Locarno Diplomacy: Germany and the West, 1925-1929

by Jon Jacobson

Overview

The Locarno Conference of 1925 and the five treaties concluded there have been seen as the turning point of the interwar years, i.e., Germany's acceptance of the 1919 peace settlement and the beginning of a new era of peace. Studying the documentary evidence, much of it available only recently, Jon Jacobson explores the personalities and politics of Locarno and offers a historical interpretation and synthesis of a critical decade in European diplomacy.

Originally published in 1972.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691620015
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/08/2015
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1487
Pages:	434
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

Read an Excerpt

Locarno Diplomacy

Germany and the West, 1925-1929

---

By Jon Jacobson

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1972 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05190-1

---

CHAPTER 1

Stresemann and the Practice of German Revisionism

Austen Chamberlain, the British Foreign Secretary, trembled and wept with joy, as did the French Foreign Minister, Aristide Briand. Benito Mussolini kissed Mrs. Chamberlain's hands. Bands played; members of the assembled crowd danced in the village square; even calloused newspaper reporters applauded and cheered. The next day the headlines in the New York Times read "France and Germany Bar War Forever," and those in the London Times declared "Peace at Last." The day was October 16, 1925; the place was Locarno, a small lakeside resort in southeastern Switzerland; and what evoked the "orgiastic gush," as Harold Nicolson called it, were the feelings of goodwill, the hopes for the future, and the enthusiasm over what had been accomplished on that day when the representatives of seven European powers initialed five agreements called the Treaties of Locarno.

The provisions of the treaties were less thrilling than the initialing ceremony. Four of them were arbitration conventions between Germany and her neighbors — France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The other, the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee, was a multilateral regional security agreement. It was, first of all, a reciprocal treaty of nonaggression by which the powers situated on the Rhine — Germany, France, and Belgium — promised not to attack, invade, or resort to war against each other. Secondly, it was a treaty of mutual guarantee and assistance by which the nations of Western Europe — England, France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy — promised to observe the demilitarization of the Rhineland, to defend the existing borders between Germany and France and Germany and Belgium, and to render military assistance to any signatory who was the victim of a violation of these two promises. Although they did not bring perpetual peace to Europe, these agreements — particularly the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee, sometimes called the Rhineland Pact — are of major historical significance. "Locarno," one historian has written, "was the turning point of the years between the wars. Its signature ended the first world war; its repudiation eleven years later marked the prelude to the second."

Locarno was not merely one of many interwar conferences, and the following series of negotiated settlements dealing with German League membership, disarmament, reparation, and military occupation was not a simple honeymoon interlude. The Locarno era — the year preceding the signature of the Rhineland Pact and the four years that followed — was the hinge on which the relations between Germany and the West turned between the wars. It ended the period of confrontation following one war, and during the early thirties it gave way to an age in which each of the settlements of the Locarno era collapsed or was repudiated, placing Europe on the threshold of another war. Moreover, it was an era in which the extent and the limits of great power consensus were tested by a variety of conflicts. From the very beginning, consensus was tried by the conflicting considerations which brought the makers of German, British, and French foreign policy to Locarno, and thereafter it was strained by the divergent views these men held of what they accomplished at Locarno and what their achievement meant for the future.

The deliberations and negotiations which led to Locarno began nine months earlier, in January 1925. At that time Gustav Stresemann, the German Foreign Minister, in consultation with a few senior Foreign Ministry officials, decided to propose a series of nonaggression, arbitration, and military agreements between "those powers interested in the Rhine," a proposal which was delivered in London on January 20 and in Paris on February 9. Stresemann's proposition amounted to an acceptance of the 1919 peace settlement in the West, a renunciation of recourse to war with France (the defender of Versailles), and an agreement to submit to arbitration disputes with Poland, the possessor of German lands and peoples in the East. Stresemann made his proposal both in pursuit of the objectives which had controlled his foreign policy since 1923 and to meet the new situation which faced him in January 1925.

