The Propaganda War in the Rhineland: Weimar Germany, Race and Occupation After World War I by Peter Collar

Author:Peter Collar [Collar, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Black Studies (Global), Europe, Propaganda, Discrimination, Social Science, Social History, Political Science, History, Germany
ISBN: 9781784536695
Google: 6m0DvgAACAAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2017-03-30T12:55:15+00:00

6

THE PFALZZENTRALE: METAMORPHOSIS AND DISSOLUTION

Having earlier outlined the way in which the Pfalzzentrale was set up and how it related to other propaganda organisations, we can now turn our attention to its subsequent development and the events that ultimately resulted in its demise. While the creation of the Pfalzzentrale had been very much a Bavarian initiative, the Reich Chancellery and the Ministry of the Interior had, even if indirectly through the Volkspflege, played a part in shaping its early development. It had been caught up in the wider question of demarcation of rights and responsibilities between Reich and states. The Bavarian government had robustly – and successfully – defended the rights of individual states to organise propaganda in the occupied Rhineland. The role of the Reich had essentially been to provide support but not to interfere. Thus by the summer of 1921 the combined efforts of Bavaria, Prussia and Hessen were embodied in the Mannheim Centre, with Eberlein acting as overall leader. An accommodation – if at times uneasy – had finally been reached between Reich and states.

While the organisation of official propaganda in the Rhineland had until mid-1920 been largely influenced by the internal political and constitutional situation in Germany, external factors were henceforth to play an increasingly important role. From the standpoint of the Reich and the states the Mannheim Centre, embodying the Pfalzzentrale, was operating successfully under Eberlein’s energetic leadership. As far as the Allies – more particularly the French occupation authorities – were concerned, however, it was achieving considerable notoriety. This was to rebound on the Reich government. From late 1920 onwards the Reich Foreign Ministry inevitably became more closely involved. Matters came to a head when in June 1921 the first demands were made by the Allies for the closure of the Mannheim Centre. This raises two questions. To what extent was the Foreign Ministry either willing or able to make compliance with Allied demands a priority for the Reich government? Perhaps more significantly, against a background of generally strained relations between Berlin and Munich, to what extent could the Reich government intervene and control the actions of a semi-official Bavarian agency? It is with such aspects, which forced the Mannheim Centre into a clandestine existence in the autumn of 1921 and led to its closure in May 1924, that this chapter is concerned. Furthermore, throughout this study it has been argued that German Rhineland propaganda in the early Weimar years owed much of its impact to relatively few strongly motivated and energetic individuals. Eberlein was arguably the most prominent of these. Confrontational by nature, he was able to thrive for a time in the fractured political and constitutional environment of Weimar Germany. But I seek to make clear in this chapter that the very characteristics that brought him to prominence also made the enforced closure of the Centre inevitable.

The fact that much of the diplomatic interchange concerning the occupation occurred through the IRHC was to play a decisive part in the future course of events.

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