Saar

   Bounded by France in the south and west and by Rheinland-Pfalz in the north and east, the coal-rich 990-square-mile Saar (the Saarland since 1957) was among Germany's densest industrial regions. During World War I, upon determining that recovery of iron-rich Lorraine would aggravate France's already coal-deprived steel industry, the French government decided that by an-nexing the Saar, it could double its production of steel while simultaneously crippling Germany.

   Although France hoped to annex the Saar outright, it met opposition from its wartime Allies on grounds of self-determination. But the Versailles Treaty* (Articles 45-50) granted a fifteen-year occupation of the "Saar Territory." France was thereby allowed to exploit the Saar's coal until 1935, when a pleb-iscite would determine the region's future. Although the Saar was administered from July 1919 by the League of Nations, it was garrisoned by French troops, was subjected to France's customs and currency system, and fell increasingly under French political control. Beginning with the Locarno Conference* of 1925, Gustav Stresemann* pressed for its early return. Over the next five years several futile attempts were made to procure the Saar's recovery through a cash settlement. But while France acquiesced at the first Hague Conference* (August 1929) to early withdrawal from the Rhineland,* it consistently obstructed any discussion of the Saar. After Stresemann's death, when the French proposed a long-term joint exploitation of the region's mines in exchange for early return, the German negotiators judged the price too high.

   On 13 January 1935 more than 90 percent of the Saar's population elected to reunite with Germany; 8.6 percent voted to retain the status quo, while only 0.4 percent chose union with France. "Returned" with great fanfare to the Third Reich on 1 March, the Saar was merged with the Palatinate to form the province of Saarpfalz.

   REFERENCES:Feldman, Iron and Steel; Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy; McDougall, France's Rhineland Diplomacy.