Since coming to office in August 1923, Stresemann had devoted himself to defending the unity of the Bismarckian Reich from possible disintegration under the impact of the Ruhr invasion and Rhenish separatism. In 1924 he had accepted the Dawes plan in order to prompt the withdrawal of the French from the Ruhr and to promote American investment in Germany. Then, after he proposed the Rhineland Pact, he justified his action as a continuation of both policies. During the economic recession which began in mid-1925, deepened the following autumn, and lasted until the next spring, he spoke of Germany's need for additional American loans, which would be granted, he stated, only if the security pact were concluded. On other occasions Stresemann played on the political trauma suffered by the German people two years earlier when a disarmed, demilitarized, and half-sovereign Reich had been unable to prevent the French from invading the Ruhr and supporting Rhenish separatists and autonomists. He defended the Rhineland Pact as a measure by which the French renounced a policy of invasion and military sanctions, admitted that the lands of the Rhine were a German possession, and recognized the territorial integrity and unity of the Reich — all guaranteed by Great Britain, of course. In so doing, Stresemann perhaps exaggerated both French intentions as of 1925 and the scope of the opportunity open to Paris to continue an aggressive Rhine-Ruhr policy. But his statements carried a propaganda advantage: within Germany, approval of the Rhineland Pact would appear to be a dire military necessity, and abroad Stresemann's policy would seem a measure of defense against invasion and dismemberment.

Within Foreign Ministry circles the Rhineland Pact was viewed not simply as a defense measure, but as a means of achieving the chief objectives of German foreign policy in 1925. As we shall see, Stresemann aimed at the prompt evacuation of Allied troops from Cologne and the Rhur, and ultimately, at freedom from all foreign occupation and the preservation of Germany from the designs of the French. He wanted a compromise settlement of the problem of German disarmament and, ultimately, the negotiated rather than the enforced application of the Treaty of Versailles. He desired to protect Germany from international institutions of supervision and inspection. The Inter-Allied Military Control Commission (IMCC) was to be withdrawn, and the permanent international commissions, which were being promoted by Paris to govern the disarmament of Germany and the demilitarization of the Rhineland, were not to be established. The Rhineland Pact was proposed, as a top Foreign Ministry official privately stated three months later, with the expectation that the British would lead the French to accept these three objectives. The actual proposal of the pact was prompted, according to available evidence, by two situations which became acute in December 1924: the nonevacuation of Cologne and rumors of an impending Anglo-French military alliance.

In the years following the First World War, Germany was repeatedly penalized for not complying with the Treaty of Versailles, frequently by the application of military sanctions. In 1920 French troops had invaded Frankfort a. M. and the surrounding area; in 1921 they had occupied three cities in the Ruhr — Düsseldorf, Duisburg, and Ruhrort; in 1923 French and Belgian troops had taken over the rest of the Ruhr district. In December 1924 penalty was levied once again, this time by continuing the military occupation of German territory beyond the scheduled date for evacuation. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the German Rhineland was occupied by Allied troops as a way of assuring compliance with the provisions of the treaty. The area of occupation had been divided into three zones, centered on Cologne, Coblenz, and Mainz; one zone was to be evacuated every five years (1925, 1930, and 1935) provided the German government faithfully carried out its treaty obligations. On September 8, 1924, four months prior to the scheduled evacuation of the first zone (Cologne and the surrounding area), the IMCC began a general inspection of German factories and military installations in order to determine whether Germany had complied with the disarmament provisions of Versailles. By mid-December the IMCC had largely completed its efforts and submitted an interim report stating that the treaty provisions had not been fulfilled. On December 27 the Conference of Ambassadors, the Allied institution responsible for overseeing the application of the treaty, decided that the evacuation of Allied troops from Cologne would not begin on January 10 as scheduled. In this manner the French, supported by the English, the Belgians, and the Italians, made clear their intention to enforce the Versailles Treaty by continued occupation.

The decision of the Conference of Ambassadors, officially communicated to the German government on January 5, 1925, had been forecast by earlier events. In August 1924 Edouard Herriot and Ramsay MacDonald, the French and British Prime Ministers, had agreed that the evacuation of Cologne would depend on the outcome of the general inspection conducted by the IMCC, and Stresemann was informed of this soon thereafter. Stresemann and Wilhelm Marx, the German Chancellor, asked the Reichswehr to cooperate with the IMCC for the sake of Cologne. They met with no success, and by early December the German embassies in Paris and London were warning the Wilhelmstrasse that Cologne would not be evacuated on schedule. In the middle of the month, Berlin tested Allied willingness to withdraw in spite of the reported lapses in disarmament. The reports which came back (December 20-24) indicated that the French would make no such high-policy compromise, that they would demand consideration of the details of German disarmament, and that the British and Italians would join them in a declaration of German default and in a refusal to evacuate. Stresemann, who regarded "the sovereignty of Germany on German soil" as the first objective of German policy, found progress toward his goal blocked by Herriot's unwillingness to compromise French military security.

