The strategic context of the 1920s could hardly have been more different from the
perspective of French security. No longer was there a great power ally in the East, threat-
ening Germany with a two-front war. Instead, France could only seek some solace in
treaties of alliance with the array of weak new, or controversially expanded, states that
had been created from the collapse or reduction of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and
German empires. Despite the nominal commitment to collective security that was the
keystone in the arch of the League of Nations, France hastened to assemble an allied team
of minor players located to the east and south of Germany, signing treaties of alliance
with Poland (19 February 1921), Czechoslovakia (25 January 1924), Romania (10 June
1926) and Yugoslavia (11 November 1927) (the latter three known collectively as the
‘Little Entente’). The French strategic problem was that it shared Western Europe with a
Germany that was potentially unmatchably powerful. This did not matter in the 1920s,
because Germany, though energetically revisionist, was in no position to take action to
restore its position by threat or force. France recognized, however, that that satisfactory
condition could only be temporary. None of France’s former great power allies were
willing or able to play an active role in supporting the European order which they had
helped establish at Versailles. Russia was a pariah state, distrusted and self-absorbed,
though willing to collaborate secretly with Weimar Germany on innovative military
projects for mutual advantage. The United States had rejected the League of Nations
because of the theoretical obligation to take action for collective security which member-
ship entailed. As a result, America definitely was not available as a likely ally of France
against a Germany that was recovering. Last, but not least, Britain was more worried
about French hegemony in Europe than it was sympathetic to French security anxieties,
so it, too, was not available as an ally, even an unreliable one. That political condition
was to endure until early 1939.
France had need either of allies or of a benign transformation in the character and
foreign policy of its German neighbour. For nearly twenty years it could acquire only state
minnows as allies, while after January 1933, of course, there was indeed a transformation
of Germany, but it was far from benign. The basis of French anxiety was demographic.
It had a population of 40 million, which was declining, while Germany’s population
was 75 million and rising. Furthermore, given French interests in the Mediterranean, a
potentially hostile Fascist Italy had a population of 40 million. Beyond the promise
of menacing demography, Germany’s industrial base was second to none in Europe and
had been damaged neither in the war nor very seriously by the Versailles Settlement. So,
in the 1920s, the bottom line to French appreciation of its strategic context was that
effectively it stood alone as the guardian of the new European order. That position of
great strategic responsibility would be undemanding only while Germany could be kept
in a condition of strategic impotence. Revisionist Weimar was strategically impotent and
was obliged to pursue a responsible diplomatic course, but that course was designed to
unravel Versailles, strand by strand.
This text has emphasized the importance of context. The 1920s showed real and
apparent progress in international cooperation. Conference diplomacy bloomed as never
before. The 1920s out-conferenced the post-1 8 15 Congress System. It is possible that
had the economic, political and strategic contexts of that decade continued into the
1930s with no abrupt, non-linear shifts, Germany might have completed the process of
reabsorption into the ranks of responsible, respectable and essential great powers. But
108 War, peace and international relations