WI: Rhineland given to France, Belgium, and The Netherlands

kernals12

Banned
What if after World War I, the left bank of the Rhine was taken from Germany and divided up amongst its neighbors rather than simply being turned into an international zone? Depriving the Germans of their coal reserves would've made life a lot harder during World War 2 and it could've allowed lower cash reparations.
 
How would they exactly divide that up? The Netherlands was neutral during the war. Also, doesn't Luxembourg get anything?
 
If I remember my history the area would be filled with Germans fighting against the occupying power, just as had happened when the French occupied the Rhineland post world war one. Hell the area was a huge base of support for the Nazis and other nationalist parties.
 

kernals12

Banned
If I remember my history the area would be filled with Germans fighting against the occupying power, just as had happened when the French occupied the Rhineland post world war one. Hell the area was a huge base of support for the Nazis and other nationalist parties.
They managed to get them to give up territory in the east and the French were able to invade the Ruhr in 1923.
 

kernals12

Banned
The one problem I see is it would've resulted in Mainz, most of Cologne and Bonn, and a large chunk of Dusseldorf, being in another country. You could probably make exceptions for them which isn't a big problem since Germany would still lose her coal mines.
 
If I remember my history the area would be filled with Germans fighting against the occupying power, just as had happened when the French occupied the Rhineland post world war one. Hell the area was a huge base of support for the Nazis and other nationalist parties.

I recall Belgium was offered a few more kilometers and refused. The Malmedy district and a few other bits were all they could handle. France found a lot of the Alsatian population spoke no French and had moved there from other parts of Germany while a portion of the French speaking population had migrated away, to France, the US, Africa, or wherever. Taking on other districts with no French speakers & otherwise very hostile to French rule seems rather a overreach.
 

kernals12

Banned
I recall Belgium was offered a few more kilometers and refused. The Malmedy district and a few other bits were all they could handle. France found a lot of the Alsatian population spoke no French and had moved there from other parts of Germany while a portion of the French speaking population had migrated away, to France, the US, Africa, or wherever. Taking on other districts with no French speakers & otherwise very hostile to French rule seems rather a overreach.
Why not expel the Germans? Remember, the entire world hates Germany so there are few punishments too extreme to consider.
 
The French hated Germany, &so did the Belgians. But, even before the dust settled a very large portion of the US soldiers and civilians were rethinking the whole mess. There was a significant degree of sympathy in the US for the German citizens and support for the Red Cross efforts to relieve the winter hunger was widespread in the US. The Italians did not hate Germany at all. Many had been guest workers there pre 1914 & were wondering why hey had been at war with Germany in the first place. Even the Brit voters were a bit disgusted with the wartime propaganda & the 'hate' was subsiding. The legitimate hate of the Germans derived from the abuse of the Belgian & French civilians in the occupied provinces. Doubling down on that sort of abuse by expelling several million women and children from their homes and turning them into impoverished refugees shuffling across the Rhine river bridges has a certain degree of moral hazard. Note that when the French sent a few regiments into the Rhineland five years later to collect a late reparations payment they had zero support from the US & Italy, & the weakest of support from Britain.
 
Why not expel the Germans? Remember, the entire world hates Germany so there are few punishments too extreme to consider.

The massive removal of such a huge German population (the Rhine Province of Prussia alone had 6,435,778 people in 1905 and that's not including the Bavarian Palatinate) was just not politically plausible in 1918 the way the removal of an even larger number of Germans from eastern and central Europe was in 1945. Even the French didn't advocate anything so drastic; their hope was that economic ties with France, and the Catholicism of the Rhinelanders would lead them to demand separation from the rest of Germany and the formation of a Rhenish Republic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhenish_Republic In retrospect, this was probably a forlorn hope once the Zentrum joined the German government, but it seemed plausible at the time; even Konrad Adenauer warned that if Prussia were not broken up and the Rhineland granted autonomy, a French-aligned republic might be the only alternative.
 
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