The occupation of the heavily industrialized Ruhr district came in response to Germany's repeated defaults on the reparations payments required under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

With the active support of the German government, civilians in the area engaged in passive resistance and civil disobedience which largely shut down the economy of the region.

It restructured and lowered Germany's war reparations payments and led to France and Belgium withdrawing their troops from the Ruhr by August 1925.

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party used the occupation as part of their justification for the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, which brought them wide public attention for the first time.

[3] In addition, Germany was forced to accept responsibility for the damages caused in the war and was obliged to pay reparations to the Allies.

[6][page needed] Due to delays in reparations deliveries, French and Belgian troops, with British approval, occupied Duisburg and Düsseldorf in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland on 8 March 1921.

[7] In the London ultimatum of 5 May 1921, the Allies attempted to enforce their payment plan for 132 billion gold marks by threatening to occupy the Ruhr if Germany refused to accept the terms.

[10] Raymond Poincaré, the French prime minister, hoped for joint Anglo-French economic sanctions against Germany but opposed military action.

According to some historians, he sought a special status for the Rhineland and the Ruhr comparable to that of the Saar region, in which affiliation with Germany would have been purely formal and France would have assumed a dominant position.

[17] The Reichstag, recognizing that the extraordinary nature of the event could not be met using normal parliamentary measures, passed an enabling act on 24 February.

[1] Their attempt to ship out ready reserves of coal failed when German railroad officials and workers walked off the job and in some places removed signage from stations and signal boxes.

[13] The situation for the French was further complicated by the fact that the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syndicate moved its headquarters out of the occupied district and thus from control by MICUM.

Krupp was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined 100 million marks, but he served only 7 months and was released when passive resistance was called off.

[22] They blew up train tracks and canal bridges to stop the delivery of reparations material to France, attacked French and Belgian posts and killed at least eight collaborators.

[29] In one incident of sabotage that gained wide public attention, the National Socialist Albert Schlageter was executed by the French for destroying a section of railroad track.

[30][page needed] Acts of violence and accidents caused by the occupying forces had resulted in 137 deaths and 603 injuries by August 1924, shortly before the passive resistance was called off.

[17] In addition to calling for passive resistance, Chancellor Cuno and his government undertook to support the workers idled by the shutdown of factories and mines.

[1] The move helped spark the hyperinflation of 1923, during which Germany's currency, the Papiermark, fell from 17,000 to the US dollar at the beginning of the year to 4.2 trillion at the peak of the inflation.

[32] Germany's new government, led by Gustav Stresemann of the German People's Party announced the end of passive resistance on 26 September.

Stresemann's goal, however, was to improve international relations by making a good faith effort to comply with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

[35] The British diplomat Sir Eric Phipps commented that "The London Conference was for the French man in the street one long Calvary as he saw M. Herriot abandoning one by one the cherished possessions of French preponderance on the Reparation Commission, the right of sanctions in the event of German default, the economic occupation of the Ruhr, the French-Belgian railroad Régie, and finally, the military occupation of the Ruhr within a year".

[38] The French invasion of Germany did much to boost sympathy for the German republic internationally, although no action was taken at the League of Nations since the occupation was technically legal under the Treaty of Versailles.

The tension between France and the United Kingdom peaked during a conference in Paris in early 1923, by which time the coalition led by Lloyd George had been replaced by the Conservatives.

In response, German President Friedrich Ebert instituted a state of emergency throughout the country and transferred executive power to Minister of Defence Otto Gessler.

Kahr and two associates advocated a march on Berlin to overthrow the government, but on 8 November 1923 Adolf Hitler and members of the Nazi Party broke into their meeting and began the Beer Hall Putsch.

The ruling centre-left coalition was discredited by its inability to address the crisis, while the far left Communist Party of Germany remained inactive for much of the period under the direction of the Soviet Politburo and the Comintern.