`preaching The Gospel Of Reasonableness`: Anglo-german Relations, 1919-1939

Preaching the gospel of reasonableness : Anglo-German Relations 1919-1939

In the Shadow of Versailles, 1919-23

For all the contradictions and inconsistencies which were enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles, nothing augured less brightly for the prospects of a smooth transition from conflict to co-operation during the early 1920s than the fact that the two powers upon whom the burden of enforcing the peace settlement ultimately came to rest, France and Great Britain, had sharply contrasting visions of Germany s future role in European affairs. Driven by what they perceived as their own unique experience of the German problem , the French had initially desired a settlement which would permanently reduce Germany to such a state of weakness and subservience that she would never again be in a position to threaten the security of France. Indeed, the basic French aim at the peace conference, from which Clemenceau and his associates were only moved under protest and with extreme difficulty over some of the more contentious issues, had been unequivocally formulated in a Quai d Orsay memorandum drawn up shortly before the armistice. In order to assure Europe of lasting peace, it argued tersely, Bismarck s work must be destroyed. ^[1] The peace negotiations in Paris, however, soon demonstrated the fundamental incompatibility of this objective with British concerns for the restoration of a European balance of power, the establishment of a stable democratic Germany shielded from Bolshevik encroachments and the reconstruction of the European economy, to which a significant degree of German economic recovery was increasingly deemed essential.^[2] This conflict of ideas, which soon developed into serious disagreements over basic principles of policy, was aptly summarised by Sir Maurice Hankey, secretary to the British delegation in Paris, only two months after the Treaty of Versailles came into force. Commenting on the incessant disputes with the French about the German settlement, he wrote : The fact is that they wanted a stiffer treaty and we wanted an easier one. Moreover, from the first we always intended to ease up on the execution of the treaty if the Germans played the game. With the French, the exact opposite is the case. ^[3]

Dissension amongst the allies had not passed unnoticed by the Germans during the peacemaking process and provided them with a solitary ray of hope in what otherwise seemed a dark and dangerous situation. For although successive German post-war administrations were plagued by internal unrest and economic chaos, each had as its foremost, and practically pre-determined, goal in foreign affairs the dismantling of the peace settlement as rapidly and in as comprehensive a form as possible. To their own population the German leaders could claim that domestic strife, political instability and economic misery were the result of a criminal Diktat . At the same time, the new regime could seek to exploit the differences between the allies and plead for some alleviation of the treaty lest a worse - possibly soviet - fate befall the German nation. From the outset therefore the Germans drew a distinction between Britain and the United States, to whom they looked for some understanding of their situation, and France, from whom patently nothing of the sort was to be expected. Indeed, when formal diplomatic relations between Britain and the Weimar Republic were finally established in the summer of 1920, the new German Ambassador, Friedrich Sthamer, received a set of guidelines from Berlin which reveal much about German tactics towards Britain in the immediate post-war period. Starting from the premise that Germany s position vis- -vis France was that of a debtor whose only option was to put up whatever defence she could against additional onerous demands from Paris, the foreign minister, Walter Simons, drew attention to the fact that Britain s interest in the German economy provided a welcome counterweight to the French tendency to seek a further weakening, if not the total destruction, of the German state. Consequently, although care had to be taken to ensure that Germany did not become a British economic colony , co-operation with the British in the economic and, where possible, other spheres was certainly not to be discouraged. Moreover, Germany should be equally wary of giving any appearance of sympathy for the aims of Britain s enemies. Should there be any suspicion of such activity, warned Simons, Britain would forthwith abandon Germany to the tender mercies of the French.^[4]

Anglo-French discord over Germany was no more intense or obvious in the early 1920s than in the case of reparations where, in British eyes, the French seemed to be pursuing the contradictory policies of seeking to ruin Germany economically while simultaneously demanding full and immediate satisfaction of their financial and other demands. How was it possible, asks Frederick Northedge with some point, to have golden eggs and roast goose at the same time? ^[5] To be sure, the British were determined to extract their own substantial quotas from Germany after the final reparations total had been fixed in 1921, but it seemed to them wholly illogical, not to say dangerous, to wreck the German economy in the process. Consequently, while the French held that the Germans were wilfully evading their treaty obligations, the British were more inclined to give a sympathetic hearing to the German claim that in present circumstances they simply could not meet the demands of the repayment schedule. The two major international conferences on economic problems held at Cannes in January 1922 and at Genoa three months later not only failed to produce any agreement, but, on the contrary, marked a further sharp deterioration in the general situation. During the Cannes conference the French premier, Aristide Briand, resigned as a result of accusations of subservience to Britain and was replaced by Raymond Poincar whose obsession with Germany, writes Sally Marks, was almost total .^[6] Moreover, the only tangible result of the subsequent gathering at Genoa was the Russo-German Treaty of Rapallo which introduced a new element of uncertainty into an increasingly unstable environment. Anxious at this latest development and angered by French intransigence, Lloyd George personally told the German Chancellor, Joseph Wirth, that any isolated action by France in pursuit of her own interests would mean the end of the alliance .^[7]

During 1922 the German economy had already begun the slide into chaos which was to result in the astronomical inflation and abominable privations of the following year. With America having evidently washed its hands of European affairs following the Senate s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and in view of British efforts to provide them with a forum to state their case at Cannes and Genoa, it was perhaps understandable that by the autumn the Germans should have come to view the British as their first, and even only line of defence against French aggression .^[8] It was thus equally understandable that they followed with great interest and not a little anxiety the general election which followed the fall of Lloyd George in October 1922. The new Conservative government, however, did not, and indeed could not, deviate from the policy pursued by its predecessor. The differences between Britain and France over Germany, and indeed other issues, were of such a fundamental nature and concerned such vital British interests that they could not be relegated to the cut and thrust of party politics. In a memorandum of 20 November 1922 the head of the British department at the Wilhelmstrasse, Carl von Schubert, predicted that the conservatives would, if anything, take a stronger line against France in accordance with the basic principles of British foreign policy which dictated that no European power should ever become so strong that it could pose a threat to the British Empire. The conservatives, in Schubert s opinion, were determined to make this the keystone of their policy.^[9]

The fact that by early 1923 the Entente cordiale was distinctly lacking in cordiality was demonstrated by an incident at the Gare du Nord following a further acrimonious round of Anglo-French discussions in January. Having taken leave of Poincar , the Prime Minister, Bonar Law, slammed the carriage window shut and hissed: Now you can be damned! ^[10] The Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr which began only a few days later was thus hardly likely to ease the very considerable strains which continued to burden Anglo-French relations. Although there was never any serious risk of a complete breakdown between London and Paris, the Ruhr crisis not only united the German people behind their government s call for passive resistance, but also threw into sharp relief the divergence between the British and French attitude towards German reintegration. Speaking at the Imperial Conference of October 1923, the British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, who had already fired off a highly critical note to Paris in August, publicly attacked the Franco-Belgian action which, he claimed, was productive of no good result and was leading to disaster and ruin .^[11]

In the meantime, however, a decisive development had occurred in Germany with the appointment of Gustav Stresemann as chancellor and foreign minister. Although his term of office as chancellor lasted only until November, Stresemann bravely took the decision to call an end to passive resistance on 26 September. He thus played an important part in breaking the deadlock and preparing the ground not only for a revised, and for Germany more manageable, reparations settlement, the Dawes Plan, which came into force in August 1924, but also for the end of the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr which had had baleful repercussions for all concerned. Moreover, according to a German assessment of September 1923, Stresemann had succeeded in making a very positive impression on all shades of British opinion which was now almost universal in its condemnation of French policy. The chancellor, it was felt, had done all he could to accommodate France and had nothing left to offer. Stresemann had thus achieved a great political success , for there was almost no one in Britain who doubts his sincerity in desiring an understanding with France for which he is prepared to make the greatest sacrifices .^[12] It now remained to be seen whether Stresemann, who continued as foreign minister in the new cabinet, could capitalise on this apparently favourable situation.

