The German Separatists
What further excited the bitter hatred of the Germans was the effort of French generals and political agents to detach the loyalty of the Rhineland from the German Empire by encouraging bodies of “Separatists,” who proclaimed a Rhineland Republic. Led by a very doubtful but plausible gentleman named Dr. Dorten, whom I met in the early days of the British occupation, these “Separatists” were mostly youths of the disorderly class and men of criminal type supported by a few sincere fanatics. Many of them were in the pay of the French. Their movement was regarded as black treachery by patriotic Germans, and when the French troops stood by the Separatists while they seized public buildings and murdered German police, previously disarmed by French orders, fury was unrestrained among the German people. French policy, in this matter at least, was a blunder, because from the first the Separatist movement had no basis of reality nor any chance of success. It was an illusion of French politicians who let their wish be father to their thoughts.