Occupation of the Ruhr important harbour in Duisburg-Ruhrort, ending French occupation of the Ruhr region on 25 August 1925. According to Sally Marks, the occupation of the Ruhr "was profitable and caused neither the German hyperinflation, which began in 1922 and ballooned because of German responses to the Ruhr occupation, nor the franc's 1924 collapse, which arose from French financial practices and the evaporation of reparations". Marks suggests the profits, after Ruhr-Rhineland occupation costs, were nearly 900 million gold marks. Despite his disagreements with Britain, Poincaré desired to preserve the Anglo-French entente and thus moderated his aims to a degree. His major goal was
Ruhr Question themselves how to deal with the economic and technological potential of the Rhine and Ruhr. When the French were deliberating the future of Germany, the Ruhr Question was their top priority. The industrialized area of the Rhine and Ruhr, highly stylized in Nazi propaganda as the "armory of the empire", represented for France at the end of World War II far more than merely an Industrial region. Rather, the Ruhr was "a symbol of German Power and a source of French humiliation". As early as February 5th, 1945, France's provisional head of government Charles de Gaulle broadcast a speech introducing