Editing Maginot Line (section)

==== 1927: Allied Control Commission abolished ====
In 1926, ''[[The Guardian|The Manchester Guardian]]'' ran an [[Exposé (journalism)|exposé]] showing the ''[[Reichswehr]]'' had been developing military technology forbidden by the [[Treaty of Versailles]] in the [[Soviet Union]]. The secret German-Soviet cooperation started in 1921.{{Citation needed|date=December 2023}} The German statement following ''The Manchester Guardian''{{'}}s article that Germany did not feel bound by the terms of Versailles and would violate them as much as possible gave much offence in France. Nonetheless, in 1927, the [[Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control|Inter-Allied Commission]], which was responsible for ensuring that Germany complied with Part V of the Treaty of Versailles, was abolished as a goodwill gesture reflecting the "Spirit of [[Locarno Treaties|Locarno]]".{{sfn|Keylor|2001|p=121}} When the Control Commission was dissolved, the commissioners in their final report issued a blistering statement, stating that Germany had never sought to abide by Part V and the ''Reichswehr'' had been engaging in covert rearmament all through the 1920s. Under the Treaty of Versailles, France was to occupy the Rhineland region of Germany until 1935. Still, the last French troops left the Rhineland in June 1930 in exchange for Germany accepting the [[Young Plan]].{{sfn|Keylor|2001|pp=121–122}} As long as the French occupied the Rhineland, it served as a type of collateral under which the French would annex the Rhineland in the event of Germany breaching any of the articles of the treaty, such as rearming in violation of Part V; this threat was powerful enough to deter successive German governments all through the 1920s from attempting any overt violation of Part V.{{sfn|Keylor|2001|p=122}} French plans as developed by Marshal [[Ferdinand Foch]] in 1919 were based on the assumption that in the event of a war with the ''Reich'', the French forces in the Rhineland were to embark upon an offensive to seize the Ruhr.{{sfn|Keylor|2001|p=122}} A variant of the Foch plan had been used by Poincaré in 1923 when he ordered the French occupation of the Ruhr.{{sfn|Keylor|2001|p=122}}

French plans for an offensive in the 1920s were realistic, as Versailles had forbidden [[Conscription in Germany|German conscription]], and the ''Reichswehr'' was limited to 100,000 men. Once the French forces left the [[Rhineland]] in 1930, this form of leverage with the Rhineland as collateral was no longer available to Paris, which from then on had to depend on Berlin's word that it would continue to abide by the terms of the Versailles and Locarno treaties, which stated that the Rhineland was to stay demilitarised forever.{{sfn|Keylor|2001|p=122}} Given that Germany had engaged in [[German re-armament|covert rearmament]] with the co-operation of the Soviet Union starting in 1921 (a fact that had become public knowledge in 1926) and that every German government had gone out of its way to insist on the moral invalidity of Versailles, claiming it was based upon the so-called ''Kriegsschuldlüge'' ("War guilt lie") that Germany started the war in 1914, the French had little faith that the Germans would willingly allow the Rhineland's demilitarised status to continue forever, and believed that at some time in the future, Germany would rearm in violation of Versailles, reintroduce conscription and remilitarise the Rhineland.{{sfn|Keylor|2001|p=122}} The decision to build the Maginot Line in 1929 was a tacit French admission that without the Rhineland as collateral, Germany was soon going to rearm and that the terms of Part V had a limited lifespan.{{sfn|Keylor|2001|p=122}}