In the 1815
Congress of Vienna, Prussia gained control of the duchies of Cleves, Berg, Gelderland and Jülich, the ecclesiastical principalities of Trier and Cologne, the free cities of Aachen and Cologne, and nearly one hundred small lordships and abbeys which would all be amalgamated into the new Prussian Rhine Province. In 1822 Prussia established the Rhine Province by joining the
provinces of
Lower Rhine and
Jülich-Cleves-Berg. Its capital was
Koblenz; it had 8.0 million inhabitants by 1939. Popes
Pius VIII (in 1830) and
Gregory XVI (in 1833) raised concerns regarding the pastoral care of
Catholics in the Upper Rhineland, both writing letters of concern to the local bishops.
Aftermath of World War I ) 1923. Dark dotted (
Saar):
League of Nations (France), vertically hatched
France, diagonally hatched
United Kingdom, horizontally hatched
Belgium, dark (
Ruhr): France/Belgium Following the
Armistice of 1918, Allied forces occupied the Rhineland as far east as the river with some small bridgeheads on the east bank at places like
Cologne. Under the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles of 1919 the occupation was continued and the
Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission was set up to supervise affairs. The treaty specified three occupation zones, which were due to be evacuated by Allied troops five, ten and finally 15 years after the formal ratification of the treaty, which took place in 1920, thus the occupation was intended to last until 1935. Initially, 5 zones of
Occupation of the Rhineland were established, but the American Forces handed over their zone in 1923, since they had not ratified the Treaty of Versailles, to the French. The treaty also separated the
Saar from the Province and administered by the
League of Nations until a plebiscite in 1935, when the region was returned to Germany. In fact, the last Allied troops left Germany five years early, in 1930, as a result of an agreement reached between Germany and the Allies in parallel with the
Young Plan on
German war reparations. Sections of the Rhineland, which had once belonged to the
Habsburg Netherlands'
Duchy of Limburg, were annexed by Belgium according to the
Treaty of Versailles. The cantons of
Eupen,
Malmedy and
Sankt Vith though (with the exception of Malmedy) German in culture and language, became the
East Cantons of Belgium. Although a plebiscite was held in early 1920, it was not conducted as a secret ballot but required only those opposed to Belgian annexation to register their formal protest. Only a few did so because of the threat of a confiscation of ration cards.
German is now the third official language of Belgium, along with
French and
Dutch (see
German-Speaking Community of Belgium). After the enlargement of the French occupation zone by the American withdrawal from the
occupation (1919–1930), the French encouraged the establishment of an independent
Rhenish Republic by banking on traditional anti-Prussian resentments, especially in the
Palatinate. In the end, the separatists failed to gain any decisive support among the population since they were viewed as puppets of the French. The Treaty of Versailles also specified the demilitarization of the entire area to provide a buffer between Germany on one side and France, Belgium and Luxembourg (and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands) on the other side, which meant that no German forces were allowed there after the Allied forces had withdrawn. Furthermore, quite unbearably from the German perspective, the treaty entitled the Allies to reoccupy the Rhineland at their will if the Allies unilaterally found the German side responsible for any violation of the treaty. In 1932,
Wetzlar (), formerly an exclave of the Rhine Province situated between
Hesse-Nassau and the
People's State of Hesse, was transferred to Hesse-Nassau.
Nazi period In the last free
German federal election in March 1933, two of the four parliamentary districts of the Rhine Province (Cologne-Aachen and Koblenz-Trier) were the only districts in Germany in which the
Nazi Party did not win the plurality of votes. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the spirit of the
Locarno Pact,
Nazi Germany remilitarized the Rhineland on Saturday, March 7, 1936. The occupation was done with very little military force, the troops entered on tractors and
no effort was made to stop it. Even though France had an overwhelming force nearby it did not act because of its political instability, and since the remilitarization occurred during a weekend, the British government could not find out or discuss actions to be taken until the following Monday. As a result, the governments were inclined to see the remilitarization as a
fait accompli.
