Field post of the French in Germany after the First World War 1918–1935
If one deals with the history of the occupation of the Rhineland , the role of France and its relationship to Germany play a key role. France was the dominant power among the four occupying powers and largely determined the occupation policy.
On December 1, 1918, the Allied armies crossed the frontier on a broad front and advanced into their zones of occupation. On December 5th, the French troops reached Mainz , where the commander-in-chief of the French occupation army set up his headquarters . It was to remain here until the end of the Rhineland occupation on June 30, 1930.
The 8th Army , charged with occupying the Palatinate , moved to its headquarters in Landau . The main focus of the occupation outside the French zone were Bonn , Düren , Siegburg and Trier .
The relationship between the French occupiers and the local population was very tense from the start and was characterized by mutual distrust and prejudice.
France, on the other hand, considered the demands of the Versailles Treaty not only completely justified, but also entirely achievable. They meticulously paid attention to compliance with all contractual provisions and reacted immediately with sanctions if the contract was viewed as violated. When, for example, the Reichswehr and Freikorps marched into the Ruhr area in March 1920 to put down the workers' uprisings that broke out following the Kapp Putsch and thereby violated the demilitarized zone along the right bank of the Rhine, French troops occupied the Maingau with the cities of Frankfurt am Main as a sanction , Hanau , Homburg and Darmstadt . These troops were only withdrawn again in mid-May 1920. This policy of expanding the occupied territory was also practiced by France in the period that followed.
The occupation of the Ruhr area
The situation came to a head in 1921. At the Paris Conference (January 24–29, 1921) the Allies were finally able to agree on the level of reparation payments . Germany was supposed to pay 269 billion gold marks , spread over 42 annual installments, and made a counter offer, which the Allies rejected. As a sanction, French, Belgian and British troops marched into Düsseldorf , Duisburg and Ruhrort on March 7, 1921 and stood on the threshold of the Ruhr area . While Germany was still hoping to lower reparations payments through negotiations, the Allies in London issued an ultimatum on May 5th . The ultimatum was limited to May 12, 1921, after which the occupation should begin. France did not stop at these threats, however, but also transferred several divisions from France to the Rhine and to the threshold of the Ruhr area in order to be prepared for the invasion. Only after the German government had unconditionally accepted the Allied demands were the divisions relocated to France in August 1921. The occupation of the sanction area on the right bank of the Rhine with Duisburg and Düsseldorf was maintained as a constant warning.
It soon became apparent that the Germans could not keep the London payment plan drawn up by the Reparations Commission . Already on December 14, 1921 one had to ask for a deferment of payments, on May 31, 1922 a further deferment was granted. When the commission found another backlog in the delivery of wood on December 26, 1922, the Allies refused to postpone the vote against Great Britain. Germany was accused of the same misconduct with regard to coal deliveries, whereupon the French government under Poincaré decided on January 5, 1923 to occupy the Ruhr area . With this so-called “policy of productive pledges”, the future delivery of the reparations payments under Allied control was to be ensured.
On January 11, 1923, an engineering commission of about 60 men, consisting of French, Belgians and a few Italians , arrived in Essen to check the delivery capacity of the Ruhr mines and factories. This commission was accompanied by five French war-strength divisions and a Belgian division , a total of around 50,000 men. While the Belgians marched in the north of the Ruhr area, the French advanced in the south. On January 12th, Gladbeck , Buer , Gelsenkirchen , Wattenscheid , Steele and Werden were occupied, and on January 14th they advanced to Velbert and Langenberg . On January 15th they advanced via Bochum to Hagen-Vorhalle , Wetter , Witten , Castrop , Herten , Suderwich and Datteln , and on January 16th to Dortmund and Lünen .
The imperial government immediately protested strongly against the action of the French and Belgians and stopped all reparations deliveries. At the same time, the population of the newly occupied area, especially workers and civil servants, was asked to submit to passive resistance . In a telegram on January 19, the Reich Minister gave the instruction that the officials must not obey the orders and orders of the occupation authorities in the burglary area.
Now the " Ruhrkampf " flared up sharply and led to a hardening of the fronts on both sides. The occupation authorities responded to the increasing German resistance and the increasing number of cases of refusal to work and sabotage with arrests, mass expulsions and the expansion of the occupied territory. As early as January, after the Americans had evacuated their zone of occupation with the Koblenz bridgehead in protest against the French action , the French moved up there and hoisted the tricolor on the Ehrenbreitstein .
