand payments that world believed Germans cannot pay no matter how harshly you'd abuse them to force payments, therefore French ocupation was in the eyes of objectors self-evident proof that French are invading for shit and giggles - pure sadism.
ITTL French are acting within borders or their own country, forcing their own citizens to obey their own laws.

France is also a liberal constitutional republic, meaning there's an expectation they aren't going to be have like an authoritarian *bodily opening at the end of one's digestive tract* and ethnically cleanse people whoare , as you said, citizens of the French Republic.
 
France is also a liberal constitutional republic, meaning there's an expectation they aren't going to be have like an authoritarian *bodily opening at the end of one's digestive tract* and ethnically cleanse people whoare , as you said, citizens of the French Republic.
Even decades later, French still had the will to supress insurgents all over their colonial empire. They would've kept doing so, was it not for pressure from USA, which in 1920s and 1930s is still isolationist.
They don't need to round up and shoot half of Germans in Rhineland to maintain order.
Just ban separatist organisations, publications, and rallies. Arrest those who break the law. Shoot those who engage in armed resistance. Daily bread for every country in first half of XX century, liberal constitutional republic or not.
 
Even decades later, French still had the will to supress insurgents all over their colonial empire. They would've kept doing so, was it not for pressure from USA, which in 1920s and 1930s is still isolationist.
They don't need to round up and shoot half of Germans in Rhineland to maintain order.
Just ban separatist organisations, publications, and rallies. Arrest those who break the law. Shoot those who engage in armed resistance. Daily bread for every country in first half of XX century, liberal constitutional republic or not.

The colonial empire example is moot at the time, because those were "just" brown and yellow people. Not good White, Christian peoples. Also standard early 20th century fare.

I certainly agree that, if France acts like a basic liberal regeime, that they'd be able to keep order and probably even gain the loyalty of the locals should the altnernative be the ultra-nationalist, arch-conservative dictatorship (Or Red dictatorship) others in this thread suggest would take power in Germany; I made a post earlier in the thread emphasising that exact point. My comment is specifically directed at all those peoples who suggest an ethnic cleansing/harsh military crackdown on the Rhineland.
 

RousseauX

Donor
And France is supposed to find the Frenchmen to replace them from... where? The problem with kicking all the Germans out of the Rhineland is that without them, the region becomes so much economic and military dead weight. All France would get is a bigger blue blob on the map.
this wasn't a problem with Poland in 1945 w.r.t German' eastern boundaries
 

RousseauX

Donor
Which would only fan the flames of radical politics in Germany. The stab in the back myth? Now it's a cold truth, since all those "November criminals" had just given Germany's heartland to it's mortal enemy on a silver platter. Expect widespread nationalist agitation and a Vietnam-esque insurgency.
was there such an insurgency in the interbellum in German speaking areas annexed to Poland or the Sudetenland?
 
The colonial empire example is moot at the time, because those were "just" brown and yellow people. Not good White, Christian peoples. Also standard early 20th century fare.

I certainly agree that, if France acts like a basic liberal regeime, that they'd be able to keep order and probably even gain the loyalty of the locals should the altnernative be the ultra-nationalist, arch-conservative dictatorship.


Why would "acting like a liberal regime" win any loyalty?

It would still be a foreign regime, imposed by diktat of their national enemies. How would the political character of the French (or the German) regime make any difference whatsoever?
 
Why would "acting like a liberal regime" win any loyalty?

It would still be a foreign regime, imposed by diktat of their national enemies. How would the political character of the French (or the German) regime make any difference whatsoever?

... because in a liberal, Constituional France you would have a greater say in your local government, electing the mayor, town council, and the like. You could run your bussiness in relative peace, protest or strike if you diden't like your conditions, voice dissent without the boys in brown shooting you dead or dragging you away in the dark of the night. It would be a country where you could be a socialist, or a liberal, or what have you without being an "enemy of the state", where your individual freedoms and desires weren't being crushed. Assuming Paris isen't actively dicking the locals over, and they welcome the refugees fleeing political repression in "Nazi" Germany, with all the horror stories it entails, then why would I give up my decent and free life just so my head of state would be speaking German?

For the average citizen, they could speak German for 95%+ of their activity (Because all your neighbors speak German too) , have a job and family, and go about their daily lives in a decently autonomous French province as citizens of the Republic. Granted, if France goes around trying to Frenchify them than the situation is different, but if not why sell out all these things you enjoy as an individual for life under a totalitarian state that's an "ideological enemy": a difference of values and lifestyles rather than just languages?
 
