Wars do not start at a precise single place or moment. Usually many specific
conditions accumulate as causes of wars, then the war starts, but often
not at a specific place or time, but places and
times. Similarly, wars do not stop at a specific
single place or time. When World War I ended, the war ended over a period of
time in the West (France) as Germany "lost" the war in the West, but
simultaneously, the Germany was winning in the East,
and the war continued in the East towards the Baltic and Ukraine/BeloRussia.
As World War I closed, France wanted to obtain as many advantages as
possible. France acted independently of the central powers (Great Britian,
the United States, and Russia). The major French objective was to gain
territory in the Rhineland and the Ruhr. France supported "Separatists"
as proxies, the object being to form a state of the Rhineland, part of France,
separated from Germany. Several facts lent themselves to France securing these
rich mining and industrial areas of Germany 1.
France seized control of mines, steelworks, railways, postal services,
telegraph services, police services. The Germans ran the blockades
(temporary rail lines during the war, but were not on any map, unknown to
the French). Trains ceased to function, the Germans used trucks and buses
for transportation. German ex-military truck drivers also ran blockades.
France countered: use of trucks and buses forbidden to Germans.
Similarly, Germans were forbidden to use telephones and telegraphs. Germans
resorted to postal services.
German hotels, restaurants, shops boycotted the French, the French reacted
by shutting all these businesses down. The French ordered a customs (tax)
be collected from all merchants. The result: all exports and imports ceased.
Factory inventories backed up, and goods couldn't be sold. Newspapers were
closed. Canals were sabotaged: barges sunk, locks opened, dams broken.
The German police were arrested by French police. German governmental
employees such as mayors were arrested. Without police, criminals were rampant.
Some of the issues taking place while the blockade of Rhineland and the
strikes and violence was taking place. The art of Käthe Kollwitz, George
Grosz, Max Beckmann, and Otto Dix is a graphic record of the despair and death
that took place while capitalists and their diplomats played their games 2.
The playright Bertolt Brecht's "Three Penny Opera" (
Click for Brecht )
describes these times.
"Spartacist" revolutionaries (Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht).
Starvation, due to a blockade of food and medical supplies. Prostitution
was rampant. Racism due to the presence of "Negroid" troops and Asian
troops (French Annamese, North Africans) 3.
Near white.
Café au lait.
Café noir.
Coal black skin pigmentaion.
Medical conditions: Flu pandemic, TB, venerial diseases, starvation, etc.
The French recruited trade bundists in place of socialists in an attempt to
break strikes. German trade bundists then refused to cooperate with the French.
The French then turned to communists. Finally, the French turned to violence
(revolvers and bayonets). France took over the German railway system and
rolling stock (a violation of the Versailles Treaty). The "Bloody Easter"
uprising took place at Krupp steelworks in Essen, when French seized Krupp cars.
More insurrections due to the high cost of food and starvation. French executed
Albert Schlageter, creating a German martyr. As France took over banks, manipulating
currency, local scrip was issued by municipalities, printed in factories
and printed on secret presses located in mine galleries.
German magnates (Krupp, Stinnes, Vögler, Klöckner) threatened
to close all mines and industrial works and turn out workers on the streets.
There was fear that Germany would in fact reignite the war.
France selectively and unilaterally interpreted the Rhineland Agreement
with the objective of separating land in the Rhineland, and later, in the
Ruhr from Germany, as an "inner" colony to be incorporated into France.
German default of timber reparations acted as a fake basis for France to
invade the Ruhr. French raided German banks, as well. The major method
used by Germans to oppose French seizures was strikes: by miners, bank personnel.
The French attempted "divide et impera" (divide and rule): separate agreements
of pro-rated reparations from different magnates. Various Separatists were
used by the French, called "Bund Freier Pfalz" for putsch or violence:
Pretty Addi (Doctor Adam Dorten).
Deckers.
Joseph Smeets (Rheinische Republic newspaper).
Matthes (French "storm troops")
Parsifal (commander of French "storm troops")
The French Rhine Republic or the Revolver Republic. The members of
this "government" had police convictions, but were otherwise well
selected by the French, with the following qualifications:
waiter, shoemaker, brothel keeper, butler, messenger, trumpeter,
painter and decorator, workman, baker. The British refused to
recognize this "Rhineland Republic". French pressured Belgium to
support this "Rhineland Republic", but the government of Belgium
realized that this "Rhineland Republic" would soon threaten Belgium.
Belgium disarmed these Separatists after British protests. Thus the
"Rhineland Republic" was doomed, the French allowed their
"Bund Freier Pfalz" agents to return to the underworld.
Dorten (Pretty Addi) appointed a man named "Heinz" as general
commissar of the Palatinate of Bavaria. Heinz was quickly
assassinated by the Germans. In 1925, under the Spears Plan, France
attempted to make the occupation of Rhineland and the Ruhr permanent,
but the occupation ended when the French left in 1930. By then,
Hitler continued the tradition of violence, using specifically the
"Shame on the Rhine" (bastards from Black x German women and Annmese
x German women) and the Versailles Treaty "diktat".
A Visual Record by Artists Actiive at this Period in German History
Bertolt Brecht developed a violently antibourgeois attitude that
reflected his generation’s deep disappointment in the civilization
that had come crashing down at the end of World War I. Among Brecht’s
friends were members of the Dadaist group, who aimed at destroying
what they condemned as the false standards of bourgeois art.
Much of the art of the following artists accurately depicted the society.
It was realistic, in the sense of Eakins. Must art be "beautiful"? More
precisely, what exactly is "beauty"? Must beauty ignore unpleasant
realities (be blind to reality)? Must art accept limits and be blind,
as blind as the bourgeoise? The art below is disturbing: it is meant to
be disturbing. Just as the art of Doré in Danté's "Inferno"
is shocking, the art below is intended to be shocking. People have compared
the horror Dix showed in his "der Kreig" art to Goya's "Los desastres de la
Guerra" of the Spanish war of independence, 1808-1814.
1
German magnates directed major industries. These magnates included:
Stinnes, Thyssen, Krupp, Haniel, Klöckner, Funke, Mannesman,
Tengelmann, Olse, Wustenhoffer, Spindler, Vögler, Otto Wolf, etc.
Aside from industrial production, major deposits of iron and coal/coke
were located in these geographic regions.
2
Is it not odd that so much of the art of Käthe Kollwitz that depicts
starvation, violence, mad people running through the streets, riots
remains unknown, only her art of love being available? People think
censorship is from a bygone age.
3
Of course, the ever present racism of anti-Semitism was out in the open.
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