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The Locarno Treaties were seven agreements negotiated in Locarno, Switzerland, from 5 to 16 October 1925 and formally signed in London on 1 December, in which the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of Central and Eastern Europe sought to secure the post-war territorial settlement, in return for normalizing relations with the defeated German Reich. It also stated that Germany would never go to war with the other countries. Locarno divided borders in Europe into two categories: western, which were guaranteed by the Locarno Treaties, and eastern borders of Germany with Poland, which were open for revision.
The Anti-Comintern Pact, officially the Agreement against the Communist International was an anti-Communist pact concluded between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan on 25 November 1936 and was directed against the Communist International (Comintern). It was signed by German ambassador-at-large Joachim von Ribbentrop and Japanese ambassador to Germany Kintomo Mushanokōji. Italy joined in 1937, but it was legally recognised as an original signatory by the terms of its entry. Spain and Hungary joined in 1939. Other countries joined during World War II.
The Little Entente was an alliance formed in 1920 and 1921 by Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes with the purpose of common defense against Hungarian revisionism and the prospect of a Habsburg restoration in Austria or Hungary. France supported the alliance by signing treaties with each member country. The rapid growth of German power caused its collapse in 1938, and it never went into wartime operation.
Jean Louis Barthou was a French politician of the Third Republic who served as Prime Minister of France for eight months in 1913. In social policy, his time as prime minister saw the introduction of allowances to families with children.
Maxim Maximovich Litvinov was a Russian revolutionary and prominent Soviet statesman and diplomat who served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs from 1930 to 1939.
The causes of World War II have been given considerable attention by historians. The immediate precipitating event was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany made by Britain and France, but many other prior events have been suggested as ultimate causes. Primary themes in historical analysis of the war's origins include the political takeover of Germany in 1933 by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party; Japanese militarism against China, which led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Second Sino-Japanese War; Italian aggression against Ethiopia, which led to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War; the consent of Western countries to Germany's actions on the annexation of Austria and the partition of Czechoslovakia; and Germany's initial success in negotiating the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union to divide the territorial control of Eastern Europe between them.
German–Soviet Union relations date to the aftermath of the First World War. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dictated by Germany ended hostilities between Russia and Germany; it was signed on March 3, 1918. A few months later, the German ambassador to Moscow, Wilhelm von Mirbach, was shot dead by Russian Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in an attempt to incite a new war between Russia and Germany. The entire Soviet embassy under Adolph Joffe was deported from Germany on November 6, 1918, for their active support of the German Revolution. Karl Radek also illegally supported communist subversive activities in Weimar Germany in 1919.
The Franco-Polish Alliance was the military alliance between Poland and France that was active between the early 1920s and the outbreak of the Second World War. The initial agreements were signed in February 1921 and formally took effect in 1923. During the interwar period the alliance with Poland was one of the cornerstones of French foreign policy.
The German–Polish declaration of non-aggression, also known as the German–Polish non-aggression pact, was an agreement between Nazi Germany and the Second Polish Republic that was signed on 26 January 1934 in Berlin. Both countries pledged to resolve their problems by bilateral negotiations and to forgo armed conflict for a period of 10 years. The agreement effectively normalised relations between Poland and Germany, which had been strained by border disputes arising from the territorial settlement in the Treaty of Versailles. The declaration marked an end to an economically damaging customs war between the two countries that had taken place over the previous decade.
The Soviet–Polish Non-Aggression Pact was a non-aggression pact signed in 1932 by representatives of Poland and the Soviet Union. The pact was unilaterally broken by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939, during the Soviet invasion of Poland.
The military alliance between the United Kingdom and Poland was formalised by the Anglo-Polish Agreement in 1939, with subsequent addenda of 1940 and 1944, for mutual assistance in case of a military invasion from Nazi Germany, as specified in a secret protocol.
The remilitarisation of the Rhineland began on 7 March 1936, when military forces of the German Reich entered the Rhineland, which directly contravened the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties. Neither France nor Britain was prepared for a military response, so they did not act. After 1939, commentators often said that a strong military move in 1936 might have ruined the expansionist plans of Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany. However, recent historiography agrees that both public and elite opinion in Britain and France strongly opposed a military intervention, and neither had an army prepared to move in.
The Iberian Pact or Peninsular Pact, formally the Portuguese–Spanish Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression, was a non-aggression pact that was signed at Lisbon, just a few days before the end of the Spanish Civil War, on 17 March 1939 by Portuguese Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar, representing Portugal, and Ambassador Nicolás Franco, representing Spain. The treaty was ratified on 25 March 1939.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was an August 23, 1939, agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany colloquially named after Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The treaty renounced warfare between the two countries. In addition to stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol dividing several eastern European countries between the parties.
Relevant events began regarding the Baltic states and the Soviet Union when, following Bolshevist Russia's conflict with the Baltic states—Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—several peace treaties were signed with Russia and its successor, the Soviet Union. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Soviet Union and all three Baltic States further signed non-aggression treaties. The Soviet Union also confirmed that it would adhere to the Kellogg–Briand Pact with regard to its neighbors, including Estonia and Latvia, and entered into a convention defining "aggression" that included all three Baltic countries.
The timeline of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact is a chronology of events, including Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact negotiations, leading up to, culminating in, and resulting from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The Treaty of Non-aggression between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was signed in the early hours of 24 August 1939, but was dated 23 August.
The background of the occupation of the Baltic states covers the period before the first Soviet occupation on 14 June 1940, stretching from independence in 1918 to the Soviet ultimatums in 1939–1940. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia gained independence in the aftermath of the Russian revolutions of 1917 and the German occupation which in the Baltic countries lasted until the end of World War I in November 1918. All three countries signed non-aggression treaties with the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Despite the treaties, in the aftermath of the 1939 German–Soviet pact, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were occupied, and thereafter forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, in 1940.
The Eastern Pact was a proposed mutual-aid treaty, intended to bring France, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania together in opposition to Nazi Germany.
Paul-Émile Naggiar was a French diplomat.
Jakob Suritz, also known by the Russian version of his name, Yakov Zakharovich Surits, was a Soviet diplomat best known for serving as the Soviet ambassador to France during the Danzig crisis.
References
- Pavel A. Zhilin, "The USSR and collective security 1935–1939." Scandinavian Journal of History 2.1-4 (1977): 147-159.
- Ragsdale, Hugh. The Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the Coming of World War II
- Azeau, Henri (1969). Le Pacte Franco soviétique [du] 2 mai 1935. Presses de la Cité.
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