The Locarno Treaties

OCT 16 1925 · 12:00

Foreign ministers Gustav Stresemann, Austen Chamberlain and Aristide Briand at the Locarno conference, October 1925. Place: Locarno, Ticino, Switzerland Figures: Gustav Stresemann, German Foreign Minister · Aristide Briand, French Foreign Minister · Austen Chamberlain, British Foreign Secretary · Émile Vandervelde, Belgian · Benito Mussolini, Italian (signing without enthusiasm) Borders Guaranteed Germany, France, Belgium, Britain, and Italy sign a treaty guaranteeing the post-Versailles Franco-German and Belgo-German borders, including the demilitarized status of the Rhineland. Britain and Italy commit to act against whichever of France, Belgium, or Germany violates the settlement. Germany signs arbitration treaties with France, Belgium, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Crucially, the eastern German borders (with Poland and Czechoslovakia) are not guaranteed in the same terms. Stresemann refuses; nobody insists. The treaty is initialled on 16 October 1925 at the Palazzo del Pretorio in Locarno after two weeks in which the foreign ministers eat lunch together every day. It is signed formally at the Foreign Office in London on 1 December. Germany is admitted to the League of Nations the following September. Five Good Years Stresemann, Briand, and Chamberlain share the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize. For about five years it looks as if European reconciliation is real. The Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928 (see [[kellogg-briand-pact-1928]]) follows directly from the esprit de Locarno. French troops evacuate the Rhineland in June 1930, five years ahead of the Versailles schedule. Stresemann dies on 3 October 1929. The Wall Street crash arrives three weeks later. The reparations system that the Dawes (1924) and Young (1929) plans had stabilized collapses with the German banking system in 1931. By March 1936 the Wehrmacht is back in the Rhineland; the Locarno guarantees are dead letter; nobody fires. The interval is remembered as the last moment in which the post-Versailles settlement could plausibly have stabilized into a durable Westphalian peace.