The Treaty of Locarno

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found a new modus operandi, that means that they found their stability. This has been possible thanks to the USA’s helps and the mediation of the Great Britain. France moved away the troops from the Ruhr area and both nations decided to obey to the established borders.

Thanks to the treaty, Germany took part in the League of Nations the next year.

The effort of all the nations made possible the creation of the Treaty and one of the major consequences was the “ spirit of Locarno”. It brought a period of hopes. Chamerlain considered it as the turning point of the European situation and after he signed the Treaty he said that it was the best thing that he had ever seen.

Everyone tried to make the things work. Thanks to the treaty was possible, after some years, to established a new pact: the Briand-Kellog pact. At the begging, it was just a bilateral pact between France and USA, but they decided to open it to all the nations. More than 60 nations signed the pact, that established the idea that the war wasn’t the right way to fix the international problems.

Another important aspect that demonstrates that this treaty was useful is the fact that Briand and Stresemann won the Nobel Prize for the peace.

Unfortunately, this period of stability didn’t last long. In 1929, after the Crash of Wall Street the situation changed completely.

On the other hand, the treaty tried to fix many problem but many other appeared. The illusion of the Treaty depends on three important aspect: economics aspect, nationalism and political issues.

The Treaty of Locarno was a great solution for those years and it seemed to work but the Italy and Great Britain didn’t accept to guarantee the Eastern borders. It has been asked to Germany to give away the territories of Danzig, Upper Silesia and the Polish corridor but they said that they had already left the Alsace- Lorraine, so it wouldn’t ever happen. For this reason, Czechoslovakia and Poland thought that none was trying to help them. For this reason, Joszef Beck said “ Germany was officially asked to attack the east, in return for peace in the west”. A situation close to this one happened in the Balkan territories. People were completely stunned by what big changes brought the Treaty of Locarno in the West of Europe, so many thought that they could do the same thing to create order in the territories from the Baltic to the Aegean. They never reached the same goals because the two winners, Yugoslavia and Greece, didn’t find an agreement and also because, Chamberlain said immediately that he won’t be the mediator.

When in 1929, there was the Crash of Wall Street the USA situation fall and with it also the European one. From this moment, the order and stability that they found was gone.

Another important aspect was that during those years, there were in many nations such as Italy and Russia the rising of nationalism. Everyone started to think for its own state. The state: “ democracies do not wage war against each other for the solidity of the Locarno agreements” shows it. In fact, this is what happened in the case of Germany when Hitler took the power. He didn’t accept the agreements took at Versailles and Locarno, so he decided after some years to militarize the Rhineland on 7 March 1936. Not one country did something to avoid it because everyone were scared by the possibility of the communism spread and Hitler seemed the only one that could fight against it.