Theses and Dissertations Collection

The Rhineland Republic was a short-lived attempt to separate from Germany. The movement was created out of frustration with economic and political circumstances that resulted from World War I. What started as a local movement to start a new state, evolved into an economic battle between France and the newly established German government. The separatists depended wholly on the French government for military and financial support. France supported the separatists in order to secure material resources out of the Rhineland to cover the reparations costs that Germany refused to pay. The real battle of separatism was fought between Gustav Stresemann, the German Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Raymond Poincaré, the French premier. Both of these men fought for Germany's future: Stresemann to strengthen it, and Poincaré to curtail it.