The Treaty of Locarno

The period of the Treaty of Locarno is full of important changes, either positive and negative. The 1920’s is full of pacts. For this reason, many historians called it the “ pactomania era”. Inside, this huge amount of treaty there is the Treaty of Locarno.

After the WWI, the winner power met at Versailles where they signed on 28 June 1919 the Treaty of Versailles. During the conference, there were three main protagonist: Clemenceau, Llyod George and Wilson. They formed the B3. The Treaty of Versailles is at the center of many discussion, there are many historians that consider it as the only kind of solution during that years, while others say that it was too harsh against the Germany. That is why Keynes defined it as a “ Carthaginian peace”.

During the meeting, they took important decisions to face the big problems that the war brought. All of them had different aims. Clemenceau was very angry with Germany and he wanted to take back the territories of Alsace-Lorraine, he asked for high reparations and he also proposed to create a buffer state, the Rhineland, between France and Germany. Wilson proposed the 14 point, based on self-determination, and also to create a new international organism to prevent the war, it was the League of Nations. The main agreement that they reach was the disarmament. Germany and Russia didn’t take part in it for different reasons. The first one was considered the only guilty in the WWI, while the latter was the center of the communism. The Germany considered all the decisions took at Versailles as a “Diktat”.

After this treaty, the situation didn’t change and the Germany was still very the guilty power. In the meanwhile, Germany and Russia decided to sign an agreement. In 1922, the met at Rapallo where they signed the bilateral agreement. They decided to erase all the reparations of the war that they had to pay on each other, to help each other in case of attacks and Germany had the chance to try its army on Russian territory, in this way it could avoid the decision of disarm took at Versailles.

When Wilson lost his power, the new president, Harding, decided to not enter in the League of Nations and he established an isolationistic policy.

At this point, Great Britain was the only mediator in the European situation. The main problem was still the strong spirit of revanche that France felt against Germany. Germany hadn’t been paying in time the reparations and the France decided to ask for some help to the Great Britain. The latter didn’t accept, so, in 1923, Poincarè decided to send the French troops to the Ruhr area, that was the most industrialized of all Germany. The Germans started a passive resistance.

The situation started to change between 1924 and 1925. This changes were possible thanks to the help of the USA and they idea that the Germany-France situation had to be fix immediately to avoid another war. US decided to try to fix the European situation with an economic support. They proposed the Dawes Plan, that had as aim to help Germany with the reparations to stop all kind of military attacks as a way of solving problems. Germany accept immediately and this Plan established also the demilitarization of the Rhineland. This seemed to be the first step to improve the European situation. From this moment on, also the nations tried to solve the international problems. The next step was the Treaty of Locarno.

The treaty of Locarno was established on 16 October of 1925, in Switzerland. It was formally signed on the 1st December of the same years. This was actually not only an agreement but a set of it. They are seven agreements but the main is the “ Rhineland Pact”, that established the western borders and the demilitarization of the Rhineland. The powers that took part in it were: France, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Great Britain. The last were the guarantors of the of western borders. Great Britain decided to not have the same role for the Eastern borders. In fact in the Treaty there were many bilateral agreements for the eastern borders, such as between Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia and also between the latter two and France.

The Treaty of Locarno was possible thanks to important protagonists. They had all different aims but they found an agreement. Stresemann, the Germany’s Foreign Minister, proposed the Treaty of Locarno, he wanted to reestablish the role of Germany as a participant and not anymore as a looser. He asked for the evacuation of the Rhineland. Briand, who was the Foreign Minister of the France, was still not contented of Germany but he decided to try to fix the problems. Another important role was the one of Chamberlain. He decided to become “ the honest broker” of the agreements. His role as mediator was just for the Western borders. In fact, he said that it wouldn’t ever happened that the Great Britain troops would have risk their life to keep the peace in the East side.

The treaty of Locarno is nowadays a discussed theme. There many thesis on it, one side of historians considered it as a treaty that brought the peace in Europe, while the others say that it was just a temporary peace that didn’t fix the situation. Both the thesis seem to be true.

To justify the first one, we can say that for the first time after the Treaty of Versailles, Germany and France finally

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