The Watch on the Rhine: The Military Occupation of the Rhineland

Abstract

Nine decades have passed since the victors of the First World War resolved to occupy the German Rhineland. Today, the events of this twelve-year occupation are at the very limits of living memory, and it is therefore all the more remarkable that the most recent historical account of the Rhineland occupation to be published has been written by someone who experienced the occupation at first hand. Margaret Pawley, the daughter of a political officer at the British High Commission, combines personal recollections of her Rhineland childhood with a well-informed overview of the workings of the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission in Koblenz and of political developments in the zones of the four occupying powers. This mixture of autobiography and history will be familiar to readers of her previous offering, Obedience to Instructions: FANY with the SOE in the Mediterranean (1999), an account of her experiences working for the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War.