Adolf Hitler took a risk when he sent his troops to the Rhineland. He told them to "turn back and not to resist" if they were stopped by the French Army. The French, however, did not try to stop them because they were about to hold
legislative elections; further, President
Albert Lebrun did not want to start an unpopular war against Germany and French intelligence greatly overestimated the number of German troops. The British government did not oppose the remilitarization in principle, and
Lord Lothian famously stated that "the Germans are after all only going into their own back garden". However, the British government rejected the Nazi manner of accomplishing the act, which they had been willing to concede by negotiations with Germany.
Winston Churchill advocated military action by co-operation by the British and the French but did not demand war over the issue. The remilitarization of the Rhineland was supported by most of the local population because of a resurgence of
German nationalism and the bitterness that had been harboured over the Allied occupation of the Rhineland until 1930 and
Saarland until 1935. A side effect of the French occupations was the offspring of French soldiers and German women. Those children, who were seen as the continuing French pollution of German culture, were shunned by the broader German society and were known as
Rhineland Bastards. Children fathered by French colonial or American troops of African ancestry were especially despised and became targets of
Nazi sterilisation programmes in the 1930s. The American poet
Charles Bukowski was born in 1920 in
Andernach as the son of a German mother and an American soldier, who served in the occupation troops.
1944–1945 military campaigns Two different military campaigns were fought in the Rhineland. The first operation of the campaign was the Allied
Operation Market Garden that sought to allow the
Second British Army to advance past the northern flank of the
Siegfried Line and enter the
Ruhr industrial area. After the failure of that operation for five months, from September 1944 until February 1945, the
First United States Army fought a costly battle to capture the
Hürtgen Forest. The heavily forested and ravined terrain of the Hürtgen negated Allied combined arms advantages (close air support, armor, artillery) and favoured German defenders. The U.S. Army lost 24,000 troops. The military necessity of their sacrifice has been debated by military historians. In early 1945, after a long winter stalemate, military operations by most Allied armies in Northwest Europe resumed with the goal of reaching the Rhine. From their winter positions in The Netherlands, the
First Canadian Army under General
Henry Crerar reinforced by elements of the
British Second Army under General
Miles Dempsey, drove through the Rhineland beginning in the first week of February 1945. Operation
Veritable lasted several weeks, resulting in the clearance of all German forces from the west side of the Rhine river. The supporting operation by the US Ninth Army, Operation
Grenade, was planned to coincide from the
River Roer, in the south. This was delayed for two weeks, however, by German flooding of the Roer valley. On March 7, 1945, a company of armoured infantry of the
U.S. 9th Armored Division captured the last intact bridge over the Rhine at
Remagen. General
George Patton's Third US Army also made a crossing of the river the day before the much anticipated Rhine crossings by the 21st Army Group (
First Canadian Army and the
British Second Army) under Field Marshal
Montgomery in the third week of March 1945. Operation
Varsity was a massive airborne operation in conjunction with Operation
Plunder, the amphibious crossings. By early April, the Rhine had been crossed by all the Allied armies operating west of the river, and the battles for the Rhineland were over. In the official histories of the British and Canadian armies, the term Rhineland refers only to fighting west of the river in February and March 1945, with subsequent operations on the river and to the east known as "Rhine Crossing". Both terms are official Battle Honours in the Commonwealth forces.
End of the province Following the unconditional surrender of Germany in 1945, the Rhine Province was split between the
French and
British Occupation Zones. The Rhine Province was abolished in August 1946 when the northern part of the province, under British administration, was merged with the former province of Westphalia to form
North Rhine-Westphalia and most of the southern portion, under French administration, was merged with the
Palatinate (previously an exclave of
Bavaria) and other territories to form
Rhineland-Palatinate. These areas of the former province were incorporated as states into the new
Federal Republic of Germany when it was established in May 1949. The French organised the
Saarland as a separate
protectorate on 16 February 1946 and it eventually joined the Federal Republic as a separate state in 1957. Within North Rhine-Westphalia, the (LVR), which was established in 1953 as regional council, still holds considerable administrative power and can be regarded as a direct successor of the Rhine Province administration. There is no equivalent successor in Rhineland-Palatinate or Saarland. ==Notes==