Franco-German relations and the coal problem in the aftermath of the first and second world wars: From bilateral conflict to european energy cooperation

Abstract

Coal and coke were of major importance in the Franco-German puzzle during the first half of the twentieth century, coal being the main energy resource in Europe and coke being a rarer coal by-product necessary for the steel industry. Both of these commodities were concentrated near the Franco-German border. France in particular suffered from a structural dependence on imports of coal and coke from the Ruhr basin in order to fuel its national steel industry, which Paris planned to relaunch after each world war. For its part, Germany was a major European coal exporter with a strong metallurgical industry. Despite the growing prominence of oil during the interwar period, the primary and diversified use of coal by European populations and by industry made that resource into a political conundrum for European and transatlantic diplomatic relations from the end of the First World War onward.1.