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The Rhine Province was created in 1824 by joining the provinces of Lower Rhine and Jülich-Kleve-Berg . Its capital was Koblenz; it had 8.0 million inhabitants (1939). In 1920, the Saarland was separated from the Rhine Province and put under French administration. In
1946, the Rhine Province was divided up between the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.The Treaty of Versailles (1919) specified the de-militarisation of the entire area after World War I to provide a buffer between Germany on one side and France, Belgium and LuxembourgThe Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (also Luxemburg is a landlocked state in the north-west of the continental European Union, bordered by France, Germany and Belgium. Grand-Duche de LuxembourgGrossherzogtum LuxemburgGroussherzogtum (Grand-Duche) Letzebuerg ( I (and to a lesser extent, the NetherlandsDutch redirects here. For other uses, see Dutch (disambiguation). The Netherlands ( Dutch: Nederland is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a constitutional monarchy. It is located in northwestern Europe and borders the North Sea, Belgium) on the other side.
In violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, Nazi Germany reoccupied the Rhineland on March 7, 1936. The occupation was done with very little military support and could easily have been stopped had it not been for the appeasement mentality of post-war Europe. The remilitarization of the Rhineland was very popular with locals, however, because of a resurgence of German nationalism and harbored bitterness over French occupation of the Rhineland until 1926.