The
Saar Protectorate was a German borderland
territory twice temporarily made a
protectorate state.
Since rejoining
Germany in 1957, it is the smallest Federal German
Area State
(Flächenland), the Saarland
. It is named after the Saar River
.
After
World War I and World War II, the state was forcibly made a
protectorate by the victorious allies as part of a policy of
"industrial disarmament" and re-settlement of peoples mandated on
the new German
governments. The Saar protectorate was a short lived
post-World War II protectorate
(1947-1956) partitioned from defeated Nazi
Germany; it was administered by France
.
The region
about the Saar
River
and its tributary valleys
is a geographically folded, mineral rich, strongly ethnically
German, economically important, heavily industrialized area.
It possesses a well developed
transportation
infrastructure that was one of the centres of the
Industrial Revolution in
Germany and which, like the
Ruhr Area, fuelled the German war industries from
during the early 1800s to the end of WWII. Like the nearby
Ruhr valley, it was heavily bombed by the allies as
part of the strategic bombing campaigns.
Territorially, the protectorate corresponds
to the current German state of Saarland, which it
became known after it was returned to West Germany in January 1,
1957. After World War II, a policy of industrial
disarmament and dispersal of industrial workers was officially
pursued by the allies until 1951 and the region was made a protectorate under French control in
1947. Cold War pressures
for a stronger Germany allowed renewed industrialization, and the
French returned control of the region to the government of Federal Republic
of Germany
in 1957.
History
The region had previously been occupied by France during the
Napoleonic Wars, when it had been
included in the
First French
Empire as the
département Sarre between 1798 and 1814.
As almost all of the local population is ethnically German, this
resulted in strong anti-French sentiments. .
Post-World War I
Under the
Treaty of Versailles the
post-World War I, the Saar area was
occupied jointly by the United Kingdom
and France. In 1920 Britain and France
established a nominally independent occupation government, which
was sanctioned by a 15 year
League of
Nations mandate:
Saar .
However, the Saar's coal industry, the dominant industry in the
region at the time, was nationalized and directly administered by
France. French nationalists coveted the region for its mineral
wealth and industrial potential. The French administration of the
German region did not succeed in garnering local support to become
part of France.
Plebiscite
On 13th January 1935, a
plebiscite held
in the territory at the end of the 15-year term, resulted in 90.7
percent of voters cast their ballot in favour of a return to
Germany, and 0.4 percent voted for union with France. Others (8.9%)
favoured the third option of a continued British-French occupation
government. After several years of political agitation and
maneuvering by Chancellor
Adolf Hitler
for the re-union of the Saarland with the
German Reich (
Rückgliederung des
Saarlandes) it was reincorporated in 1935 as the
Gau of
Saar-Palatinate (
Saarpfalz). In 1942
it was renamed
Westmark (Western Boundary) of the
Reich.
Post-World War II
After
World War II, the Saarland came
under French administration as the Saar Protectorate.
Before
detachment from Germany the French enlarged the territory by adding
109 municipalities from the Rhineland Palatinate
to it.
In the
speech Restatement of
Policy on Germany, given in Stuttgart
on September 6, 1946, the U.S. Secretary of
State
James F. Byrnes stated the U.S. motive in detaching
the Saar from Germany as "The United States does not feel that it
can deny to France, which has been invaded three times by Germany
in 70 years, its claim to the Saar territory".
From 1945–51, a policy of industrial disarmament was pursued in
Germany by the Allied powers (see
industrial plans for Germany).
As part of this policy limits were placed on permitted production
levels, and industries in the Saar were dismantled as they had been
in the Ruhr, although mostly in the period before the detachment
(see also
the 1949 letter from the UK Foreign minister
Ernest Bevin to the French Foreign minister
Robert Schuman, urging a
reconsideration of dismantling policy).
