Locarno: The Forgotten Conference of 1925

Largely forgotten to history, the Locarno Conference of October 1925 was a turning point in the interwar European diplomatic landscape. The conference initiated the re-integration of Germany into the international order and laid the foundations for a more stable international system, even if it did not last for long.

The Locarno Conference was, in a sense, a dividing line between the end of The Great War (World War I), in which Germany was to be relegated to the sidelines of European diplomacy, and a post-Locarno order in which Germany was to be re-admitted into the international order as a central actor in it. 

As a result of the Locarno Conference, Germany became a member of the League of Nations, from which it had been intentionally excluded. Indeed, Germany became a permanent member of the Council of the League of Nations (the parallel of the Security Council of the United Nations).

Germany recognized the boundaries on her western front that had been agreed upon – or imposed on Germany – following the Great War. As far as the frontiers on her eastern front were concerned, Germany refused to recognize them officially, but committed itself to modify them only by peaceful means.

It was further agreed that Britain and Italy would guarantee the borders between Germany, France and Belgium. Thus, should any one of the three invade the other, Britain and Italy would intervene on the side of the country being invaded. Only six years after the Versailles Treaty, Germany was given a guarantee, by two of the victors of World War I, that it would be defended in case of an attack by France and/or Belgium. This pledge, by itself, would have been inconceivable in 1919.  

As an additional consequence of the Locarno Conference, Allied forces evacuated the Rhineland in 1930, five years prior to the scheduled date.

The principal political architects of the Locarno Pact of 1925 were to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Sir Austen Chamberlain in 1925, and Germany’s Foreign Minister, Gustav Stresemann, and France’s Foreign Minister, Aristide Briand, jointly in 1926.

The Locarno Pact was a corollary of propitious circumstances. Stresemann understood that the only way for Germany to ease the conditions imposed on it by the Versailles Treaty and facilitate its re-integration into the international order was by compromise rather than defiance. Briand believed in a more conciliatory policy towards Germany than many of his fellow politicians in France, who were wary of German intentions. Chamberlain, though cautious about the resurgence of a menacing German presence in Europe, wished to see the reemergence of an economically viable Germany with which Britain could trade. The intersection of these three factors made the Locarno Pact possible. 

The Locarno Pact was the diplomatic handle that opened the gates to German readmission into the mainstream of the new international system that had emerged in the wake of World War I. It reconciled German aspirations for international recognition with French and British expectations for German moderation. Germany was to be welcome back again as one of the principal diplomatic powers of Europe. The Versailles Treaty was not revoked, to be sure, but the attitude of the victors of World War I to Germany changed considerably. The diplomatic status of Germany altered significantly. 

When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933 Germany was no longer the relegated country that it had been from the end of the Great War to 1925. Indeed, it was the German leader, Adolf Hitler, who soon after taking power decided freely that Germany would leave the League of Nations.

The Locarno Conference was a turning point, which the Nazis derided precisely because it denoted a peaceful, gradual return of Germany to the mainstream of international diplomacy. It afforded legitimacy to a reformed post-Versailles order, which the Nazis could not accept.

There is a widely held view that Locarno turned out to be a failure because it didn’t create the means to prevent Nazi Germany from upsetting the international order.

No enforcement mechanism can ever work in international relations unless those responsible for enforcing an existing agreement are willing to do so. The British and the Italians in the 1930s were not willing, for their own reasons, to enforce the Locarno agreements.

Further, Nazi Germany would not have abided by any agreement signed at Locarno in 1925 and would have done its utmost to violate it. Thus, no matter what was actually agreed to at Locarno, Nazi Germany would have refused to abide by it. Any agreement signed at Locarno that would have satisfied Nazi Germany would have been totally unacceptable by the other powers. The problem was not Locarno 1925, but Berlin 1933. 

No agreement would have succeeded lacking an intention to implement it. The problem with Locarno was two-fold: the rise of Nazi Germany and the unwillingness to enforce what had been agreed upon at Locarno. Both had nothing to do with the content or lack of it of the agreements reached at Locarno. Nothing that would have been added or removed from them would have made any difference. Incidentally, it should be added that the decision-makers concerned in the 1930s in Germany, France and Britain, were not those who attended the Locarno Conference.

In terms of cause and effect, Locarno and its main architects had precious little to do with the reasons that brought its demise.

The Locarno Conference was thus a turning point for what happened and for what might have happened. It re-introduced Germany into the international order as a respected actor, creating as well the so-called “Locarno Spirit” of reconciliation and moderation in international diplomacy. It could have continued to serve as a foundation for a reformed, post-Versailles system had it not been for the rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany and the refusal of the guarantors of the Locarno Settlement, for various reasons,  to make it work. 

It has been argued that the Locarno Conference secured the borders to the west of Germany, but not those to the east. Thus, the countries in Western Europe, such as France and Belgium could feel secure, whereas Czechoslovakia and Poland could not. This argument, though ostensibly reasonable as the borders between Germany and its western neighbours were guaranteed and those with its eastern neighbours were not, is historically untenable. After all, Nazi Germany, which did not recognize any agreement signed in Locarno, violated their terms both with regard to its western and eastern borders. France and Belgium were attacked in 1940 notwithstanding the Locarno treaties. Again, the problem with the Locarno treaties was not their content, but the refusal of Nazi Germany to abide by them. To argue that the Locarno agreements would have fared any better had there been the same guarantees for Germany’s eastern neighbors as there had been for its western ones, is to divest historical analysis of historical facts. The fate of Czechoslovakia and Poland turned out to be the same as that of France and Belgium, not because of Locarno, but in spite of it.