<P> The Occupation of the Ruhr (German: Ruhrbesetzung) was a period of military occupation of the German Ruhr valley by France and Belgium between 1923 and 1925 in response to the Weimar Republic's failure to continue its reparation payments in the aftermath of World War I . </P> <P> The Ruhr region had been occupied by Allied troops in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, during the Allied occupation of the Rhineland (1918--1919). Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which formally ended the war, Germany accepted responsibility for the damages caused in the war and was obliged to pay war reparations to the various Allies, principally France . The total sum of reparations demanded from Germany--around 226 billion gold marks (US $859 billion in 2017)--was decided by an Inter-Allied Reparations Commission . In 1921, the amount was reduced to 132 billion (at that time, $31.4 billion (US $442 billion in 2017), or £ 6.6 billion (UK £ 284 billion in 2017)). Even with the reduction, the debt was huge . As some of the payments were in industrial raw materials, German factories were unable to function, and the German economy suffered, further damaging the country's ability to pay . </P>

What was the french occupation of the ruhr