Word: westphalia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1923-1923
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...overthrow the Reich, France would be bound to act. The French General Staff foresaw " the necessity for certain military measures to protect the French troops in the Ruhr." The first of these measures would be to straighten out the Ruhr salient by taking strategic positions to the South in Westphalia. It was estimated that France could put 200,000 men in motion: 55,000 already in the Ruhr basin, 95,000 in the Rhineland, 50,000 massed near the frontier, including large garrisons at Metz and Strasbourg, with reserves at Belford Epinal and Verdun...
Herr Oswald Sprengler, the German historian whose book, Downfall of the Occident, was one of the sensations of the past few years, accuses France of carrying on Napoleon's ambitions: "When Napoleon founded the Grand Duchy of Berg in the Ruhr Basin and the Kingdom of Westphalia he observed to his brother-in-law that the Ruhr was the strategic road to the North Sea. This thought of Napoleon's . . . is gradually taking shape in Premier Poincaré's policy . . . it is only a short distance from the Ruhr to the North Sea. . . . France could seize...