... because in a liberal, Constituional France you would have a greater say in your local government, electing the mayor, town council, and the like. You could run your bussiness in relative peace, protest or strike if you diden't like your conditions, voice dissent without the boys in brown shooting you dead or dragging you away in the dark of the night. It would be a country where you could be a socialist, or a liberal, or what have you without being an "enemy of the state", where your individual freedoms and desires weren't being crushed. Assuming Paris isen't actively dicking the locals over, and they welcome the refugees fleeing political repression in "Nazi" Germany, with all the horror stories it entails, then why would I give up my decent and free life just so my head of state would be speaking German?

For the average citizen, they could speak German for 95%+ of their activity (Because all your neighbors speak German too) , have a job and family, and go about their daily lives in a decently autonomous French province as citizens of the Republic. Granted, if France goes around trying to Frenchify them than the situation is different, but if not why sell out all these things you enjoy as an individual for life under a totalitarian state that's an "ideological enemy": a difference of values and lifestyles rather than just languages?


None of which could come anywhere near overcoming the fact of being ruled by foreigners.

Look at the Saar. The biggest industry there was coal mining, so a huge proportion of the voters are unionised miners who would have voted Socialist or even Communist had they been part of the Weimar Republic. They knew perfectly well what awaited them in Hitler's Germany - suppression of their Unions and prohibition of their political parties. Yet the option of remaining under League of nations administration couldn't obtain 9% of their votes, while union with France <g> couldn't even muster 0.5%. National loyalty easily trumped all other considerations. If the choice was between being ruled by Hitler or by a foreigner (esp a Frenchman), then Hitler was the lesser evil. And there isn't the remotest likelihood that the rest of the Rhineland would have seen things any differently.

France's system of government is entirely irrelevant to this issue. No constitution could turn the French into Germans (the only thing that would make their rule acceptable) or Rhinelanders into Frenchmen.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
was there such an insurgency in the interbellum in German speaking areas annexed to Poland or the Sudetenland?
If Czechoslovakia tried to fight Germany, there would have been one. And during the Polish-Soviet War, the residents of Danzig went on strike and refused to allow supplies to get through to Poland in the hopes that the Poles would be defeated.
 
If Czechoslovakia tried to fight Germany, there would have been one. And during the Polish-Soviet War, the residents of Danzig went on strike and refused to allow supplies to get through to Poland in the hopes that the Poles would be defeated.
Dont forget the whole Freikorps thing going on in the East.
 
this wasn't a problem with Poland in 1945 w.r.t German' eastern boundaries

And the majority of those Poles came from the Kresy as they were expelled by the Soviets in the process of shifting Poland's borders around. Plus a communist government is much more easily able to move populations around at the drop of a hat than a liberal democratic capitalist government.
 

RousseauX

Donor
And the majority of those Poles came from the Kresy as they were expelled by the Soviets in the process of shifting Poland's borders around. Plus a communist government is much more easily able to move populations around at the drop of a hat than a liberal democratic capitalist government.
were there that many ethnic poles in the areas annexed by the USSR?

my impression was that they were mostly populated by non-poles
 

Deleted member 94680

While many make the good point that liberal France would appear better than Nazi Germany, it misses out the the 14 years or so that it would be Weimar Germany bordering the Rhineland.

Good old Germany with a large Social Democrat Party, German as the official language, German law as the legal system and countless other things that the adults in the Rhineland would feel is natural.

It would take far more than "liberal government and autonomy" to erase the memory of the fact that you're living in a seperate country now from Cousin Franz in Berlin. A separate country because the "liberal government" took your Provinz from the nation you were born in at the point of a bayonet.
 
were there that many ethnic poles in the areas annexed by the USSR?

my impression was that they were mostly populated by non-poles

Lwów and surroundings were very Polish. Other areas had sizable Polish minorities as well, which barely exist nowadays. And then you consider some surveys in Silesia nowadays which show the majority of people there have ancestry in the former Kresy region. Lower Silesia has the highest percentage of these Poles, which isn't surprising since it had been predominantly German since the Middle Ages.

The areas did have a large amount of Ukrainians and Belarusians (and Jews, but most of them were killed in the Holocaust), but after the Soviets shifted the borders, the amount of Poles markedly decreased.
 
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