On February 13, the Belgians occupied the ports of Wesel and Emmerich , and from March the French extended their occupation to Remscheid and Vohwinkel , Mannheim , Karlsruhe and Darmstadt . The areas between the bridgeheads of Cologne , Koblenz and Mainz were also occupied. The French responded to the increasing acts of sabotage in the area of rail transport with the threat of the death penalty for all those railway workers who were guilty of “transport endangerment”. Finally, there were mass expulsions here too. The German hopes for the complete collapse of the traffic and transport system and a French relenting, however, were not fulfilled. The French and Belgians managed, with the help of several thousand railway workers from France and Belgium, to take over rail traffic in the Ruhr area and the Rhineland on their own and to maintain it according to their own needs. In the end, it was the civilian population who suffered from restrictions in rail and postal traffic.
A customs border was introduced between the occupied territories and the free territory of the Reich,
Visits across the border were only possible with the approval of the occupation authorities. From April onwards, the border against free Germany ran via Dorsten , then Haltern (today: at the lake), Datteln , Waltrop to Lünen , from there via Scharnhorst to Brackel , Aplerbeck , Hengstey and Hagen-Vorhalle, to via Volmarstein , Schee , Vohwinkel , Lüttringhausen , Remscheid , Wipperfürth to reach the British occupation zone. On August 12, 1923, the government had to break off passive resistance because the costs were no longer affordable.
After the Reich government had agreed to regulate the reparations question anew and the French government had also approved this plan in principle, the negotiating partners met for new meetings in London from July 16 to August 16, 1924, to negotiate a series of agreements to negotiate. Subsequently, France agreed to evacuate the Ruhr area within a year, i.e. by August 1925. As a first result, the customs barriers between the occupied and unoccupied parts of Germany fell in early September 1924. The free movement of goods and people was thus restored. By the end of the year, the outskirts of the Ruhr area had also been cleared and the occupation forces reduced. Until the evacuation of Dortmund in October 1924, the French maintained only three divisions in the Ruhr area, after that only the 3rd division in Bochum and Düsseldorf and the 77th division in Essen . The break-in areas between the bridgeheads were also cleared by the end of the year.
On July 31, 1925, the last French troops left the Ruhr area. On August 25, 1925, the French and Belgians also cleared the sanction area on the right bank of the Rhine with the cities of Düsseldorf and Duisburg. This means that all areas outside the area occupied in December 1918 were again free of occupation.
The evacuation of the occupied Rhineland
According to the Versailles Treaty , the first zone of the Rhineland with the Cologne bridgehead was to be evacuated by the occupation troops in January 1925 . At precisely this point, however, the French-led Inter-Allied Military Control Commission came to the conclusion that Germany was behind schedule with its disarmament efforts. With references to the violation of the Versailles Treaty, the upcoming eviction was postponed despite violent German protests, without a new date being given. At the initiative of Stresemann , the Locarno Conference took place in October 1925 , at which Germany, France and Belgium guaranteed the inviolability of the western border and the demilitarization of the Rhineland, with England and Italy acting as guarantor powers. The Locarno Treaty marked a turning point in Franco-German relations. The immediate result was the evacuation of the Cologne occupation zone; it began the day before the ratified treaties were signed in London on December 1, 1925, and was completed by the end of January 1926.
Considerable relief for the still occupied area soon followed. The occupation forces were further reduced, and on January 31, 1927, the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission declared its work in Germany over.
On the occasion of the annual League of Nations conference in Geneva in September 1928, Germany agreed with France, Belgium and Great Britain to start negotiations on the early evacuation of the second and third Rhineland zones now demanded by Germany. The Young Plan did not bring any tangible relief of the reparations burdens , as Germany originally hoped, but it was accepted because France made the evacuation of the Rhineland dependent on it. At the first international conference in The Hague in August 1929, which had to decide on the report of the experts on the Young Plan, Stresemann received the long-awaited promise of the complete evacuation of the Rhineland from the French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand . It began with the evacuation of the 2nd occupation zone around the Koblenz bridgehead from September 1929. On November 30, 1929, the tricolor was pulled down on the Ehrenbreitstein , the 2nd zone was thus vacant. The last remaining contingents of the British and Belgians left the Rhineland by the end of the year.
By June 30, 1930, the French occupation troops cleared the last occupation zone with the Mainz bridgehead. The time of the Allied occupation of the Rhineland ended after almost 12 years, five years earlier than the Treaty of Versailles had planned when it came into force in 1920. Only the small contingent of French railway protection troops remained in the Saar area. With their withdrawal in December 1930, the presence of French occupation troops after the First World War ended.