Tea for Three? The Locarno Interlude, 1924-29

Although controversy still exists over Stresemann s ultimate aims,^[13] it is clear that from the outset he accorded a high priority to Britain s role as mediator in Franco-German disputes. Stresemann brought a new coherence and direction to German foreign policy which made possible the remarkable successes achieved between 1925 and 1930. And in each of those successes, the Treaty of Locarno, Germany s entry into the League the following year and ultimately, although he did not live to see it, the evacuation of the Rhineland, he sought and to some degree received the support and co-operation of the British government. Stresemann naturally harboured no illusions that Britain s attitude in these questions was determined by anything other than a sober evaluation of her European and imperial interests. But he fully appreciated that, however much British statesmen might claim to value the friendship of France and criticise Germany, the simple fact was that the most fundamental British concepts of European stabilisation required an improvement in the German economic position and thus some modification of the oppressive policy pursued by France since the end of the war.

As Marshall Lee and Wolfgang Michalka have noted, Stresemann was one of a bare handful of Western politicians fully to comprehend the political and diplomatic changes wrought by the First World War, and one of an even more exclusive number who realised that the only victor of that conflict was the United States .^[14] Thus, while on the one hand, he was concerned to develop economic and financial ties with America in an effort to curb French power, he was also fully alive to the contradictions within the Entente which the Ruhr crisis had so clearly revealed. Unlike Hitler, who drew his own conclusions from the Ruhr crisis,^[15] Stresemann was too much of a realist to entertain any ideas about a future Anglo-German alliance, but he was nonetheless convinced that Britain had an important role to play in his efforts to restore Germany to the ranks of the Great Powers. As he declared to a Berlin audience in December 1925, Britain s participation in the Locarno pact had once more cast her in the role of the arbitrator of Europe whose interest by definition lay in the suppression of French hegemony. If I am told that I pursue a policy friendly to England, he continued, I do not do so from any love of England, but because in this question German interests coincide with those of England, and because we must find someone who helps us to shake off the strangle-hold upon our throat. ^[16]

It might seem somewhat ironic that the progress which Stresemann made towards this end came during a period when the threads of British foreign policy were in the hands of Austen Chamberlain, who in February 1925 described himself to the British Ambassador in Paris as the most pro-French member of His Majesty s Government.^[17] Chamberlain had taken office in November 1924 determined to provide France with a measure of security which, he hoped, would not only repair the damage inflicted on Anglo-French relations since 1919-20 but also pave the way for a general relaxation of European tension in which the causes of legitimate German grievance could safely be removed .^[18] When it became clear that the Geneva Protocol would be rejected by Britain and the Dominions, Chamberlain s instincts led him to favour the conclusion of a security agreement with France and Belgium which might in due course be extended to include Germany provided that in the interim she played the part of a good European and complied with the terms of the peace settlement. The idea of an alliance with France, however, met with strong and eventually decisive opposition from several of Chamberlain s cabinet colleagues who feared that, far from engendering a more reasonable attitude in Paris, it would simply serve to stiffen the French and encourage them to continue their provocative policy towards Germany. While these issues were being debated in London, Stresemann, prompted by the British Ambassador in Berlin, Lord D Abernon, came forward with his famous proposal for a regional security agreement centred on the Rhineland which twelve months later had evolved into the Treaty of Locarno.

Judging by some of the contemporary French criticism of British policy^[19], and given the general consensus that Germany was the chief beneficiary of Locarno, one is almost tempted to look for elements of an Anglo-German deal lurking behind the clauses of the new security arrangements. It is certainly undeniable that both Stresemann and Chamberlain had cause for considerable satisfaction with their achievements, more so than the French foreign minister, Briand, who had signally failed to interest his British and German counterparts in the security of Eastern Europe, where France had contracted alliances with Czechoslovakia and, more importantly, with Poland, the b te noire of successive post-war German governments. Stresemann s immediate gains lay in averting an Anglo-French alliance and in securing the first of the three scheduled withdrawals of allied troops from the Rhineland which, although due in any case in late 1925 under the terms of the 1919 settlement, had threatened to provoke a further serious crisis in view of Germany s failure to comply with the disarmament provisions of Versailles. In the longer term, however, Stresemann believed that Locarno offered Germany a great deal more. As he wrote in April 1925 : Our policy regarding the security offer was undoubtedly correct it secured the Rhineland against a French policy of persecution, split the Entente, and opened new prospects for the East. ^[20]

That Stresemann hoped for British assistance in exploring these prospects is clear from a letter written a year later to Friedrich Sthamer. The revision of the Eastern frontier, he argued, was not only the most important task of our policy, but perhaps also of European diplomacy as a whole . British co-operation towards a solution, which admittedly could only be sought through peaceful means, was, in Stresemann s opinion, an imperative prerequisite .^[21] Chamberlain was doubtless gratified to learn from Sthamer in March 1925 that Germany had no intention of resorting to arms in her numerous quarrels with Poland, and to see that assurance enshrined in the German-Polish arbitration treaty which was built into Locarno, but he was certainly not prepared to support Stresemann in a confrontation with Warsaw. One of the great attractions of Locarno had been that it had limited Britain s commitments to Western Europe, where her vital interests were at stake, and contained no provisions involving Britain east of the Oder, where they decidedly were not. In Chamberlain s view the question of the German-Polish frontier paled into insignificance in comparison to the central issue of Franco-German reconciliation, and, in the hope that the passage of time itself would dampen passions and thus facilitate a solution, he was determined to have as little direct involvement with it as possible.^[22] However, Chamberlain and Stresemann independently understood and welcomed the fact that Locarno had compromised the French alliance with Poland. For Britain this meant that some restriction had now been placed on France s freedom of manoeuvre which made her less likely in future to back Poland unreservedly against Germany and thus hamper the general process of appeasement. Stresemann, on the other hand, clearly stood to gain from any weakening of Franco-Polish relations. In this sense the repercussions of Locarno in Eastern Europe were, as Chamberlain said at the time, all in the German interest and in ours .^[23]