In 1925 French security against a German attack rested on two bases, the disarmament of Germany and the occupation of the Rhineland, both of which prevented the Reichswehr from threatening France. In Paris these two deterrents were viewed as being all the more important in the absence of a third — a defensive military alliance signed by Great Britain. The question facing the Herriot government in late 1924 was whether they should begin to dismantle the barrier of occupation at a time when German disarmament was not complete and without a guarantee of military assistance from Britain. A decision to do so would have caused the government severe political difficulties, and on January 28 Herriot announced to the Chamber of Deputies what had long been suspected throughout Europe — that French insistence on the continued occupation of Cologne was motivated not only by a policy of strict treaty enforcement, but also by the essential security needs of France.

Although Stresemann regarded French concern over military security as irrational, he was willing to give Paris written assurances against "the nightmare of a future German attack," as he called it. He did so to prompt the evacuation of Cologne and the negotiation of a compromise disarmament settlement. Caught between the Reichswehr, which would not cooperate with the IMCC in the disarmament of Germany, and the Allies, who would not evacuate until it did so, Stresemann saw one avenue of escape — a compromise settlement providing for Allied evacuation in exchange for a German promise to correct the most important disarmament violations. To promote this compromise, and to break the link between occupation and treaty enforcement, Stresemann proposed an alternative form of military security — a pact of nonaggression and a treaty of guarantee. Hopefully, Herriot's Cartel de Gauches government would be led to evacuate Cologne and so begin the withdrawal of foreign troops from Germany. Then future French governments would be less tempted than those of the immediate past to extend or continue military occupation either as a means of treaty enforcement or as a barrier against German attack. The first step toward Stresemann's objective — the sovereignty of Germany on German soil — would be taken.

The second factor in the January 1925 situation prompting Stresemann to action was the prospect that French security needs would be met in a manner unfavorable to Germany — by an Anglo-French military alliance. Such a bilateral alliance would give London and Paris both the incentive and the opportunity to cooperate on a wide variety of world problems and to collaborate behind Germany's back in the application of Versailles and in other matters of interest to the Reich. Germany would be confronted with a hostile coalition in the West, and Stresemann would be forced to choose between diplomatic isolation or greater dependence on the Soviet Union. Rumors that Austen Chamberlain intended to conclude an alliance with France began to reach the Wilhelmstrasse as early as December 10, 1924, and on December 29, Lord D'Abernon, the British ambassador, warned Carl von Schubert, State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry, that the French were pressing an alliance on Chamberlain, and he suggested that the Germans intervene with a Franco-German nonaggression pact. D'Abernon's suggestion came at a crucial time: on the same day the German cabinet was meeting to discuss Berlin's response to the Allied decision not to evacuate Cologne, and rumors of an entente, based on British support for French Rhineland policy in exchange for French support of British colonial policy, were being reported to the Wilhelmstrasse. Within two weeks the Germans were ready to propose the Rhineland Pact, and thereafter Stresemann repeatedly stated that the prevention of an Anglo-French alliance was one of his chief objectives in proposing a security pact of his own. He could well regard a Rhineland Pact as the least objectionable way of giving France security. Certainly it was preferable to a military alliance between France and England, the prolonged occupation of Cologne, and the strict enforcement of the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles — a set of eventualities which confronted his foreign policy with the possibility of a serious setback.

As seen from Berlin, the events of December 1924 — the nonevacuation of Cologne and the rumors of an impending Anglo French alliance — appeared to indicate an abrupt change in the course of German relations with the West and to forecast a reverse for Germany. On September 26, 1923, six weeks after Stresemann came to office and took over the direction of German policy, he had ended passive resistance to the French seizure of the Ruhr. Next, at the London conference in August 1924, he had agreed to fulfill a reparation payment plan drawn up by Allied and American financial experts, and in return Herriot promised to evacuate the Ruhr by August 15, 1925. Then came the December setbacks. After negotiating a reparation settlement with the Germans, the Allies were apparently reverting to a policy of enforcement, sanctions, and imposed settlements. From the nonevacuation of Cologne it appeared that they were about to settle the disarmament problem without considering German interests; the proposed Anglo-French alliance indicated that the security question was to be resolved without consulting Berlin either. "The policy of the London conference," Stresemann told the cabinet on January 6, "carried with it not only the idea of an economic and financial settlement, but a settlement of the whole world-political situation. The nonevacuation of Cologne puts the continuation of this policy in the greatest danger."

