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Gerald D. Feldman the French Policies of Hugo Stinnes

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Gerald D. Feldman the French Policies of Hugo Stinnes Gerald D. Feldman The French Policies of Hugo Stinnes Hugo Stinnes (1870-1924) played a major role in Franco-German relations during his lifetime and powerfully influenced the security issues connected with them1. It is, to say the least, odd that a private businessman should be of such importance to international relations, and Stinnes has no counterpart in any other major indus- trial nation. Even J. P. Morgan did not exert the kind of influence over foreign pol- icy wielded by Stinnes. In fact, the only comparable figure was another German industrialist, Walther Rathenau, who was often Stinnes's rival. Rathenau, however, held official government posts, including that of Foreign Minister in 1922, and was not as engaged in business affairs as Stinnes during the war and postwar years. Indeed, this was the period in which Stinnes reconstructed and expanded his economic empire in coal and its by-products, iron, steel, electric power, urban transport, shipping, oil, cellulose, hotels, and a variety of other things. Fur- thermore, Rathenau did not exercise the influence and power in business circles enjoyed by Stinnes; indeed he was viewed with suspicion because of his planned economy ideas. While Stinnes worried his colleagues because of his acquisitive ap- petite, he nevertheless came to be regarded by 1918 as the most imaginative, ener- getic, and formidable spokesman for German heavy industry and, increasingly, for German industry as a whole. This was made possible, of course, by his willingness and desire to take a leadership role despite his manifold activities and, above all, by the profound weakness of Germany's political leadership and deficiencies in Ger- man political culture. The Evolution of Stinnes's French Policy to 1919 Stinnes had substantial prewar interests in France through the Deutsch-Luxem- burg Mining and Smelting Company, which had ore holdings in Longwy and Normandy, and also through his commercial firm, which had an important office 1 This paper is based on Gerald D. Feldman, Hugo Stinnes: Biographie eines Großindus- triellen (München 1998) and Gerald D. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914-1924 (New York, London 1993, paperback 1996). See also Peter Wulf, Hugo Stinnes. Wirtschaft und Politik 1918-1924 (Kieler Historische Stu- dien 28, Stuttgart 1979). The reader is referred to those books for general accounts. 44 Gerald D. Feldman in Paris. "While Deutsch-Luxemburg had some exclusive holdings of its own in France, it also collaborated in consortia with other great German iron and steel enterprises in acquiring ore fields. The French did not always make things easy, and German penetration of Normandy shortly before the war especially worried the French right, which warned of a "German invasion". Stinnes and his col- leagues used straw men and set up French corporations to get around those diffi- culties. Thus, Deutsch-Luxemburg collaborated with Phönix and Hoesch to take over concessions in Normandy, and in the building up of transport facilities at the mines and in the harbor of Caen. Additionally, Stinnes, Thyssen, and Krupp bought up four fields in Normandy in 1912 through a Dutch ore merchant and front man, who shipped ore from France to Rotterdam and then into the Ruhr. In late June 1914 a further important step was taken with a plan for the Ore Research Corporation to set up a French corporation in Paris, the Société générale d'entre- prises minières, to act as a holding company for the various ore mining interests in France, Spain, and elsewhere "with the purpose of hiding the German partici- pation in those enterprises"2. Stinnes was quite satisfied with these techniques, and neither he nor the head of the Coal Syndicate, Emil Kirdorf, were overly concerned about periodic irri- tations from the French side with respect to the ore concessions. They knew that the French needed German coke for their own smelting operations and that Ger- mans were therefore not defenseless. Stinnes was quite irritated by the noisy Pan- German criticisms of the Morocco settlement of 1911, pointing out that "It would ... be regrettable, if through boundless unproductive criticism an atmosphere is created between Germany and France that would once again be like the atmos- phere with England after the Boer War, an atmosphere under which both parties suffer to an equal extent, most of all the coal and iron industry, which in Germany and France are dependent on one another."3 In a famous discussion with Heinrich Class in 1911, Stinnes asserted that Ger- many could achieve economic domination in Europe through its natural econ- omic superiority and opposed warlike policies. Insofar as the French were con- cerned, he argued that they "have remained behind us; they are a nation of petits rentiers"4. He supported expanding the German army in 1913 to