The Locarno pact and the rather short-lived era which it is commonly held to have inaugurated represented the high watermark of Anglo-German relations during the inter-war years. This is not to suggest, however, that the period 1925-29 witnessed the development of a rapprochement between Britain and Germany, or even that the cordial relations between Chamberlain and Stresemann contributed significantly to an Anglo-German d tente. The atmosphere during some of the so-called Locarno tea parties was certainly fraternal, but this could not disguise the fact that neither the treaty nor Germany s subsequent entry into the League had in themselves solved the basic problem of how French fears could be reconciled with German ambitions.^[24] Chamberlain, who saw Locarno not as the end of the work of appeasement and reconciliation, but as its beginning ,^[25] continued to view Britain as the key to this dilemma, and much of his diplomacy in Europe after 1925 was geared towards the promotion of the Franco-German understanding which he had hoped would follow from Locarno. Indeed, Briand s failure to carry through the programme for reconciliation discussed with Stresemann at Thoiry in September 1926 and the repercussions of that failure on Stresemann s position vis- -vis his own domestic opponents only served to underline the importance of Britain s continued commitment to a role in continental affairs. The British reaction to Thoiry is itself instructive in this respect. For although Chamberlain and his advisors approved of the meeting, some concern was expressed both at the time and later about the prospect of a direct Franco-German settlement which failed to take sufficient account of British interests. Having committed themselves to Europe through Locarno, the British were determined that their voice should and must be heard. Small wonder therefore that the foreign secretary should later warn of the dangers of a second Thoiry with its immense expectations and absolutely negative result. ^[26] A telling indication of Chamberlain s perception of Britain s task, and of his own effectiveness in discharging it, came in March 1927 when the League Council debated the relatively minor issue of the Saar Railway Defence Force. Here his intervention as adjudicator between France and Germany had been crucial in securing a compromise acceptable to Briand and Stresemann who had found it impossible to reach agreement between themselves. It was disappointing, Chamberlain wrote to his sister, that the press did so little to highlight the decisive role played by Britain, or even hint at the fact (which was obvious to every soul in the room) that if there was to be an agreed solution, it must be found by us for we alone could speak with sufficient authority and were sufficiently possessed of the confidence of both parties .^[27]

Chamberlain thus hoped to continue in the role of honest broker between France and Germany which he had claimed for Britain as early as March 1925.^[28] However, as Frank Magee has demonstrated, this policy was not dictated by any altruistic considerations but by a realistic assessment of British interests which demanded stability between the major continental powers as the essential pre-requisite for continued pacification and prosperity.^[29] As one Foreign Office official succinctly observed in April 1926, Without our trade and our finance we sink to the level of a third-class Power. Locarno and the unemployed have an intimate connexion. ^[30] Over the next three years, however, numerous factors conspired to make it extremely difficult for Chamberlain to capitalise on the promising start which had been made at Locarno. Foremost amongst these was the fact that Britain s role as a world power demanded much greater attention after 1926 than had hitherto been the case. Indeed, German affairs were discussed at cabinet level only once between December 1926 and September 1928.^[31] Moreover, internal developments in both France and Germany did little to facilitate Chamberlain s task. For while Stresemann was forced to defend his policy against the nationalists who accused him of complying all too readily with the wishes of Britain and France and clamoured noisily for further treaty revision, Briand too had increasingly to shield himself against those who argued that far too much had already been conceded. While Chamberlain fully appreciated the magnitude of the domestic problems faced by Briand, he was perhaps rather less understanding of those confronting Stresemann, who once remarked with a mixture of humour and despair that he had friends in all German political parties, even his own.^[32] Notwithstanding Stresemann s personal determination to wring further concessions from the Western powers, his pressing need to appease domestic opinion sometimes infuriated Chamberlain, who was convinced that progress on outstanding issues had to be achieved step by step if it were to have any prospect of lasting success.^[33]

The implications of Britain s cool rationalisation of her European interests through the Treaty of Locarno were not lost on the German Ambassador in London. In a perceptive review of British policy submitted in early 1927 Sthamer argued that the Rhineland pact had erected an insurmountable political barrier to the German drive to the West and had thus fulfilled one of Britain s foremost aims on the continent. Combined with the fact that Germany had already been severely weakened by the Treaty of Versailles, this aim now appeared to have been secured long into the future provided that Britain continued to harmonise her policy with that of France, the only other power which might threaten her in Western Europe. In these circumstances it was clear that Germany could expect no support from Britain which might serve to weaken the entente and it was this paramount consideration, Sthamer believed, which explained London s current perceptible lack of interest in German issues. Moreover, recent experiences had demonstrated that Germany becomes a matter of indifference to Britain as soon as a particular goal involving Germany is achieved , and that Britain s interest in German affairs was only revived when Germany s co-operation is required to achieve specific British aims, following which it once more immediately expires .^[34]

Subsequent developments would bear out much of this analysis. On questions of major importance such as reparations, German disarmament and the evacuation of allied troops from the Rhineland, Chamberlain was prepared to support Stresemann only in so far as was compatible with the maintenance of cordial relations with France, which, in the words of Walford Selby, Chamberlain s private secretary, remained the axiom of British foreign policy .^[35] In other areas where British and German interests simply happened to coincide, as in September 1927 when the Poles sought to bring before the League Assembly a proposal to extend the Locarno guarantees to Eastern Europe, he was prepared to offer Germany his diplomatic backing, but once more only in concert with Briand.^[36] Moreover, although Chamberlain professed to fear any further strengthening of the ties between Germany and Russia which went beyond the 1926 Treaty of Berlin, he also hoped to make use of Stresemann s special relationship with Moscow to promote European appeasement following the breach of Anglo-Soviet relations in mid-1927.^[37] Chamberlain equally took no pains to spare German sensibilities in pursuit of British interests. That much was demonstrated in July 1928 by his announcement of the ill-conceived Anglo-French Compromise on Armaments which not only brought forth criticism of his francophile foreign policy at home, but also provoked a wave of indignation in Germany and the United States.^[38] Stresemann was thus far too optimistic in declaring to the representatives of the Dresden press in October 1925 that the time of alliances was over, and by 1929 he had few fair words for either Chamberlain or Briand whose original intentions he feared he had misjudged.^[39]

In his celebrated letter to the former Crown Prince of September 1925 Stresemann outlined the three great tasks which would confront German foreign policy in the immediate future, namely a tolerable solution of the reparations question, the protection of German minorities abroad and a revision of the territorial settlement in Eastern Europe. The essential prerequisite for progress on the first of these objectives, he argued, was the complete evacuation of allied troops from the Rhineland and it was this issue which dominated his final years at the Wilhelmstrasse.^[40] Stresemann was naturally determined to see the Rhineland question solved prior to and separate from that of reparations due to his well-founded fears that the French would seek to use the continued presence of their troops on German soil as security against a final reparations settlement. Moreover, in view of the return of Poincar to the French premiership in July 1926, the obstructive attitude of the French military and Briand s failure to commend the Thoiry project to his colleagues, it was clear that Stresemann would face very stiff opposition from Paris to any modification of the Rhineland settlement. In these circumstances he had little choice but to look once more to Britain for support, and, as he told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Reichstag in June 1926, he had some reason to believe that his hopes in that respect were not entirely without foundation. Recalling a conversation with Chamberlain in London six months earlier, Stresemann told the committee that the foreign secretary had arranged for a portrait of Castlereagh to be hung in the room at the foreign office where the Locarno treaties were to be signed. I received a definite hint, he continued, that this diplomat had supported in the name of England France s liberation from occupation, and that he (Chamberlain) now had the intention of following the same policy with regard to Germany. ^[41]

As Stresemann anticipated, Chamberlain was prepared to consider a gradual and even accelerated withdrawal of allied forces from the Rhineland in order to further the process of appeasement. However, although he occasionally supported the German case over troop reductions, a matter in which he once confessed to Stresemann he had a very bad conscience ,^[42] Chamberlain did not accept the German thesis that complete evacuation either could or should be dealt with in isolation. In his view the Rhineland and reparations were essential features of the more general and inclusive settlement towards which he was working. Sure in the knowledge that the Germans would seek to open the Rhineland issue as soon as they had taken their seat on the League Council, Chamberlain had by August 1926 determined on a broad strategy which governed his policy over the Rhineland until the fall of the conservative administration in May 1929. While I have set myself no rigid programme, he wrote to the British Ambassador in Paris,

it seems to me that the least difficult line of approach will be to aim first at a reduction in the number of occupying troops, secondly at the evacuation of the Saar, and finally at a shortening of the period of occupation. At the same time I have no illusions as to the difficulty of inducing the French Government to follow us along these lines unless they receive an adequate quid pro quo, and I should be astonished if the pressure of German opinion upon the German Government does not make the task even harder for France than it need be. Nevertheless, I am not without hope that French statesmen will see that for success in dealing with the economic difficulties of France they require political appeasement and a spreading conviction in Europe and elsewhere that the danger of new quarrels is averted for our time at least.^[43]

