WI: Monnet Plan succeeds, France receives the Ruhr and Saar

What if, due to a successful post-WW2 Monnet Plan, France possessed the very powerful industrial coal and steel regions of the Ruhr and Saar?

Would they have been the third most powerful country after the US and USSR (until Japan recovers and China industrializes)?
 
What if, due to a successful post-WW2 Monnet Plan, France possessed the very powerful industrial coal and steel regions of the Ruhr and Saar?

Would they have been the third most powerful country after the US and USSR (until Japan recovers and China industrializes)?
Who said it didn't?
 
What if, due to a successful post-WW2 Monnet Plan, France possessed the very powerful industrial coal and steel regions of the Ruhr and Saar?
Since the areas are full of Germans, there are basicly two options for France.

1. Ethnically clease the area of Germans, like in Poland, Sudetenland and Kaliningrad. This is obviously morally unacceptable, but I am not sure people (or at least the French government) would have cared enough after WWII. In that case France needs to repopulate the area with French citizens. It would probably cause a lot of friction between Germany and France, so likely no EU. Also it would look to outsiders that France is still expansionist and might go for the Rhineborder again, so I guess that the relationship with the Benelux, who might feel threathened by France wouldn't be great either.

2. the other option is let the Germans remain at these areas. This will no doubt lead to friction between these areas and the rest of France, since I doubt the Germans would be willing to become French. Basicly general unrest, the rise of natonalist parties trying to become independent (or reunify with Germany), possibly violent actions by the Germans. Oh and the problem of bad relations with Germany and the benelux remains.

The best, although morally worse, choice for France is option 1, since it leads to less problems. Well actualy the best course of action would be OTL. Good relations with Germany, the Benelux and all of Europe and France is still one of the most important economies in Europe.
 
Since the areas are full of Germans, there are basicly two options for France.

1. Ethnically clease the area of Germans, like in Poland, Sudetenland and Kaliningrad. This is obviously morally unacceptable, but I am not sure people (or at least the French government) would have cared enough after WWII. In that case France needs to repopulate the area with French citizens. It would probably cause a lot of friction between Germany and France, so likely no EU. Also it would look to outsiders that France is still expansionist and might go for the Rhineborder again, so I guess that the relationship with the Benelux, who might feel threathened by France wouldn't be great either.

2. the other option is let the Germans remain at these areas. This will no doubt lead to friction between these areas and the rest of France, since I doubt the Germans would be willing to become French. Basicly general unrest, the rise of natonalist parties trying to become independent (or reunify with Germany), possibly violent actions by the Germans. Oh and the problem of bad relations with Germany and the benelux remains.

The best, although morally worse, choice for France is option 1, since it leads to less problems. Well actualy the best course of action would be OTL. Good relations with Germany, the Benelux and all of Europe and France is still one of the most important economies in Europe.
I don't think France removing Germans would torpedo the EU.
 
I don't think France removing Germans would torpedo the EU.
Yes it would. It would completely ruin the relationship between Germany and France and without that relationship there is no EU. Besides that, France annexing the Rhineland means that France might still be interested in the Rhine border, which means France is a threat to the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg. That potential threat alone would probably mean that those countries would not trust France enough to form the EU (or EEC). Basicly they would grow closer to the UK and the USA as opposd to France. If France would do this, there will be no EU.
 
2. the other option is let the Germans remain at these areas. This will no doubt lead to friction between these areas and the rest of France, since I doubt the Germans would be willing to become French. Basicly general unrest, the rise of natonalist parties trying to become independent (or reunify with Germany), possibly violent actions by the Germans. Oh and the problem of bad relations with Germany and the benelux remains.....

The Communists no doubt would try hard to take advantage of this.

Unhappy Germans would make for a poor labor force & the Ruhr might be disappontingly unporductive. Even to the point of being a economic loss to France.

French control greatly weakens the West German remnant. The ability of the Bundeswehr to rearm to the level of the 1980s or even 1960s is questionable.
 
Yes it would. It would completely ruin the relationship between Germany and France and without that relationship there is no EU. Besides that, France annexing the Rhineland means that France might still be interested in the Rhine border, which means France is a threat to the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg. That potential threat alone would probably mean that those countries would not trust France enough to form the EU (or EEC). Basicly they would grow closer to the UK and the USA as opposd to France. If France would do this, there will be no EU.
No it wouldn't.

1) Firstly, there were 4 other members of the EU when it was founded.