The French field post in the Rhineland
When they marched into the Rhineland, the French occupation troops were accompanied by their field post offices . These so-called “Secteur Postal” (translatable as “Post Sector” or “Section Post Office”) were numbered and each assigned to a larger military formation. These were army corps or divisions as well as important military agencies, more rarely brigades or other smaller formations below the division level. The Secteur Postal of a unit was mobile in character and not tied to a location. Some Secteur Postal maintained so-called "Sous Secteur" (branch post offices). These branch post offices had the same Sector number as their superior field post office, followed by the letter "A" or "B". For example, the branch post office of the firing range of the French Rhine Army in Bitch / Lorraine had the number "4 A", as it was subordinate to the "Secteur Postal 4" in Zweibrücken.
In addition to these two types of field post offices, there was also the "Secteur Fictif" (translatable as "dummy post office" or "fictitious post office"). These Secteur Fictif could be set up for smaller units, for which, for purely economic reasons, the establishment of their own field post office was not worthwhile. For example, the Kehl bridgehead on the right bank of the Rhine opposite Strasbourg was only occupied by a half-brigade. It was assigned the "Secteur Postal 250" as its field post address, although there was no field post office in Kehl. The corresponding number stamp was only knocked off on the post of this unit in the Strasbourg train station, so that one can say that this Secteur and thus the field post office only consisted of an address and a stamp.
The “Vaguemestre”, the field post sergeant, was responsible for the post in the individual units. He delivered the mail from his unit to the relevant Sector Postal and received the mail sent to the units there.
The mail collected at the Secteur Postal was forwarded by the latter to a “Bureau Frontière” (translatable as “Front” or “Border Post Office”). This Bureau Frontière was the base or central field post office for the entire Rhine Army.
It forwarded the mail to the “Bureau Central Militaire” (BCM) in Paris, the highest field post office of the French army. At the same time, the Bureau Frontière was an exchange post office between the field post and the civil post. The Frontière Bureau responsible for the French Army of the Rhine was called “BUREAU FRONTIERE D”. It was relocated from Le Bourget to Saarbrücken in 1919 , only to be relocated to the Metz train station after a while . From there it supplied the French Rhine Army until the end of the occupation.
With the entry into force of the Versailles Treaty and the Rhineland Agreement at the beginning of 1920, the character of the occupying army and thus also that of its field post offices changed. The army now moved into permanent garrisons, with which the field post offices lost their mobility. As a result, they now supplied a location and all troops stationed in its catchment area as well as the non-military services of the occupying power. The Sector Postal now remained at the site when the formation to which it was originally assigned left it and was replaced by another unit. The formation post offices thus became stationary post offices. Only in exceptional situations, such as during the threat of the occupation of the Ruhr in May 1921, did a number of formation post offices return to the Rhineland with the additional divisions relocated from France to Germany. With the withdrawal of these divisions, these field post offices also disappeared again, only to reappear during the occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923. The French Army on the Rhine also returned to the mobile formation post offices during the major maneuvers between 1926 and 1928.
Overall, however, from around 1920 onwards, the location of the respective posting field post office can be determined with a high degree of certainty on the basis of the field post number stamp or the Sector Postal number in the sender information. By the end of 1920, all field post offices had been given numbered stamps and the old stamps without numbers from the war years and the early days of the occupation had largely been withdrawn from circulation.
The number of French field post offices changed in the course of the occupation. It reached its climax during the preparations for the Ruhr occupation in 1921 and the Ruhr occupation itself in 1923/24. With the evacuation of the Ruhr area in 1925 and the subsequent evacuation of the 1st occupation zone with the Cologne bridgehead in 1926, the number of French field post offices in the Rhineland steadily decreased. In addition, there were troop reductions due to the easing situation between France and Germany after the Treaty of Locarno. With the evacuation of the 3rd occupation zone in June 1930, the last remaining French field post offices left the Rhineland. As the last French field post office on German soil after the First World War, the "Secteur Postal 219" closed in Saarbrücken in December 1930.
postage
During the entire period of French occupation, normal mail sent by members of the armed forces to France or the colonies in North Africa, where many occupation soldiers came from, was free of charge. The sender noted “FM” (= Franchise Militaire) or “SM” (= Service Militaire) at the top right of his post in order to identify the shipment as military mail and thus avoid charging the recipient with a postage fee. The vaguemestre of the unit also struck off his stamp on the mail pieces delivered to him, thus confirming the sender's right to postage exemption. The indication of a field post address with the corresponding Sector Postal number also identified the sender as a member of the military. The last feature for free transport was the mark off of the field post stamp of the posting post office.