As noted earlier, however, Chamberlain s attention after 1926 was largely focussed on extra-European issues, and this fact, coupled with the opposition he faced from both the war office and the treasury to any unilateral withdrawal of British troops, meant that progress was bound to be slow and problematical. It was certainly the case that British influence helped to secure the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from the Rhineland in 1927, but, as David Dutton has noted, Chamberlain s efforts on that occasion marked the limit of Anglo-German co-operation over the Rhineland, which throughout the period 1926-9 remained an issue upon which he was unwilling to press the French government too hard .^[44] Thus, although he recognised Stresemann s difficulties, Chamberlain would not permit a German diplomatic success over the Rhineland unless the French received satisfaction over reparations. He was thus inclined to allow the initiative over the scale and timing of troop evacuations to rest with France. Moreover, although he might have reposed a certain amount of personal trust in Stresemann, Chamberlain never overcame his fundamental suspicion of Germany s ultimate aims, a fact which was compounded by his profound sense of loyalty towards France. Ironically his suspicions became more pronounced after the promising developments of 1925-6. By August 1928 his frustration led him to compare Stresemann s policy to that which had been pursued by the Kaiser before 1914. Notwithstanding all that has been done to alleviate her difficulties since Locarno, he complained indignantly, she [Germany] continues to parade her grievances and now to suggest that the Allied Powers were failing in the undertakings given to her at Locarno. ^[45] In the spring of 1929 he told Mussolini that it would be unwise to trust too implicitly in the improvement of relations between Germany and the Western powers which had occurred since Locarno. Only the future would show, he advised the Italian leader, whether Germany would really accept her present position, or whether she would once again resort to arms and stake everything on the hazards of a new war. Vigilance thus remained the order of the day, and it was imperative for Britain, France and Italy to stand together in order to guide the Germans further along the path of peace and conciliation. Germany, he feared, was still restless, still prone to suggest that her good behaviour must constantly be bought by fresh concessions .^[46]

Shortly before Chamberlain s meeting with the Duce, Stresemann himself had made some equally revealing statements in a letter to his former collaborator, Lord D Abernon. Commenting on a recent article by D Abernon entitled Back to Locarno , Stresemann wrote that he would be happy indeed if European statesmen once more found it possible to embrace the spirit in which the treaties of 1925 had been negotiated. Unless a miracle occurred soon, however, he feared that it would be too late. Stresemann was particularly scathing about the lack of progress over the Rhineland. France, he argued, simply wanted to use the issue as a means of blackmailing Germany over reparations. Britain, too, could and should have done more. In a tone which barely concealed his bitterness he concluded : If Britain, instead of her complete indifference towards these questions, had energetically used her influence with France to secure the evacuation of the Rhineland, then German public opinion and its attitude towards Britain would today be different. ^[47]

Faced with French intransigence on the one hand and the British inclination to let France make the running on the other, Stresemann was ultimately forced to bow to the pressure of circumstance and agree to a linkage between further allied concessions over the Rhineland and a new reparations schedule. During the first Hague Conference of August 1929 Stresemann accepted a revised settlement, the Young Plan, while Briand, himself under pressure from the new British Labour government, reluctantly agreed to the complete evacuation of the Rhineland by mid-1930. Superficially the results of the conference appeared to represent a reasonable compromise between France and Germany in a form eminently consonant with the British concept of a general settlement. The negotiations, however, had been exceedingly difficult and in many respects their outcome did not augur at all well for the future. Not only had the British alienated the French with their insistence on a modification of the financial settlement to their own advantage and their support for Germany in the evacuation question, but the Germans themselves, realising that a better deal could hardly be expected at present, had nonetheless attempted to make their agreement contingent on a series of further concessions. Moreover, Stresemann s acceptance of the Young Plan had united the various elements of the national opposition which now turned on him with a vengeance. It is with some justification therefore that Jon Jacobsen has argued that although Stresemann hoped that the Hague settlement would consolidate the republic and its foreign policy, it ultimately proved to be the first stage in a protracted crisis which ended with the collapse of both.^[48] Sensing the critical nature of the German situation at the turn of the decade, the new British permanent under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, Sir Robert Vansittart, warned in May 1930 that Germany was on the threshold of a new period in which she may be sorely tempted to apply the old methods of diplomacy if she finds the new ones of arbitration and conciliation eventually ineffective for changing the status quo to her purpose .^[49] Before long it would become clear that the temptation was too strong for the new leaders of the beleaguered Weimar Republic to resist.

Hiatus, 1930-33

With the onset of the new decade the policy makers in Britain and Germany were forced to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances both at home and in the international arena. Following Stresemann s death in October 1929, the British Embassy in Berlin anticipated no new departures in German foreign policy which now passed into the hands of Julius Curtius. Germany s acceptance of the Young Plan meant that financial considerations would necessarily command the attention of her leaders and that it was therefore probable that internal affairs will loom more largely than for a number of years .^[50] By 1930, however, the picture was radically different as the first repercussions of the depression began to make themselves felt in Europe. The worsening economic situation and in particular the final withdrawal of allied troops from the Rhineland resulted in an explosion of German nationalist feeling and thrust the question of treaty revision to the forefront of the agenda of every political party during the election campaign of June-September 1930.^[51] Alarmed by the staggering electoral success of the national socialists, Curtius and Heinrich Br ning, chancellor since March 1930, jettisoned Stresemann s policies and adopted a more aggressive and confrontational stance which, they hoped, would solve Germany s internal and external problems simultaneously. In an ill-fated attempt to pursue domestic policy through foreign policy ,^[52] the German leaders sought to secure a favourable solution of the reparations and disarmament questions by exploiting and even deliberately intensifying the impact of the economic crisis in Germany. This so-called Durchhaltepolitik ( stick-it-out policy ) was meant to convince the British and Americans of the folly of making further financial demands on Germany at such a critical juncture and thus confront them with the choice between settlement or the threat of impending collapse of the German economy and utter domestic chaos . ^[53] At the same time, by staking everything on the achievement of a striking diplomatic success, Br ning hoped to consolidate his position at home, thereby paving the way for far-reaching reforms and the final overthrow of Versailles. In practice, however, this strategy had catastrophic repercussions on Franco-German relations, alarmed the British, alienated the United States and ultimately played into the hands of Br ning s domestic opponents who, pointing to the lack of further concessions, continued to pillory his government at every available opportunity. Although reparations were finally cancelled during the Lausanne conference in June 1932, Br ning thus eventually became a victim of the very unrest he sought to exploit .^[54]