2) The Germans invaded France, slaughered hundreds of thousands of people and reduced it to a puppet state. Yet, they got over it. There's very little reason to assume that the German and French relations would permanentl suffer for it. France did adjust it's borders after WW2. Few people will care and it certainly wouldn't inspire wide scale fear of French expansionism.
 

Archibald

Banned
French - German relations only really improved with De Gaulle and Adenauer from 1962. Before that date the relationship was pretty mixed, although France (military and politically wise) had other serious matters than Germany re-armement - namely, Indochina (1946 - 1954) closely followed by Algeria (1954 - 1962).
Political unstability (1946 - 1958: 12 years, 25 governments !) also prevented a true renewal of the relationship with Germany (no long range strategy when your political life expectancy is an average six months or worse)
 
France did adjust it's borders after WW2.

The change in the Franco-Italian border was very slight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Treaties,_1947#Border_changes (The Tende Valley had a few thousand people, La Brigue's population was in the hundreds--and the people of the affected areas approved the change in a plebescite. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Référendum_local_sur_le_rattachement_de_Tende) Comparing that with the Ruhr and Saar with their industrial importance and millions of Germans is not IMO very helpful.

Maybe the Germans would swallow the loss of the Saar alone, but I cannot imagine a French Ruhr without creating really long-lasting Franco-German bitterness.
 
What if the POD was a bit earlier, and this expansion of France was also paired with a bigger, badder East Germany, such that West Germany never became more than a narrow military buffer zone?

So France could champion their acquisition of the Ruhr and Saar as bringing democracy to Germans.
 
1. Ethnically clease the area of Germans, like in Poland, Sudetenland and Kaliningrad. This is obviously morally unacceptable, but I am not sure people (or at least the French government) would have cared enough after WWII.

I remember reading that they refused to let the Dutch annex such a large territory (Would have expanded the country by 50%, with controlling the land between Oldenburg and Duren) due to the influx of nearly 14 million German refugees and that it would have weakened Western Germany too much. Pretty much all annexation plans (proposed by the Dutch,Belgians, Luxumbergiouns? and French) were rejected by the U.S, U.K, and the USSR
 
The change in the Franco-Italian border was very slight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Treaties,_1947#Border_changes (The Tende Valley had a few thousand people, La Brigue's population was in the hundreds--and the people of the affected areas approved the change in a plebescite. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Référendum_local_sur_le_rattachement_de_Tende) Comparing that with the Ruhr and Saar with their industrial importance and millions of Germans is not IMO very helpful.

Maybe the Germans would swallow the loss of the Saar alone, but I cannot imagine a French Ruhr without creating really long-lasting Franco-German bitterness.
I was going off the top of my head, but I remebered a slight adgustment in the North too. Maybe I was wrong. Anyways, the Germans lost far more in the East and the deNazification process is going to be through. The benefits of an EU would by far outweigh irredentism.
 
What if, due to a successful post-WW2 Monnet Plan, France possessed the very powerful industrial coal and steel regions of the Ruhr and Saar?

Would they have been the third most powerful country after the US and USSR (until Japan recovers and China industrializes)?

By 1945, the Saar and the Ruhr were in ruins, broken by two years of continuous allied bombing - and some fierce ground fighting. So, have the French own two wrecked territories. They will be unable to rebuild them, leaving them with the liability of supplying the populace (either disenchanted French settlers or disentchanted German natives).

No EU, certainly not. Germany, if not fully turning to Moscow, will at least go for neutrality (in the - vain? - hope of getting some eastern lands back).
 
By 1945, the Saar and the Ruhr were in ruins, broken by two years of continuous allied bombing - and some fierce ground fighting. So, have the French own two wrecked territories. They will be unable to rebuild them, leaving them with the liability of supplying the populace (either disenchanted French settlers or disentchanted German natives).

No EU, certainly not. Germany, if not fully turning to Moscow, will at least go for neutrality (in the - vain? - hope of getting some eastern lands back).
Allied Germany turning to the Soviet Union that destroyed them, cut their country by half, smashed ther army and committed mass rape as they went. Why are we even assuming the Americans would allow it? Why would the West Germans want to become a Soviet puppet?
 
Somehow the plan never seemed to think about the size of the German population in this area, especially with the displaced people coming into the area. The Ruhr area alone had about 5 million people immediately after the war (no returned POWs, almost no refugees from the east at that time yet), the areas left of the Rhine together probably close to the same. That means to get viable borders either that about 20% of the otl West German population needs to be relocated or that France needs a strong permanent occupation force to control a population 20% its own or that 20% of the French electorate will be ethnic German and will either vote for German separatist (and likely nationalist) parties or for communists, which likely means that without either support no government can be formed.
 
