Territory of the Saar Basin

• 1. Introduction

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  The Territory of the Saar Basin flew its own flag from the 28th of July 1920, a horizontal tricolour of blue, white and black. Blue and white honored Bavaria; white and black honored Prussia, the two German lands the territory had been cut from. By 1933, 812,000 people lived within its borders, centered on the capital, Saarbrücken. Its shape closely matched the modern German state of Saarland, though it covered slightly less ground. The territory was occupied and governed by the United Kingdom and France under a League of Nations mandate. Its own residents had no vote in choosing who ran their daily affairs. Who actually held power inside these borders, and how did its people finally decide where they belonged?

• 2. A Mandate Without a Nation

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  The Treaty of Versailles set exact terms: fifteen years of foreign administration for the Saar Basin, coalfields included. Its coalfields were ceded outright to France, a concession folded into the same treaty. Day-to-day rule fell to a five-person Governing Commission, known in German as the Regierungskommission, or Reko. Commission rules required at least one French member and one German resident of the Saar. After the fifteen years elapsed, a plebiscite was to settle the territory's ultimate status.

  The territory itself combined two older regions: part of the Prussian Rhenish Trier Region and part of the Bavarian district of the Palatinate. Both areas supplied a significant share of the miners who worked the Saar coal mines. The Governing Commission gave the composite territory a state's trappings, its own postage stamps and its own currency, the Saar franc.

  Four different chairmen led the commission during its lifetime, moving between French, Canadian, and British hands. The first chairman, a Frenchman, held the post from the 26th of February 1920 to the 31st of March 1926. George Washington Stephens of Canada followed, serving from the 1st of April 1926 to the 9th of June 1927. Sir Ernest Wilton of the United Kingdom then served until the 31st of March 1932. Sir Geoffrey George Knox, also British, held the chair until the 28th of February 1935.

  Knox's chairmanship ended within weeks of the vote that would decide the territory's fate for good.

• 3. A Council With No Power

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  Paragraph 23 of the Treaty of Versailles required the Governing Commission to set up an assembly of elected Saar representatives. The Commission alone decided how that assembly would be organized, and for four years no such body existed at all. On the 24th of March 1922, the Reko finally decreed the formation of a Saar assembly called the Regional Council, the Landesrat. The first election followed in June 1922. Starting with the second election in 1924, the legislative period grew from three years to four, with further elections in 1928 and 1932.

  Thirty members sat on the Regional Council, and the Governing Commission alone chose its chairperson, called the Landesratspräsident. During the first legislative period, the Reko did not even select that president from among the council's own members. The council was never a parliament; it was only a consultative body, able to be heard but not to set its own agenda. Members had no right of interpellation, no right to place a subject on the agenda, and no right to table a bill. They also enjoyed no immunity. When the Commission left an issue off the agenda, their only recourse was to petition the League of Nations directly.

  Every party elected to the Regional Council, regardless of politics, opposed the Saar's autocratic system of rule and demanded a return to Germany. In Germany, they argued, the people could elect their own parliament, which would in turn choose a self-determined government. Only after the Nazi takeover in Germany, which outlawed every party but the NSDAP, did change come. The Saar's Social Democrats and Communists broke from that unified opposition and began supporting the status quo instead.

  For the 1935 status referendum, the Social Democrats and the Communists urged voters to keep the status quo in place, an appeal that would fail.

• 4. The Vote That Ended It

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  In 1933, a considerable number of Adolf Hitler's political opponents moved into the Saar. It remained the only part of Germany still under foreign occupation after the First World War. Anti-Nazi groups pushed for the Saarland to remain under British and French occupation, continuing the League of Nations mandate. Since most of the region's population was German, though, the mandate itself remained unpopular. A plebiscite was scheduled for the 13th of January 1935.

  Adolf Hitler wanted the propaganda value of reclaiming the Saar, so Joseph Goebbels designed a concerted campaign to sway voters. Local Catholic authorities lent their support to a return to Germany, and fears of Bolshevism helped too, with Hitler cast as a bulwark against it. Turnout reached 98% of eligible voters. The result was decisive. 90.8% voted to rejoin the German Reich, while 8.8% chose to keep the status quo, mostly to avoid Nazi rule. A further 0.4% wanted union with France instead.

  After the vote, Hitler announced that Germany "had no further territorial demands to make of France." The Nansen International Office for Refugees went on to resettle Saar refugees as far away as Paraguay after 1935.

• 5. Absorbed and Renamed

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  On the 17th of January 1935, the League Council approved the Saar's reunion with Germany. On the 1st of March, Germany formally re-integrated the region into the Reich. It appointed Josef Bürckel as Reichskommissar für die Rückgliederung des Saarlandes, the "Reich Commissioner for the reincorporation of the Saarland." Many opponents of Nazism who had taken refuge there were imprisoned, along with former Saar politicians and officials who had collaborated with the occupation.

  By the 17th of June 1936, once reincorporation was considered complete, Bürckel's title changed again, to Reichskommissar für das Saarland, "Reich Commissioner for the Saarland." The new Gau extended west to the Rhine, taking in the Bavarian district of the Palatinate. On the 8th of April 1940, the region was renamed again, to Saarpfalz, "Saar-Palatinate."

  After the Battle of France, the re-annexed territory known as the CdZ-Gebiet Lothringen was folded into the Reichsgau. The region's name was finalized on the 11th of March 1941 as Westmark, meaning "Western March" or "Western Boundary." Its governor took the title Reichsstatthalter in der Westmark, the "Reich Governor in the Western March." On the 28th of September 1944, Reich Commissioner Josef Bürckel died, and Willi Stöhr succeeded him. Stöhr held the post until the 21st of March 1945, when United States Army troops conquered the region.

  That July, the Americans handed the occupation over to French forces, opening a different chapter of foreign rule for the Saar.

• 6. Home for Good

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  After World War Two, a French protectorate was established within borders similar to those of the earlier Territory. A referendum on the 23rd of October 1955 brought French rule and influence in the region to an end. On the 1st of January 1957, the Saarland became part of West Germany.