meet the French buildup, but he remained hopeful that cooler heads would prevail in France. Thus, in June 1914, he optimistically wrote of hearing "that the legislative elections in 2 Deutsch-Luxemburg to Stinnes, June 23,1914, Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Poli- tik der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (ACDP), 1-220, 068/7. An undated listing of Deutsch- Luxemburg's foreign ore interests, clearly dating from late 1912 or 1913, is to be found in ibid. On the plans to build up the harbor of Caen, see the protocol of March 1, 1913, ibid., 221/2. The best account of German penetration into Briey-Longwy and Normandy is by M. Ungeheuer, Die industriellen Interessen Deutschlands in Frankreich vor Ausbruch des Krieges, in: Technik und Wirtschaft 3 und 9 (1916) 158-172, 220-233. 3 Stinnes an die Schriftleitung der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Zeitung, Nov. 5, 1911, Nachlaß Else Stinnes. 4 Heinrich Claß, Wider den Strom. Vom Werden und Wachsen der nationalen Opposition im alten Reich (Leipzig 1932) 216-219. The French Policies of Hugo Stinnes 45 France are viewed as a protest against the policy of Poincaré and that in the ruling Radical Party the view increasingly gains ground that the long-term danger lies not with the Germans but with the Slavs"5. In fact, he was far more concerned about French financial than military power and expressed the hope that "France will shortly find in the Triple Alliance an equal opponent when it comes to giving money". Guns, however, were to play the primary role in that competition, and Stinnes became a rabid annexationist once the war started. He went beyond even the Pan- Germans in 1914, calling for the annexation, not only of Briey-Longwy, but also of the entire North Sea Coast of France and the ore fields in Normandy. As Beth- mann-Hollweg wearily and sarcastically reported of Stinnes's catalogue of wishes after a visit from the latter in November 1914: "The annexationist wishes with re- spect to France encompass: Belfort, Epinal, Toul, Verdun, Briey, and the entire northern coastal area up to the Somme including all the coal fields of France around Lille, Lens, Arras, etc., the Congo, Dahomey, Okob, etc."6 Stinnes con- tested the notion that the projected annexations of the ore regions of France in any way reflected a desire to increase the economic power of the industrialists. He insisted that without the minette from Luxemburg and Lorraine, German indus- try would not have been able to produce the iron and steel needed for the military campaign. Would this be possible in a future war? Stinnes's response reflected the deep impression made upon him by the shelling of Longwy into ruins from the hills behind his own plants in Differdingen and his feeling that it was only a matter of momentary German superiority and luck that Differdingen had not been destroyed. Stinnes pointed out that twenty percent of Germany's pig iron and steel production lay between seven and twenty-five kilo- meters of the Fortress of Longwy and that significant ore production took place in close proximity to Verdun. Thus, "the security of the German Reich in a future war demands territorially the possession of the entire minette deposit, including the fortresses of Longwy and Verdun, without which this territory is not to be held"7. At the same time, Stinnes argued that the control of the coal-producing areas of northern France and Belgium were no less important since the neutrals could only be kept from dependence on England because of the German access to additional coal resources to supply them. Germany did not have adequate oil resources, and this coal was also essential for by-products required by the German economy in peace and in future wars. This peculiar oscillation between a cynical policy of economic imperialism and self-serving pretensions to economic rationality was especially evident when it 5 Stinnes to Weitz, June 6,1914 from Karlsbad, Nachlaß Paul Weitz, U.S. National Archives, Micro Copy No. T-291, Film 5, Frames 1-3. 6 Stinnes to Zimmermann, Nov. 19, 1914, reprinted in: André Scherer; Jacques Grunwald (Eds.), L'Allemagne et les problèmes de la paix pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale, 4 vols. (Paris 1962-1978) 1,16-19, quote on 16. 7 Appendix 17 to the report of General von Gayl of June 23, 1915, Bundesarchiv (ΒΑ), Reichskanzlei, Krieg 1914, Nr. 2442/12, Bl. 215ff. 46 Gerald D. Feldman came to the ore question and the planned annexation of Briey-Longwy. Stinnes figured as one of the outspoken supporters of this major item on the annexationist agenda, although he knew that others felt the German iron and steel industry's minette ore needs could best be achieved by an understanding with its French counterpart, which needed coking coal from Germany. Stinnes had no objections to secret conversations with French industrialists in Switzerland in 1916, although he thought them more useful for intelligence purposes than anything else.
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