1L - Government and opposition 1924–1929: the impact of the Ruhr invasion and the leadership of Stresemann
Weimar government recovered after the Ruhr crisis, but recovery did not mean that Germans agreed about democracy. This lesson explains Stresemann's contribution, the changing coalitions and the strength of opposition between 1924 and 1929.
The Ruhr crisis and political recovery
The recovery of 1924 began with decisions taken during the emergency of 1923. French and Belgian troops had occupied the Ruhr in January 1923 after Germany defaulted on reparations deliveries. The government paid workers to resist through strikes and non-cooperation, while losing tax revenue and industrial output. Financing this policy by creating more money accelerated an inflation that already had roots in wartime borrowing and post-war deficits. The republic consequently faced both a currency collapse and the danger that political opponents would exploit it.
Gustav Stresemann, leader of the German People's Party (DVP), became chancellor in August 1923. Ending passive resistance in September was politically hazardous: nationalists accused him of surrendering to France. Yet continuing a policy that destroyed the tax base could not force an occupying power to withdraw. Currency stabilisation in November, involving the Rentenmark, spending restraint and tighter credit, restored the possibility of ordinary transactions. Stresemann's chancellorship ended in November, but he remained foreign minister until his death in October 1929. Do not attribute every later domestic policy to a continuing Stresemann chancellorship.
The Dawes settlement of 1924 reorganised reparations payments and helped attract foreign credit. French and Belgian evacuation of the Ruhr was completed in 1925. These changes reduced the emergencies that had made ordinary parliamentary government so difficult. Their political importance lay in giving moderate politicians results they could defend: negotiation had achieved recovery and withdrawal where confrontation had failed. The memory of lost savings and national humiliation nevertheless survived the end of the immediate crisis.
Stresemann and negotiated revision
Stresemann sought to revise Germany's position through cooperation rather than immediate confrontation. Revision meant changing aspects of the post-war settlement; it did not necessarily mean rejecting diplomacy or democracy. His nationalism and his acceptance of the republic could therefore coexist. He believed that a Germany treated as a reliable negotiating partner could regain freedom of action.
The Locarno agreements of 1925 illustrate this calculation. Germany accepted guarantees of its western frontiers with France and Belgium and agreed to peaceful settlement of disputes. Britain and Italy joined the western security arrangement. Germany did not give the same territorial guarantee to its eastern frontiers with Poland and Czechoslovakia, although arbitration treaties provided procedures for settling disputes. Locarno thus reassured France while preserving Germany's desire for peaceful revision in the east. Entry into the League of Nations in 1926, with a permanent Council seat, gave Germany a greater voice in international affairs. The Young negotiations in 1929 further reduced and rescheduled the reparations burden and were associated with agreement to end the Rhineland occupation early; withdrawal was completed in 1930, beyond this lesson's endpoint.
These achievements helped domestic stability because democratic ministers could claim to restore status without war. They also depended on other governments' choices, American finance and German administrative work. Stresemann mattered as a persistent negotiator able to connect nationalist aspirations with practical compromise. He did not single-handedly create prosperity or remove resentment of Versailles. His death removed an influential broker at the moment that worsening economic conditions made compromise harder.
The Locarno treaty provides the contemporary basis for the distinction between western guarantees and other diplomatic arrangements.
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