While normal letters and postcards were also free of charge, special forms of mail, such as registered mail, had to be franked with French stamps at French domestic rates. For mail to recipients outside France and its colonies, the corresponding French international tariffs applied.
The use of field post was also open to the French civilian personnel of the various occupation authorities working in the Rhineland . However, the group of people had to frank their mail at the French domestic rate.
The field postmarks
When marching into Germany, the occupation units continued to use their field postmarks from the last days of the war. For security reasons, the numbers were scratched out of these in 1916/17 in order to make it more difficult for the enemy to identify and localize the units. This removal of the numbers was not done with care everywhere, so that remnants of old numbers could still be seen in many of the stamps. The single-circle stamp with the inscription TRESOR ET POSTES was mainly used, more rarely the older, smaller two-circle stamp. However, some units also returned to their old number stamps from the early days of the war. After the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles, the occupying army, now known as ARMÉE FRANCAISE DU RHIN, returned to the numbering system. The unit of the sender or the place of posting could now be recognized from the “Secteur Postal” number in the field post stamp.
From June 1924, the separation of the financial administration (treasury) and the postal system (post) in France was also reflected in the field postmarks. The old number stamps with the inscription TRESOR ET POSTES were consequently replaced by new single-circle stamps with the inscription POSTE AUX ARMEES. These stamps remained in use until the end of the occupation. Stamps without a number were used in the autumn maneuvers of the Rhine Army in the Eifel from 1926 to 1928.
The mail delivered to the respective "Secteur Postal" was forwarded by the field post sergeant to the responsible "Bureau Frontière" (border or front post office). All mail to and from the Rhine Army was collected here and forwarded to the “Bureau Central Militaire” in Paris. At the same time, the "Bureau Frontière" was an exchange post office between the field and civil post.
The “Bureau Frontière D” was responsible for the French Rhine Army. It was set up in Saarbrücken in 1919 , but moved to Metz after a short time . The exact length of stay in Saarbrücken is not known. In addition to these date stamps, the "BUREAU FRONTIERE D" also used two-line stamps.
In addition to the "BUREAU FRONTIERE", the field post maintained the so-called "ENTREPOTS" at important rail traffic junctions, storage and collection points for mailbags and parcels that came together from different directions by rail, but also by courier, and were transported on by rail. In the occupied Rhineland these were the train stations in KÖLN and MAINZ. They had their own date stamps, which they put on the mail that was delivered directly to them.
The post office in the KÖLN train station was probably set up in May 1921, on the occasion of the French troop reinforcements in the Rhineland due to non-compliance with the German reparations payments. It was dissolved in January 1926 with the evacuation of the 1st occupation zone by the Allied troops. The post office in MAINZ station existed until the end of the Rhineland occupation in June 1930.
Instead of the star above the date, the time appeared from around 1924. A new stamp was later introduced in Mainz with the inscription "POSTE AUX ARMEES" in the upper part and "ENTREPOT MAYENCE" in the lower part. In addition to these date stamps, each post office also had the corresponding two-line name stamps.
Finally, there is another date stamp to be mentioned, which was introduced in 1925 at the management of the field post of the French Army of the Rhine. The stamp was knocked off in red, but should also appear in black. It is most often found on service letters. Here the stamp color is always red.
Field post in the voting areas
The Versailles Treaty provided for referendums for certain parts of the German Empire ( Schleswig , East Prussia and Upper Silesia ) in which the population should decide on the future status of these areas. In order to ensure peace and order during the preparation and implementation of these votes, the voting committees were each accompanied by Allied troop contingents.
In addition to these voting areas, there were also those regions that were separated from the Reich and were directly under the administration of the League of Nations ( Danzig , Memelland and the Saar area ), with a referendum in the latter after 15 years. Allied troops were also temporarily stationed in these regions.
Schleswig
The two zones of the voting area were under the administration of the voting commission from January 15 to June 16, 1920. The French contingent of voting troops consisted mainly of the 2nd Battalion Chasseurs Alpins, which arrived in the northern voting zone on January 20 from Cologne. The French did not have their own field post, but used the courier service or the civil post. Evidence from this small troop could only be recognized by any sender details or any troop stamps or stamps of the voting committee.
