misery provided fertile soil for extremists. In the
autumn of 1923 the attitude and questionable
loyalty of the chief of the army, Seeckt, was
perhaps the most disturbing feature of the situa-
tion. The communists believed Germany to be
ripe for revolution and attempted to start it in
Saxony and Thuringia. Separatism was still a
potent force in Bavaria and a new name, Adolf
Hitler, came to national attention when he
attempted and failed to seize power in Munich.
But in this hour of crisis for democracy and the
republic, Gustav Stresemann, a political leader
of the more moderate right, an ex-monarchist,
an ex-supporter of the war of 1914 and of
Germany’s plans to achieve continental European
hegemony, was entrusted with guiding Weimar’s
foreign relations.
Stresemann led the small People’s Party. The
Social Democrats agreed to his appointment
as chancellor in August 1923 and joined the
parties of the centre and moderate right in brief-
ly forming a grand government coalition. In
November, he became foreign minister in a new
government and remained in this post through
every successive government until his death.
Historical controversy surrounds the evaluation of
Stresemann’s role in the Weimar Republic. Was
he a blatant nationalist, even still an expansionist?
There can be no doubt that he did wish to free
Germany from the remaining restrictions of the
Versailles Treaty: reparations, foreign occupation
and military limitations. He followed pacific poli-
cies openly, yet was ready secretly and deceitfully,
by any practical means, to reach his goals in
making Germany respected and powerful. His
aims included the restoration of German territory
lost to Poland in the east, and the former colonies
too. But it is mistaken to see in Stresemann a pre-
cursor of Hitler. He was at heart a conservative
and an old-fashioned nationalist. He learnt from
the war experience that Germany could not
‘conquer’ Europe. To attempt this would create
another coalition against it. He was realistic and
accepted limits to German power. His powerful
and respected Germany would be one of Europe’s
great powers, not the onlygreat power. He recov-
ered his country’s position and prestige during
the course of the next six years until his untimely
death in October 1929.
Stresemann had the courage to do the polit-
ically unpopular. Despite the nationalist patriotic
clamour against the French and the Diktat of
Versailles, he recognised that Germany was only
ruining its economic recovery at home and its
reputation abroad. His policy was that of sweet
reasonableness, a policy of ‘fulfilment’, as it
became known. Germany would now freely
accept the Versailles Treaty, seek peace and
friendship with France and renounce any future
claim to recover Alsace-Lorraine. The French
should feel secure and so, to prove their own
acceptance of the entirely new spirit of reconcili-
ation, would show their confidence by giving up
the remaining guarantees of its security – the
occupation of the Rhineland and the Allied com-
mission supervising German disarmament. He
called off passive resistance and allowed the
French president, Poincaré, the illusion of victory
and German submission. The French were not so
naive as to accept all these protestations of love
at their face value but the British were delighted
at this promising turn of events. They wanted the
war to be over and peace and goodwill instantly
to reign. British foreign secretaries were more sus-
picious of the French than of the Germans,
though one of them at least, Austen Chamberlain,
recognised clearly enough that French militancy
was the result of their feeling of insecurity. Yet,
he too grasped at the opportunity of avoiding
closer commitments to France. Instead he under-
wrote a general Western European security treaty
suggested by Stresemann to head off any possi-
bility of an Anglo-French alliance and drafted
with the help of the British ambassador in Berlin.
The outcome was the Locarno Treaties of 16
October 1925. France and Germany undertook
to respect each other’s territories and frontiers
and to accept them as final. This treaty of mutual
guarantee, which included Belgium, was also
signed by Britain and Italy. Britain and Italy guar-
anteed that they would come to the immediate
aid of any country attacked by the other signato-
ries of Locarno. But Stresemann had refused to
extend Locarno to cover Germany’s eastern fron-
tiers with Czechoslovakia and Poland, nor would
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