A German poster urges passive resistanceduring the Ruhr crisis, under the motto"No! You won't subdue me!"

Fifty million mark banknote,Germany, September 1923

Twenty million mark banknote,Germany, July 1923

Fulfillment policyTo demonstrate its earnestness on the reparations

issue, the Reich government turned to something called the "fulfillment policy." The strategy was not mere subterfuge. German leaders were truly convinced that the country did not have the resources to continue reparations payments for any length of time. In his capacity as minister for recovery, Walther Rathenau took the lead in attempts to negotiate a series of agreements with the French that would have converted some of Germany's cash payments into alternative forms of compensation, such as supplying German laborers for construction work in the devastated areas of France.

But the fulfillment policy did not succeed, and in Germany inflation continued unabated: the mark fell from 4,500 to the dollar in October 1922 to 18,000 in January 1923. The unequal struggle over reparations came to a head in the Ruhr crisis, when the Germans again fell behind in their payments (at issue was a shipment of telephone poles).

Distrustful of Germany's intentions, a reparations commission (consisting of representatives from France, Belgium, Italy, and Great Britain) voted three-to-one to declare the Reich in violation of her treaty obligations, and authorized France and Belgium to take punitive action.

In January 1923 the two countries moved a contingent of engineers, accompanied by a small military force, into previously unoccupied parts of the Ruhr region to oversee the operations of the coal mines in that area. Ostensibly, their purpose was to ensure that coal earmarked for France and Belgium was actually shipped. The Germans, however, were convinced that the real aim of the French was to sever the Ruhr area from the Reich and consequently destroy Germany's national unity.