Six years later, in the immediate aftermath of the Munich crisis which had brought Britain and Germany to the brink of war, Sir Alexander Cadogan perhaps understandably lamented the fact that more had not been done to assist Br ning in his struggle against Hitler in the early 1930s.^[55] However, given Britain s own concerns at that time, notably the onset of the financial crisis, the preparations for the forthcoming Geneva disarmament conference and the disturbing spectacle of Japanese aggression in China, it was clearly impossible for British leaders to focus their attention on German issues. Moreover, although they had been the most vociferous critics of Chamberlain s francophile policy in the later 1920s, and despite their apparently more accommodating attitude towards German grievances, the labour leaders, MacDonald and Henderson, still sought to act as honest brokers between Berlin and Paris and thus continued to work towards that same general European pacification which had been the goal of all British governments since 1919.^[56] As long as German policy appeared to be directed towards similar ends, and provided that the Germans were prepared loyally to co-operate on the basis of gradual and limited change secured by negotiated settlements acceptable to all, they could generally expect a sympathetic hearing in London. However, if and when they sought to force the pace of revision through unilateral action which threatened to disrupt the process of appeasement, as was the case in 1931 with the proposed Austro-German Customs Union,^[57] the British closed ranks with the French and Italians to thwart any such potentially dangerous aspirations. Equally, although in the early 1930s the British had certainly wished to bolster Br ning and his successors against the nazis, the simple fact was that as time progressed internal conditions in Germany increasingly gathered a momentum of their own which no foreign power was materially able to influence, still less arrest. In these circumstances the policy makers in London watched in a state of virtual powerlessness as the last vestiges of German democracy crumbled in the second half of 1932.

Leviathan and Behemoth, 1933-39

If the British could draw any comfort from Hitler s accession to power it perhaps lay in the fact that for years the he had made no secret of his desire for a close understanding with the British Empire. In his writings of the 1920s, and in his first forays into the realm of diplomacy, Hitler emphasised the crucial role allocated to Great Britain in his foreign policy programme and his fervent wish for an Anglo-German alliance. Other aspects of that programme, however, were patently inadmissible as far as Britain was concerned. Indeed, the purpose to which Hitler would seek to put an Anglo-German alliance was far removed from British visions of a stable European equilibrium, multilateral co-operation and the maintenance of peace. In short, Hitler proposed to secure alliances with Britain and Italy, paralyse France either by drawing her into an agreement of dubious value and unspecified duration on the basis of common hostility to Bolshevism or, failing that, by eliminating her as a European power factor, following which the resurgent Reich would fall on the Soviet un ion and establish a colossal German empire stretching from the Rhineland to the Ural mountains. For some Britons the prospect of a partnership with the new, dynamic national socialist Germany certainly held a compelling attraction. In Whitehall, however, where anti-Bolshevik sentiment, racial considerations, feelings of guilt over the 1919 peace settlement and a sneaking admiration for even the most lunatic aspirations of Hitler s movement were rarely permitted to cloud the judgement of ministers and officials, there was little dispute about the nature and magnitude of the dangers ahead. In German eyes an Anglo-German alliance which would permit German hegemony on the continent and give her a free hand in Europe in return for German non-interference in the rest of the world ^[58] would, as Hitler told a visiting Englishman in February 1935, constitute the cornerstone upon which the old world would preserve itself .^[59] For the foreign office, however, the nazi leader s vision amounted to nothing more than the old story of the separate settlement behind the back of France and the division of the world between Leviathan and Behemoth of 1899 . The sequel, wrote Victor Perowne in May 1935, is the swallowing of Leviathan by Behemoth .^[60]

The British have often been criticised for underestimating the threat posed by Hitler and for failing to make timely preparations in an effort to contain him. It should be remembered, however, that the emergence of a strong government in Germany was not entirely lacking in appeal following the experiences of the early 1930s. Moreover, the slogan better Hitler than Stalin enjoyed a resonance in many western circles long before it became the vogue amongst the fearful following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Even in the foreign office, where a close watch had been kept on the rise of the NSDAP, there were men of experience and integrity who for a few fleeting moments were inclined to wonder whether national socialism might not yet develop into an idealistic and constructive system , the initial excesses of which would pale into insignificance when compared with the catalogue of outrages perpetrated by the Bolsheviks since 1917.^[61] Vansittart, however, harboured no such illusions. On 7 July 1933 he wrote :

We cannot take the same detached and high brow view of Hitlerism as we can of Bolshevism or Fascism, precisely because they are not really and vitally dangerous to us, and Hitlerism is exceedingly dangerous. Fascism has never presented the least danger to this country, and Russia has been too incompetent a country to be really dangerous even under Bolshevism. But Germany is an exceedingly competent country, and she is visibly being prepared for external aggression I do not think anything but evil and danger for the rest of the world can come out of Hitlerism, whichever way the dice fall in Germany.^[62]

In October 1933 Hitler gave the most concrete indication to date of his determination to rearm and to tolerate no limitations on his freedom of action by withdrawing simultaneously from the League and the disarmament conference which had been in session since February 1932. Following on the heels of the Manchurian crisis, the German move, although not entirely unexpected, underscored for the British the urgency of a comprehensive review of their own defence policy and the need to make good the deficiencies which had been allowed to accumulate since 1919. When in March 1934 the defence requirements committee declared Germany to be the ultimate potential enemy against which long-term defence planning should be directed, it was clear that the policy of ignoring German rearmament was in the long run no policy at all and carried with it great dangers. During the summer and autumn the British were gradually forced to the conclusion that, sooner or later, they would have to adopt a definite attitude towards German breaches of the military clauses of the Versailles treaty, and that in view of their reluctance to assume additional security commitments they were left with little alternative but to attempt in concert with the other powers to arrive at a mutually satisfactory arrangement with Germany before she became too strong.^[63] This calculation lay at the heart of the Anglo-French offer made to Germany in February 1935.

The terms of that offer reveal much about Britain s strategy in dealing with the German menace during the mid-1930s. Essentially the British wished to barter away certain parts of the 1919 settlement and to receive in return binding assurances from Berlin of future good behaviour. Thus, under the scheme presented to him in early 1935, which provided for Anglo-French recognition and legalisation of a limited amount of German rearmament, Hitler was expected to agree to a series of conditions which would oblige him to respect the territorial status quo in Eastern and South East Europe, participate in multilateral security pacts, accept an international armaments convention, return to the League of Nations and append his signature to an agreement which would extend the provisions of Locarno to cover air attack. It was hardly surprising therefore that the German leader showed no interest in the proposals apart from using the idea of the air pact to suggest an exchange of views with the British, supposedly for exploratory discussions but in reality to dangle before them the prospect of an Anglo-German condominium. Moreover, even before the visit to Berlin of Sir John Simon and Anthony Eden took place, Hitler had effectively wrecked the Anglo-French plan by announcing the existence of the Luftwaffe and the reintroduction of conscri ption on 9 and 16 March respectively. In the presence of the British ministers Hitler made quite clear his preference for uncomplicated bilateral treaties and for an exclusive partnership which was primarily designed to allow him to shatter the very status quo which the British were so concerned to preserve. In these circumstances it was hardly surprising that little headway was made during the discussions on the thorny issues of security pacts, armaments agreements and the German attitude towards the League. The lack of progress, however, had at least shown where the fundamental problem lay, even if at the time its implications were not fully appreciated by either side. For in March 1935, in the first, and indeed only, direct negotiations between a British foreign secretary and Hitler, the British insistence on collective security, arms control, the inviolability of international frontiers and the need for gradual, peaceful and limited change had clashed with the German leader s determination to retain absolute freedom of action, rearm as he pleased and, in time, to expand at the expense of his East European neighbours.