All this boded ill for German foreign policy. December's reversals would make it difficult for Stresemann to represent his policy to the German Reichstag as one which brought direct benefits and led to political recovery. In December the German ambassadors to London and Paris were instructed to argue that an Allied refusal to negotiate a Cologne settlement would have an extremely adverse impact on the German public: the majority of the German people would assume that the French had not given up their designs on the Rhineland, that the British were unwilling to oppose them, and that the Allies were determined to keep Germany in chains in spite of German desire for understanding. They would conclude that Stresemann's efforts in behalf of the London policy had been wasted, and that the policy itself was a failure. Stresemann's policy and position as leader of German foreign policy were at a crisis point. If his policy was to have credence, and if the heavy investment he had made in it since 1923 was to be protected, the Allies must begin to withdraw from Germany, and Germany must be included in the discussions of security and disarmament. To this end he first threatened the Allies: "If the question of evacuation was not made a matter for negotiations and compromise," he told the press on December 30 "it would mean the complete bankrupty of the policy on which the execution of the Dawes plan was based." Then, in January, he sent a copy of his Rhineland Pact to London.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Locarno Diplomacy by Jon Jacobson. Copyright © 1972 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

• Frontmatter, pg. i
• Preface, pg. vii
• Contents, pg. ix
• Abbreviations and Designations, pg. 2
• 1. Stresemann and the Practice of German Revisionism, pg. 3
• 2. England Between Victor and Vanquished, pg. 12
• 3. The Security of France and Her Allies, pg. 26
• 4. Three Images of Locarno, pg. 35
• 1. Security, Disarmament, and the Rhineland before, pg. 47
• 2. The Locarno Bargain, October 5-December I, 1925, pg. 60
• 3. The League Council Crisis and the Beginning of Locarno Diplomacy, March 1926, pg. 68
• 4. The Military Occupation of Germany and the Treaty of Berlin, January-August 1926, pg. 76
• 5. Allied Withdrawal from the Rhine? The Thoiry Conversation, September-October 1926, pg. 84
• 6. Permanent Surveillance of Germany and the End of Military Control, November-December 1926, pg. 91
• 1. Briand's Retreat From Thoiry, December 1926-February 1927, pg. 101
• 2. French Rhine Policy In 1927: Occupation And Security, pg. 104
• 3. The Crisis Of Franco-German Relations And The Personal Estrangement Between Stresemann And Briand, March-May 192J, pg. 113
• 4. Chamberlain And The Entente: The Rhineland, Russia, And "The Anglo-French Thoiry" Of May 18, 192J, pg. 119
• 5. Germany Between East And West June 1927, pg. 128
• 1. The German Offensive on Evacuation: The Winter Debate, January-February 1928, pg. 143
• 2. Evacuation and Security, pg. 152
• 3. The Price of Freedom: Gilbert, Poincare, and the Origins of the Young Plan, January-April 1928, pg. 156
• 4. The Miiller Government and the Evacuation of Coblenz, April-July 1928, pg. 167
• 5. The End of Locarnite Collaboration? The German Denkschrift of July 20, 1928, pg. 175
• 1. The Disarmament Compromise and the Opening of the Rhineland Question, August-September 1928, pg. 187
• 2. The Entente and the Reparation Invoice October-November 13, 1928, pg. 207
• 3. Evacuation Without Compensation and the Surge of Anti-Locarno Feeling in Germany, November 13. December 1928, pg. 223
• 1. The Politics of Disappointment, January-April 1929, pg. 239
• 2. The Young Conference, February 11-April 17, 1929, pg. 250
• 3. Germany Accepts the Young Plan April 19-May 3, 1929, pg. 258
• 4. An Analysis of the Plan, pg. 272
• 1. A New Course for British Policy: The Second Labour Government, pg. 279
• 2. Stresemann and the Return of the Saar, pg. 287
• 3. French Military Security: The Commission of Verification, pg. 294
• 4. Financial Security for France: Ratification of the War Debt Agreements and Advance Reparation Payment, pg. 299
• 1. The Break in the Entente, August 6-11, pg. 309
• 2. The Locarno Powers Divided, August 13-21, pg. 318
• 3. The End of Control over the Demilitarized Zone, pg. 331
• 4. The Modification of the Young Plan, August 16-31, pg. 334
• 5. The Settlement of 1929, pg. 343
• 1. The End of an Era, pg. 353
• 2. The Legacy of 1929, pg. 359
• 3. The Locarno Era, pg. 366
• Bibliography, pg. 389
• Index, pg. 411