page_title: Raymond Poincaré
section_title: Second premiership
hierarchical_section_title: Raymond Poincaré / Second premiership
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Conseil des ministres à la sortie de l'Élysée en 1925. De gauche à droite&#160;: Raymond Poincaré, Paul Painlevé, Aristide Briand. English: Council of Ministers at the Élysée Palace in 1925. From left to right: Raymond Poincaré, Paul Painlevé, Aristide Briand.
context_page_description: Raymond Nicolas Landry Poincaré was a French statesman who served three times as 58th Prime Minister of France, and as President of France from 1913 to 1920.
  Trained in law, Poincaré was elected as a Deputy in 1887 and served in the cabinets of Dupuy and Ribot. In 1902, he co-founded the Democratic Republican Alliance, the most important centre-right party under the Third Republic, becoming Prime Minister in 1912 and serving as President of the Republic from 1913 to 1920. He purged the French government of all opponents and critics and single-handedly controlled French foreign policy from 1912 to the beginning of World War I. He was noted for his strongly anti-German attitudes, shifting the Franco-Russian Alliance from the defensive to the offensive, visiting Russia in 1912 and 1914 to strengthen Franco-Russian relations, and giving France's support for Russian military mobilization during the July Crisis of 1914. From 1917, he exercised less influence as his political rival Georges Clemenceau had become Prime Minister. At the Paris Peace Conference, he advocated Allied occupation of the Rhineland for at least 30 years and French support for Rhenish separatism.
context_section_description: In 1920, Poincaré's term as President came to an end, and two years later he returned to office as Prime Minister. Once again, his tenure was noted for its strong anti-German policies.
  Frustrated at Germany's unwillingness to pay reparations, Poincaré hoped for joint Anglo-French economic sanctions against it in 1922, while opposing military action. In April 1922, Poincare was greatly alarmed by the Treaty of Rapallo, the beginning of a German-Soviet challenge to the international order established by the Treaty of Versailles. He was disturbed that British Prime Minister David Lloyd George did not share the French viewpoint, instead almost welcoming Rapallo as a chance to bring Soviet Russia into the international system. Poincaré came to believe by May 1922 that if Rapallo could not convince the British that Germany was out to undercut the Versailles system by whatever means necessary, then nothing would, in which case France would just have to act alone. Further adding to Poincaré's fears was the worldwide propaganda campaign started in April 1922 blaming France for World War I as a means of disproving Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which would thereby undermine the French claim to reparations.
  In the German-Soviet propaganda of the 1920s, the July Crisis of 1914 was portrayed as Poincaré-la-guerre (Poincaré's war), in which Poincaré put into action the plans he had allegedly negotiated with Emperor Nicholas II in 1912 for the dismemberment of Germany. The French Communist newspaper L'Humanité ran a front-page cover-story accusing Poincaré and Nicholas II of being the two men who plunged the world into war in 1914. The Poincaré-la-guerre propaganda proved to be very effective in the 1920s.
  Throughout the spring and summer of 1922, the British continued to spurn Poincaré's offers of an alliance with Britain. Poincaré's attempt to compromise with the British on German reparations failed in 1922. By December 1922 Poincaré was faced with British-American-German hostility and saw coal for French steel production and money for reconstructing the devastated industrial areas draining away.
  Poincaré decided to occupy the Ruhr on 11 January 1923, to extract the reparations himself. This, according to historian Sally Marks, "was profitable and caused neither the German hyperinflation, which began in 1922 and ballooned because of German responses to the Ruhr occupation, nor the franc's 1924 collapse, which arose from French financial practices and the evaporation of reparations." The profits, after Ruhr-Rhineland occupation costs, were nearly 900 million gold marks. During the Ruhr crisis, Poincaré made a failed attempt to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Poincaré lost the 1924 French legislative election "more from the franc's collapse and the ensuing taxation than from diplomatic isolation."
  Hall argues that Poincaré was not a vindictive nationalist. Despite his disagreements with Britain, he desired to preserve the Anglo-French entente. When he ordered the French occupation of the Ruhr valley in 1923, his aims were moderate. He did not try to revive Rhenish separatism. His major goal was the winning of German compliance with the Versailles treaty. Poincaré's inflexible methods and authoritarian personality led to the failure of his diplomacy.
caption: Poincaré with Painlevé and Briand (1925)
exif: {}