Despite the cool reception of his bid for an Anglo-German understanding, Hitler was not unduly disappointed with the outcome of the British visit.^[64] For his part Simon came away feeling that although the results were generally unsatisfactory, the conversations had at least served to clarify the German attitude. As long as Hitler desired good relations with Britain, which the visit had clearly demonstrated, he was most unwilling to abandon all hopes of a general agreement and to close ranks against Germany until this becomes absolutely inevitable .^[65] Eden, however, was more pessimistic. He felt that the experience had shown that the basis for any general settlement was now far more limited than it had been in the spring of 1934, and, moreover, that Germany had made crystal clear her refusal to make an active contribution to European appeasement.^[66] The British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, was of similar opinion. Reviewing the European scene in late March he wrote to Vansittart :

I cannot pretend to be an optimist for looking round Europe I see a welter of conflicting opinions, policies and emotions, opposed to which we find our dynamic Hitler, untrammelled by electoral or parliamentary considerations, who really knows what he wants and means to get it, whose will is law, so long anyhow as the Army is with him which it now certainly is, and who, by saying a word, can hurl this united and efficient people in any given direction at five minutes notice. Surely in these circumstances optimism would imply folly?^[67]

Such views, however, seemed singularly misplaced when only three months later the Anglo-German Naval Agreement was signed in London. The culmination of a series of German overtures dating back to late 1933 and a British desire to set limits to that area of German rearmament which was still negotiable after the Saturday surprises of 9 and 16 March, the treaty restricted the size of any future German fleet to 35% of the total tonnage of the Royal Navy. More importantly, however, its significance was misinterpreted by the Germans, and particularly by Hitler who convinced himself that it marked the first step towards a much closer political collaboration between the two powers. Indeed, even the German naval leadership, which was generally satisfied with the results, was prepared to admit that the principal advantage lay in the fact that a political understanding with Great Britain has been initiated by the naval settlement .^[68]

However, it was wholly misleading to speak of the initiation of any such understanding. Whereas the Germans had conceded Britain s claim to naval supremacy in the expectation that the British should likewise recognise Germany s essential interests as a continental Power ,^[69] Britain s willingness to enter into the agreement was most certainly not intended as a green light for German ambitions in Eastern Europe. The chief motivation had been to secure, at relatively little cost, a vital interest freely offered by the Great Power from which the British believed they had most to fear. From this point of view there was undeniable force in Eden s declaration to a disconcerted Pierre Laval that, practically speaking, no British Government could have done otherwise .^[70] Other factors, too, had played a part in the British decision, not least the hope that the treaty would prepare the ground for Germany s participation in a general naval agreement and, more broadly, for her collaboration on other outstanding problems. Thus, while the British certainly hoped to initiate a degree of co-operation with Germany, the nature of that co-operation was far removed from Hitler s conception of an alliance designed to ease his path to the East. When over the next year this became increasingly evident, the naval agreement lost much of its value for the nazi leadership. Indeed, as early as mid-October 1935 the counsellor of the German Embassy in London was speaking of the considerable disappointment in high circles at the failure of the naval treaty to produce any improvement in relations.^[71]

By that time the international situation had been transformed by Mussolini s invasion of Abyssinia and the deepening crisis between Italy and the League of Nations. The Abyssinian conflict provided Germany with a convenient excuse for her continued refusal to negotiate over arms limitation and multilateral security arrangements, areas in which she essentially wished to see no progress. Although Hitler was faced with the possibility of an armed clash between the two powers which, according to the thesis of Mein Kampf, were to have constituted the principal allies of the Third Reich, there were clearly advantages to be drawn from the new situation, not least with regard to the operation of the Treaty of Locarno of which Britain and Italy were co-guarantors. It was no surprise therefore that Germany chose to avoid any appearance of taking sides in the dispute, preferring to wait and see how it would affect European alignments.

The situation created by the Italo-Abyssinian dispute, coupled with the menace of a dissatisfied Germany backed by increasing military might, underlined for Great Britain the importance of rapid and extensive rearmament and, if possible, some form of European d tente. In the circumstances prevailing at the turn of 1935-6 this involved in the first instance the placing of relations between Britain, France and Germany on a new and more stable footing. Three weeks after the Italian invasion, Ralph Wigram, head of the central department at the foreign office, hinted at a further drive in this direction, writing to Phipps that the wind appeared to be setting towards some type of accommodation with Germany .^[72] Over the following months the political and economic experts in Whitehall were engaged in the compilation of several detailed analyses of the German problem which were designed to assist in answering two crucial questions, namely was a satisfactory settlement with Germany attainable, and, if so, what form should it take?^[73] Much of this material was later used by Vansittart in the drafting of an important paper on policy towards Germany which was circulated to the cabinet in February 1936.

Vansittart was careful to avoid any confident predictions as to the prospects of a workable agreement with the nazi regime and the generally pessimistic tone of his memorandum accurately reflected the mood of the foreign office as a whole. The permanent under-secretary admitted to a belief that the present rulers of Germany are bent upon eventual adventures which will be almost certain to unleash a European war and suspected that Hitler would seek to expand both in Europe and in Africa. On balance, however, and mindful of the pressures of public opinion and inadequate rearmament, he felt that it was worthwhile to make a serious attempt to curb German ambitions if possible and thus to secure peace for the world by postponing a crisis for the essential thing is that we should gain time, and things postponed have a way of not happening . Vansittart concluded that any eventual settlement would have to be made at Geneva, that Germany could only be permitted to expand in Africa, that Britain and France would therefore have to pay for such expansion through a colonial settlement, that economic assistance to Germany must be preceded by binding political guarantees, and, most important of all, that Britain must make rapid strides in her own rearmament in order to improve her bargaining position. He further advised that the best method of approach would be to introduce the idea of a general settlement by initiating discussions on one particular aspect of the security or armaments problems, such as the air pact and air limitation or the demilitarised Rhineland zone, which, he was convinced, would have to disappear as part of any agreement.^[74] By early March 1936 it had been decided that the prospect of an adjustment in the status of the Rhineland would be offered in the hope of opening fruitful discussions with Berlin.

As had happened twelve months earlier, however, a unilateral act by Hitler, another Saturday surprise , left the British negotiating strategy in tatters even before it had had chance to be implemented. The reoccupation of the demilitarised zone on 7 March 1936 not only transformed the strategic balance in Western Europe, with all its ominous implications for France s allies in the East, but, in Eden s words, also constituted a grave setback to the policy of a European general settlement by depriving the British of a useful bargaining counter in their intended discussions with Germany.^[75] It was in these depressing circumstances that the British search for stability and pacification suffered a further setback with the outbreak in July 1936 of the Spanish Civil War. The impact on Hitler of the developments in Spain should not be underestimated. In the six months which followed he signed the October protocols with Italy and the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, the only powers which, in his opinion, could be relied upon to oppose the Bolsheviks, wrote his memorandum on the Four Year Plan, which was designed to make Germany ready for war by 1940, increased the term of German military service to two years and indulged in a series of menacing denunciations of the USSR, culminating in a violent harangue to the Party faithful at Nuremberg in September.