Under the
Monnet Plan France attempted
to gain economic control of the German industrial areas in its
assigned zones, especially areas with large coal and mineral
deposits, such as the
Ruhr area and the
Saar area. Similar attempts to gain
control of, or permanently internationalise, the Ruhr (see
International Authority for
the Ruhr) were abandoned in 1951 when France rejected the
traditional aims of European hegemony predicated upon European
enemity.
In the face of U.S. and Soviet domination of
Europe the French government took a historic step in deciding that
the only viable political model for the future lay in European
integration; this resulted in the Schuman Declaration in 1950, a plan
drafted for the most part by Jean Monnet
. The plan put forward France and Germany as
the core of a new Europe, requiring a rapprochement and the
establishment of close ties between the two states. As a first step
France and Germany were to agree to pool their coal and steel
resources (see
European Coal and Steel
Community).
German participation in the plan was
contingent upon a return of full political control of German
industry to the West
German
government. However, France delayed the
return the Saar in the hope of cementing its economic control over
the region.
As had been the case from 1920 to 1935, postage stamps were issued
specially for the territory from 1947–1959 (see
postage stamps and
postal history of the Saar).
Under French rule, pro-German parties were initially banned. In the
general election of December 1952, a clear majority expressed
support for the parties who wanted the Saar to remain autonomous,
although 24% cast blank ballots in support of banned pro-German
parties.
In the
Paris Agreements of 23
October 1954, France offered to establish an independent
"Saarland", under the auspices of the
Western European Union (WEU), but a
referendum held on 23 October 1955 rejected this plan by 67.7% to
32.3% (out of a 96.5% turnout: 423,434 against, 201,975 for)
despite the public support of West German Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer for the plan. Instead, the
people of the Saar opted for the return of the Saar to the Federal
Republic of Germany.
100 Saar franken coin
On
October 27, 1956, the Saar Treaty
established that Saarland should be allowed to rejoin West Germany, which it did on January 1, 1957.
The treaty also stated that economic union with West Germany was to
be completed by 1960, with the exact date of the introduction of
the
Deutsche Mark being kept a secret
called "Day X" (
Tag X). The currencies used in the Saar
were the
Saar mark, introduced in 1947,
and the
Saar franc, on par with the
French franc, introduced in coins in
1954.
Although the Saar rejoined West Germany (as
Saarland) on January 1, 1957, the German mark was not valid in Saarland until July
6, 1959.
On 6 July 1959 the
Kleine Wiedervereinigung (small
reunion) was completed, after 14 years of separation.
The principal reason for the French desire for economic control of
the Saar was the large coal deposits. France was offered
compensation for the return of the Saar to Germany: the treaty
permitted France to extract coal from the
Warndt coal deposit until 1981.
Germany
had to agree to the channelization of the
Moselle
. This reduced French freight costs in the
Lorraine steel industry. Germany
was also made to agree to the teaching of
French as the first foreign language in
schools in the Saarland; although no longer binding, the agreement
is still in the main followed as the practice is
well-established.
As a footnote in the overall settlement of a Franco-German conflict
dating back to the Napoleonic Wars by the creation of the
European Union and the process of European
integration, the territorial dispute over control of the Saarland
was one of the last between member states. Resolved in 1956, it led
to the
European flag being given
twelve stars rather than the originally proposed 15 (one of which
was to represent a nominally independent Saar).
[123173]
Sport
The
Saar competed in
the 1952 Summer Olympics in
Helsinki
, and the Saarland national football
team participated in the qualifying section of the 1954 FIFA World Cup, but failed to
qualify after coming second to the West German team, but ahead
of Norway.
Helmut Schön was the manager of
the Saarland team from 1952 until Saarland became a part of West
Germany in 1957.
[123174]
See also
- Saar, a League of
Nations governed territory (1920-1935)
- Sarre, a département of
France (1798-1814)
- Saar
River
- Monnet Plan plan for the detachment
of German industrial regions for the benefit of France
- Kehl
directly
annexed to France
References
Further reading
- Jacques Freymond, "The Saar Conflict, 1945-1955",
Stevens, London, 1960.
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