The occupation of the Rhineland, March 7, 1936

Abstract

On March 7, 1936, three battalions of a yet relatively weak German Wehrmacht crossed the border into the demilitarized Rhineland. So fearful was the German General Staff of possible French military intervention, with which they knew they could not cope, the battalion commanders were under sealed orders to evacuate immediately in the face of any determined French stand. They occupied the towns of Dusseldorf, Cologne, Mainz, Coblenz, and Frankfurt amidst a tumultuous welcome from the German inhabitants who regarded them as the saviours of the new Germany. Thus typically and efficiently did Hitler carry off the most spectacular, and in the light of our present hindsight, the most important of a series of breaches of international convention which form the tragic history of the prewar years. Nothing came of this violation. Hitler had started into high gear the drive that would in three years embroil Europe and the world in the horrors of the Second World War. How such an obvious violation of international agreements was carried out with no interference on the part of the offended European powers, and how their misplaced faith in a peace without guarantees would lead to that war, is the theme of this thesis. The Rhineland crisis was, in fact, a logical step in the sequence of events that took place in Europe after the signing of the Versailles Treaty bringing the Great War to a close.