Britain s decision to pursue a policy of non-intervention in Spain was a source of profound concern to the German Chancellor who was at a loss to comprehend how the once mighty empire could react with such indifference to this flagrant challenge from Moscow. Britain s position over the Spanish affair, the weakness and indecision which had been revealed by her policy during the Abyssinian crisis, and, not least, her marked disinclination to share the benefits of German power, had important repercussions for the development of Hitler s policy towards Britain. By aligning himself with Britain s other potential enemies, Japan and Italy, by stepping up the demand for the return of the German colonies and by emphasising the need for Anglo-German solidarity against Bolshevism, Hitler now hoped to secure by pressure the partnership which his conciliatory attitude had hitherto failed to deliver. In August 1936 he appointed as the new German Ambassador to the Court of St James his closest foreign policy advisor, Joachim von Ribbentrop, whose diplomatic activities since 1933 had been devoted almost exclusively to the promotion of Anglo-German friendship. Shortly before his departure for London, Ribbentrop was received by Hitler who made to him the following revealing statement :

Ribbentrop get Britain to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, that is what I want most of all. I have sent you as the best man I ve got. Do what you can but if in future all our efforts are in vain, fair enough, then I m ready for war as well. I would regret it very much, but if it has to be, there it is. But I think it would be a short war and the moment it is over, I will then be ready at any time to offer the British an honourable peace acceptable to both sides. However, I would then demand that Britain join the Anti-Comintern Pact or perhaps some other pact. But get on with it Ribbentrop, you have the trumps in your hand, play them well.

For all Ribbentrop s supposed limitations, and in spite of his considerable exertions in seeking to carry out these instructions, the gulf between the British and German positions was so wide that there was never the slightest possibility of a successful outcome of his mission. In February 1938 he returned to Germany to assume the post of foreign minister not only consumed with hatred for the British but also with a chillingly rational appreciation of what course Germany must follow if she were to realise her destiny. In October 1937 he had told the Italian leaders that a conflict with the Western powers was inevitable . From that point onwards he did his best to engineer one while Germany still enjoyed the advantages of superior rearmament and more powerful, if somewhat unpredictable, allies.

When Neville Chamberlain succeeded Baldwin in mid-1937 the hopes that were generated in nazi circles that the new premier would be more attuned than his predecessors to the attraction of an exclusive arrangement with Germany were soon disappointed. Determined to take the initiative in foreign affairs, and in particular to explore the possibilities for agreement with the Germans on lines which were essentially no different to those which had been proposed in 1935 and 1936, Chamberlain found himself confronted with the familiar problem of how to reconcile Germany s yawning appetite for territory with Britain s position as a European and imperial power. The foreign office experts, of whose cautionary counsel he soon wearied, did not so much disapprove of Chamberlain s intentions, which were entirely laudable, but merely pointed to the fact that he was unlikely to succeed where they had twice failed. In March 1938, after months of deliberation, and following what he erroneously perceived as the inauguration of a fairly promising Anglo-German dialogue as a result of Lord Halifax s conversations with the German leaders in November 1937, Chamberlain offered Hitler a colonial settlement in return for which the F hrer was asked, the former German colonies only interested Hitler in 1937-8 as a means of forcing the British finally to concede his demand for a free hand in Eastern Europe. For once the rather gullible British Ambassador, Sir Nevile Henderson, who had replaced Phipps in May 1937, did not permit his view of the situation to be clouded by the vague schemes for friendship , coupled with perceptible menaces, with which the nazi leaders, particularly Goering, had continually pumped him since his arrival in Berlin. Following Hitler s rejection of the colonial offer during their interview of 3 March, Henderson wrote that the chancellor s attitude clearly shows how unpromising is the policy of those who think that he may be deflected from his aims in Central Europe by French and British expressions of disapproval. If [the] offer of British friendship and [the] prospect of a colonial settlement are not sufficient to deter him or to secure even a temporary halt, how much less effective is likely to be an ambiguous warning which is not backed up with a show of force . Eight days later, as if to prove the point, Germany annexed Austria.

As far as the British were concerned, it was not the fact of the Anschluss which perturbed them so much as the brutal manner in which it had been effected. Towards the close of 1937 both Halifax and Eden had made statements to Hitler and Ribbentrop respectively which appeared to indicate that Britain was not fundamentally opposed to an eventual Austro-German union, provided that it was brought about by peaceful means. With Czechoslovakia, however, to which all eyes now turned, and none more ravenously than Hitler s, it was an entirely different situation, not least due to the fact that the Czech republic was an ally of France. A combination of suspected German designs on Czechoslovakia, freely admitted by Goering to Group Captain Malcolm Christie in February 1937, the strategic implications of the German annexation of Austria and the Franco-Czech alliance, which had been contracted in the early 1920s when Germany was still on her knees, conjured up the nightmare scenario of a general European war in which Britain could not afford to remain a passive spectator. Chamberlain and his colleagues on the foreign policy committee were thus understandably united in the conviction that the best course would be for the Czechs to seek to make as reasonable a settlement as possible with Hitler before the situation deteriorated any further. In the meantime British policy should be to keep Germany guessing at what our action in any particular emergency was likely to be . Almost simultaneously in Berlin, however, the leader of the Sudeten Germans, Konrad Henlein, was being instructed by Hitler, who aimed at nothing less than the annihilation of Czechoslovakia, always [to] demand so much that we can never be satisfied . There was thus no possibility of any reasonable settlement in the long run nor after the May Crisis , following which Hitler decreed that Czechoslovakia must be reduced no later than 1 October, was there much time for anything apart from a frantic exercise in crisis management.

This is not the place to examine why the Czech crisis of 1938 did not result in a general European conflagration. Of far greater significance from the point of view of Anglo-German relations is the fact that Munich taught Hitler a few salutary lessons. Chief amongst these was that his conviction, expressed in November 1937 during the Hossbach conference, that Britain was too weak and preoccupied with problems connected with the empire to involve herself in a conflict in Central Europe, indeed that as far as Czechoslovakia was concerned she was reconciled to the fact that this question would be cleared up in due course by Germany , was well wide of the mark. Seething with rage at Britain s interference in an area which, in his opinion, was of no concern to her, Hitler calculated after Munich that he might after all have to fight Britain if he was to fulfil his dream of a Greater German Reich . For Chamberlain, Munich was both a glittering, if transitory, personal success and a source of anxiety for the future. Edward, we must hope for the best while preparing for the worst , he is famously quoted as saying to Lord Halifax. These preparations took the form of accelerated rearmament, an effort in January 1939 to improve Anglo-Italian relations and a rather more successful attempt to strengthen ties with France. At the same time, however, Chamberlain remained determined to explore any possible avenues of negotiation with Germany.

The prime minister s hopes, however, were abruptly dashed when in March 1939 Hitler occupied Prague and in the process symbolically ripped to shreds both the Munich agreement and the Anglo-German declaration of 30 September 1938 in which he had solemnly agreed with Chamberlain to help promote appeasement in Europe. The British guarantee to Poland which followed the seizure of Prague and the ultimately unsuccessful search for a Russian alliance over the summer were designed specifically to deter the German dictator from continuing with his programme of conquest which now threatened completely to negate all notions of stability, co-operation and a balance of power in Europe. Shortly before the outbreak of war, Hitler appeared finally to have grasped the point which Vansittart and his closest collaborators had reluctantly but inevitably been forced to admit since mid-1937. In conversation with Henderson on 23 August 1939 the chancellor declared that he was now finally convinced of the rightness of views held formerly to him by others that England and Germany could never agree , an unmistakable reference to the malignant urgings of Ribbentrop. The responsibility for the present crisis, he continued, rested squarely with Britain and nothing short of [a] complete change of her policy towards Germany could now ever convince him of [the] British desire for good relations . When shortly afterwards Germany invaded Poland the British responded in the only manner left open to them if they were to have any hope at all of influencing the future destiny of Europe.

