Occupation of The Ruhr - Results

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To deal with the implementation of the Dawes Plan, a conference took place in London in July–August 1924. The British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, who viewed reparations as impossible to pay successfully pressured the French Premier Édouard Herriot into a whole series of concessions to Germany. The British diplomat Sir Eric Phipps commented that “The London Conference was for the French 'man in the street' one long Calvary as he saw M. Herriot abandoning one by one the cherished possessions of French preponderance on the Reparations Commission, the right of sanctions in the event of German default, the economic occupation of the Ruhr, the French-Belgian railroad Régie, and finally, the military occupation of the Ruhr within a year”. The Dawes Plan was significant in European history as it marked the first time that Germany had succeeded in defying Versailles, and revised an aspect of the treaty in its favour.