Upper Silesia
Upper Silesia was under the administration of the Interallied Government and Plebiscite Commission for Upper Silesia (CIHS, French Commission Interalliée der Haute Silésie ) from February 12, 1920 to July 14, 1922. The French contingent of voting troops under the command of General Henri Le Rond (1864–1949 ) consisted of the 46th Chasseurs Alpins Division, reinforced by the 22nd Chasseurs Alpins Battalion. The main locations were Opole and Gliwice.
The 46th Division used its old "Secteur Postal" from the time of the war, "SP 184." The stamp comes in two types, which can be distinguished by the different size and width of the stamp number and the stars. In addition, an old stamp with a scratched-out number was used in the years 1920/21. In this case, only the sender's details or another reference can prove the origin from Upper Silesia.
Memel and Danzig
These two cities and their surrounding area had been separated from the German Empire and were directly under the administration of the League of Nations. To counter a feared annexation by Lithuania and Poland, allied troops were initially stationed in both cities.
The 21st Battalion Chasseurs Alpins moved into quarters in Memel. it was previously part of the 66th Infantry Division and was therefore assigned the old "Secteur Postal" of this unit, "SP 190". The SP 190 also supplied the 10th Chasseurs Alpins battalion in Danzig. The SP 190 is a so-called "Secteur Fictif", i. H. there was no post office of its own and there was no corresponding stamp. The SP 190 was not much more than a field post address. As of January 1922, the SP 190 no longer appears in the list of "Secteur Postal" published by the Ministry of Defense. In January 1923, the Memel area was occupied by Lithuania.
The previously known documents of the French troops from this region bear the stamp of a BUREAU FRONTIERE or the troop stamp of the respective commanders of the occupation units.
Saar area
The Saar area had already been occupied by French troops at the end of November 1918. According to the Versailles Treaty, the population should vote in 1935 on the future affiliation of this region. In the meantime, France was allowed to exploit the coal mines as compensation for the German destruction in the World War.
The French occupation troops were supplied by Sector Postal 219, which was stationed in Saarbrücken from 1918 to 1930 and to which the entire Saar area was subordinate.
Under pressure from the League of Nations , to which the Saar area was nominally subject, France gradually withdrew its occupation troops by mid-1928 and relocated them to the French occupation zone on the Rhine. However, in order to guarantee the security of the supply routes for the French Rhine Army, which ran over the rail network of the Saar area, an international rail protection force was set up. This railway protection force of around 800 men included 630 French who continued to use the SP 219 in Saarbrücken. The railway protection force was on duty from July 1927 to December 12, 1930. On this day the last French soldiers left the Saar area. This ended the French occupation in Germany after the First World War.
Inter allied commissions
Immediately after the signing of the armistice, and increasingly after the conclusion of the Versailles Treaty, a large number of Inter-Allied commissions took up their control and administrative activities. As far as these commissions had their seat in the occupied Rhineland or in the occupied Ruhr area, the commission members mostly used the field post of the Allied occupation troops. However, the situation was different with the many offices in the unoccupied part of Germany, where no troops were stationed and accordingly no field post facilities were available.
The most important commission was the COMMISSION MILITAIRE INTERALLIÉE DE CONTROLE, headquartered in Berlin, which only ceased its activities in 1927. It had three sub-committees to monitor armaments, army strength and fortifications. This commission alone already had 22 regional committees in Berlin , Wroclaw , Dresden , Frankfurt am Main , Hanover , Kiel , Cologne , Koenigsberg , Munster , Munich , Stettin and Stuttgart . There were also three Franco-Belgian branch offices in the neutral zone ( Duisburg , Frankfurt am Main, Karlsruhe ).
The mail of the members of these commissions was either sent by diplomatic mail or brought by courier to the nearest Allied field post office for further transport. Through the Versailles Treaty (Article 249) and the Rhineland Agreement (Articles 11 & 12), Deutsche Post was also obliged to transport the corresponding Allied mail bags free of charge and uncontrolled. In order to document the entitlement to postage paid transport by the field post as well as by the civil post, the corresponding official stamp of the respective commission had to be turned off on the post. These were used to identify the origin and to ensure that the recipient was not charged an additional fee.
See also
- Allied field post in Germany after the First World War 1918–1935
- American field post in Germany after the First World War 1918–1935
- Field post of the Belgians in Germany after the First World War 1918–1935
- British field post in Germany after the First World War 1918–1935
- French field post in Germany during the Cold War