Conclusion : The necessary war ?

In 1930 Austen Chamberlain published an article entitled Great Britain as a European Power in which he argued that Britain occupied a semi-detached position in relation to the continent. Such an assertion, implying as it did the importance of Britain s larger role as the hub of a world empire, was perhaps understandable given the time and circumstances in which it was made. Even then, however, it represented something of an illusion. It was certainly undeniable that the British Empire of the 1920s appeared to enjoy an unrivalled position among the nations, having only recently emerged victorious and substantially enlarged as a result of a protracted and bitter struggle against Germany. Nevertheless, irrespective of the rise of other potential threats to Britain s world position in the shape of Japan and the United States, and the recasting of an old adversary in its new guise as the centre of world revolution , it still remained an axiom of British foreign policy that peace in Europe and a stable equilibrium between the continental powers were essential prerequisites for the pursuit of trade and commerce, the lifeblood of the empire and the guarantee of continued prosperity. After all, it had been in order to safeguard these larger interests, rather than simply to protect the British mainland by turning the Germans out of Belgium, that Britain had gone to war in 1914. Despite four years of carnage, however, the British, themselves exhausted, were still left with a German problem after 1919, and, worse still, with some unresolved disagreements with their major continental partner as to how best to deal with it. Having contented themselves that the German naval and imperial threat had been eliminated, and with German power in Europe reduced to a negligible level, it was easy for British statesmen to counsel moderation and conciliation where it suited their own interests. In any case, they certainly found it much easier than the French who accused them of an ignorance of the German psyche and, on a less emotional level, of a blindness to the dangers of leaving Germany not only with a capacity for revival but also nurturing an acute sense of grievance.

Whereas after 1919 France chose the path of military alliances, economic strangulation and the strict enforcement of the Versailles treaty in her attempt to contain Germany, the British chose, or, it has been suggested, took a further step along, the road of appeasement. For two decades they patiently sought an elusive general settlement which sought to combine reconciliation between the European powers with a process of gradual, mutually acceptable and honourable revision of the peace settlement. In a British Foreign Office paper of April 1926 this even-handed approach was described as preaching the gospel of reasonableness , a process in which the British, so it was claimed, were always ready to join our allies in insisting upon Germany fulfilling her obligations as far as they were consistent with her capacity and with common-sense . Beyond that, however, we would not go and, above all, we insisted that we Allies were bound equally with Germany by the terms of the treaty we had signed. This was our policy in great matters and in small . In the broadest terms this lesson was directed in varying degrees towards both France and Germany from 1920 to 1933 and almost exclusively towards Germany following the advent of Hitler.

During the 1920s and 1930s, however, the one condition which was essential to the success of the various British schemes for any such general settlement was conspicuous by its absence. Austen Chamberlain hit upon this crucial point in December 1927, when, following the successful resolution by the League Council of a rather ugly looking dispute between Poland and Lithuania, he wrote with obvious satisfaction to his sister that there are few things that France, Germany and Great Britain cannot do when united . Yet during the inter-war years that vital consensus was almost entirely lacking, and even in the mid-1920s, at the time of Locarno and the German entry into the League, it remained more apparent than real. In the increasingly strained international circumstances of the 1930s the British search for a European settlement became ever more urgent, its realisation, however, ever more elusive. The French, horrified by the scale of Germany s resurgence and consumed by their own domestic problems, responded somewhat paradoxically to the nazi threat by allying with the Soviet un ion and occasionally exploring the possibilities of a direct Franco-German rapprochement, much to British chagrin. Moreover, British hopes for European pacification of were further confounded by the fact that the most important link in the chain, Germany, was internally unstable for protracted periods in the 1920s and, ironically, almost too sure of her own destiny when delivered into the iron grip of Hitler and his followers. Although Anglo-German relations had effectively been subsumed in the numerous disputes which arose between Britain and France between 1919 and 1923, a workable And what of Germany? In recent years it been the fashion to detect elements of continuity in the international policies pursued by Bismarck, Wilhelm II, the leaders of the Weimar Republic and Hitler. The ideas advanced in this essay, however, at least in so far as they concern the aims and methods of Weimar and nazi foreign policy, suggest that any such linkages should only be inferred following careful consideration of the issues. It would palpably be fatuous to deny any similarities between the aims of Stresemann and Hitler. Both wished to reassert Germany s status as a Great Power, if not as a World Power both aimed to free Germany from the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles both had designs in Eastern Europe and both desired co-operation with Great Britain. Indeed, perhaps the similarities go even deeper. It may well be that Stresemann was forced to conceal his real ambitions during the 1920s. It is certainly indisputable that he was compelled to operate in an environment dictated by the constraints imposed on Germany by the 1919 peace settlement, which he had nevertheless succeeded in undermining in several important respects by the time he departed the stage.

Hitler, however, was a completely different phenomenon and one who, within months of coming to power, systematically began to prepare Germany for a merciless war of conquest and racial extermination against Stresemann s erstwhile associate, the Soviet Union. Such were his achievements in that respect that Sir Eric Phipps was to write as early as November 1935 that Germany may be said without exaggeration to be living in a state of war . In the summer of 1936 Vansittart identified the new Germany, for new it undoubtedly was, as the most formidable proposition that has ever been formulated , and described its people as being in strict training now, not for the Olympic Games, but for breaking some other and emphatically unsporting world records, and perhaps the world as well . Eight months later he condemned German policy as one of violence and robbery , adding that Britain and Germany were separated by a fundamental difference of conception, of morality . By late 1937 none of the German experts in the British Foreign Office, and at least two senior ministers, seriously believed in the possibility of a lasting settlement with Hitler. On examining the voluminous archives of the foreign office central department, one is struck by the absence of any assessments of the prospects for Anglo-German relations or any analyses of German aims during the 1920s which are so darkly pessimistic, condemnatory in tone and so teeming with foreboding and prophecies of catastrophe as those written after 1933.

The simple fact was that unless the British were prepared fundamentally to break with their traditional concepts and sanction German mastery of the continent, or unless by some miracle Hitler could be transformed into a good European , a second conflict between the two powers became increasingly likely as Germany regained her strength and began to flex her ample muscles in Central Europe. When the final crisis came in September 1939 the mood in Whitehall was almost one of relief that the unbearable tensions of the preceding six months were finally at an end. Lord Halifax seemed relieved that we had taken our decision , wrote Ivone Kirkpatrick twenty years later. He called for beer, which was brought down by a sleepy Resident Clerk in pyjamas. We laughed and joked and when I told Lord Halifax that news had just come in that Goebbels had prohibited listening to foreign broadcasts, he retorted : He ought to pay me to listen to his . Meanwhile, in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, the atmosphere was far from jocular. After listening to a translation of the British ultimatum, Hitler, who had never wished to fight Britain and who now found himself involved in a general war facing the wrong enemies at the wrong time, spent a few moments in quiet contemplation following which he turned to Ribbentrop and said simply : What are we going to do now?

p. 30.

: German views of Great Britain in the later 1930s , History, vol. 81, no. 261, January 1996, pp. 27-31.

The University of Leeds Review, vol. 15, 1972, p. 44. For an excellent analysis of the German policy of Chamberlain s administration see the same author s We must hope for the best and prepare for the worst : The prime minister, the cabinet and Hitler s Germany, 1937-1939 , in Proceedings of the British Academy. Volume LXXIII, 1987 (Oxford, 1988) pp. 309-52.

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