Somehow the plan never seemed to think about the size of the German population in this area, especially with the displaced people coming into the area. The Ruhr area alone had about 5 million people immediately after the war (no returned POWs, almost no refugees from the east at that time yet), the areas left of the Rhine together probably close to the same. That means to get viable borders either that about 20% of the otl West German population needs to be relocated or that France needs a strong permanent occupation force to control a population 20% its own or that 20% of the French electorate will be ethnic German and will either vote for German separatist (and likely nationalist) parties or for communists, which likely means that without either support no government can be formed.

They would have just booted them from their homes. You would be surprised how much is allowed after several years of bloody war where human live of 'the enemy' no matter who they are comes to have little value.
 

Pesigalam

Banned
Yes it would. It would completely ruin the relationship between Germany and France and without that relationship there is no EU.
That's right -- just look at how Poland's ownership of formerly German lands and the ethnic cleansing of the Germans from said lands permanently ruined the relations between Berlin and Warsaw. To this day Germans are blocking Poland's E.U. entry and are vowing to retake the lands of their forefathers-

Oh wait, no, the exact opposite is true. :rolleyes:
Unhappy Germans would make for a poor labor force & the Ruhr might be disappontingly unporductive. Even to the point of being a economic loss to France.

French control greatly weakens the West German remnant. The ability of the Bundeswehr to rearm to the level of the 1980s or even 1960s is questionable.
Prove this.
 

Deleted member 1487

That's right -- just look at how Poland's ownership of formerly German lands and the ethnic cleansing of the Germans from said lands permanently ruined the relations between Berlin and Warsaw. To this day Germans are blocking Poland's E.U. entry and are vowing to retake the lands of their forefathers-

Oh wait, no, the exact opposite is true. :rolleyes:
You understand there is a huge difference between losing the economically unproductive East Prussia and the very important Ruhr, without which Germany would be relatively poor? Also the situation wasn't that Poland did that, it was the USSR that ethnically cleansed Germans from the area after they effectively destroyed Poland nearly completely, then they wiped out the German leadership and replaced the eastern half of the country with a communist system, a system that was also forced on the Poles. In the case of Poland and Germany there was huge guilt associated with the damage Germany inflicted on Poland (remember the Holocaust killed 6 million Polish citizens) and Poland didn't do the ethnic cleansing by and large, they were 'compensated' with ethnically cleansed land when they lost land in the East to the USSR. Then both Germany and Poland were dominated by a vicious victorious power in the USSR that imposed a government and economic system on both and forced them to be allies for generations.

France and West Germany had a different relationship, one that was not predicated on land loss; the pre-war border was kept and Germany and France economically integrated, making both wealthier as a result. If France got the Ruhr and Saar Germany is impoverished at the expense of France and there is no feelings of guilt from the Germans to the French, just a LOT of bitterness and anger as they are left without the means to rebuild their shattered economy, which was not a problem when Poland was given Silesia, Prussia, and Pomerania.
 

Deleted member 1487

By 1945, the Saar and the Ruhr were in ruins, broken by two years of continuous allied bombing - and some fierce ground fighting. So, have the French own two wrecked territories. They will be unable to rebuild them, leaving them with the liability of supplying the populace (either disenchanted French settlers or disentchanted German natives).

No EU, certainly not. Germany, if not fully turning to Moscow, will at least go for neutrality (in the - vain? - hope of getting some eastern lands back).
Yeah part of the problem in a lot of Allied planning was not understanding what was going on on the ground and when they came in they found that the German economy wasn't was vital as thought and was in fact quite shattered by the bombing; it took peace and several years to start rebuilding it, even though some production was able to begin immediately. It was a fraction of what existed pre-war and was mostly stuff that could be easily converted from war material production (like turning helmets into pots and pans).
 
There were various proposals for international control of the industries of the Ruhr. AFAIK there was no serious non-French support for the idea of *France* controlling them, let alone having her annex the Ruhr. (Which incidentally unlike the Saar didn't even border France, so it really couldn't be annexed without major additional Rhineland annexations by France.) This would be regarded as France seeking absurdly more than her actual power entitled her to--a rather common complaint among Allied statesmen...

One of my problems with this thread is that it regards French annexation of the Ruhr and of Saar as equally plausible. The latter, though still unlikely, was at least not so implausible.
 
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